5. Season 5
Arguably, the final season of The Boys was its weakest. Fans generally weren’t happy with the pacing, which spent too much time setting up the franchise’s next spinoff and too little trying to capture the razor-sharp satire of previous seasons. Unfortunately, by the time season 5 emerged, our reality had become far too stupid to effectively satirize and, as a result, The Boys was running on fumes.
This season set up a final showdown between Butcher and Homelander, one that had been promised for years. After being unable to use the long-in-gestation Supe virus against him, Butcher looked to Kimiko to take on Soldier Boy’s chest blast powers in an effort to suck Homelander’s away and leave him a vulnerable human they could easily beat.
There were happy endings aplenty for many of the show’s characters, including Hughie and Annie, but sadly, a few of the core “good guys” lost their lives by the time the series wrapped, including Butcher’s sweet old dog, Terror. Ultimately, the finale was a good enough sendoff for the show, but there was an overarching sense that seasons 4 and 5 were stretching out a single season of storytelling.
4. Season 4
The wheels came off a bit during this season. Though The Boys was still must-watch weekly viewing, the show was starting to feel like it was running out of compelling ideas, despite a worthy exploration of an America on the brink of societal and political collapse. There was also some uneven pacing as season 4 set up a final showdown between Homelander and The Boys, rather than embracing a more satisfyingly contained arc.
Still, there was a lot to love in season 4. Butcher had been living on the edge for a while, but finally had to face his own mortality. Alt-right Supe Firecracker was recruited at TruthCon, and actress Valorie Curry would go on to become a fantastic addition to the cast. A killer episode also had Homelander return to the Vought lab where he was once experimented on, producing some of the most tense and upsetting scenes of the entire series.
The Gen V virus crossover was a little shaky, and Joe Kessler being a figment of Billy Butcher’s imagination led to a fairly underwhelming guest-starring role for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but season 4 was basically fine overall, just not as good as previous seasons.