The battle between the Boys and the Seven is coming to an end. With the fourth season of “The Boys” set to premiere on Prime Video this Thursday, June 13, creator Eric Kripke announced on social media today that the already picked-up fifth season will be the dark superhero drama’s last.
#TheBoys Season 4 Premiere Week is a good time to announce: Season 5 will be the Final Season! Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought. Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax. Watch Season 4 in 2 DAYS, cause the end has begun! pic.twitter.com/3p7Wt4jGA6June 11, 2024
Given that Kripke recently hinted that “The Boys” could last well beyond its initially planned five seasons, it’s a bit surprising that he and Amazon are sticking to that original plan.
“I would be crazy to speculate on how many seasons any show should go,” Kripke told GamesRadar. “I’m not going to make that same mistake again.” Kripke’s previous hugely popular series, the CW drama “Supernatural,” ran for 15 seasons when Kripke had first planned for five, although he stepped aside as showrunner following the fifth season.
The business model for streaming series is very different from broadcast network series, though, and even the most popular streaming show rarely lasts beyond five seasons.
So while Kripke may have fueled speculation with his recent comments about “The Boys” lasting beyond its fifth season, the announcement fits the life cycle of a popular streaming series. It also gives Kripke and his writing staff plenty of time to craft a proper finale for “The Boys,” since writing has just begun on the fifth season. As TG’s Alix Blackburn said, it may be the best time for “The Boys” to come to a close, so that the show doesn’t drag out its storylines or ruin its beloved characters.
The end of “The Boys” also doesn’t mean the end of “The Boys” universe, of course. In the streaming era, rather than popular shows continuing into double-digit seasons like “Supernatural” did, the trend is to spin them off into multiple connected shows, allowing for continuous high-profile “new” launches. That’s already happened for “The Boys” with the animated anthology “Diabolical” and the live-action series “Gen V,” which has been picked up for a second season.
“There’s a couple of things in development,” Kripke told The Hollywood Reporter this week, so fans of “The Boys” should have plenty to look forward to, even after the main series comes to a close. “The Boys” season 4 premieres June 13, and if it follows previous release patterns, the fifth and final season should arrive sometime in 2025 or 2026.
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