Through its first four seasons, The Boys has featured dozens if not hundreds of on-screen fatalities… but if we’re being totally honest, some characters have always felt safer than others. It’s far from a unique thing about the streaming series: there are always some protagonists and antagonists that serve as pillars for everything being built, and there is no real expectation that their time as part of the cast is going to be cut short. All that being said… when it comes to a final season all bets are off, and star Karl Urban has teased that the superhero show is not going to disappoint in that respect with the upcoming Season 5.
Known to fans as Billy Butcher, Urban teased what’s to come from the last run of The Boys during a recent press line interview with Variety, and he highlighted the extreme stakes that audiences can expect. He promises that folks are going to be left with proverbial gaping jaws in upcoming episodes, and it’s not even going to be a delayed thing: we can expect some stunning developments in the premiere. Said the actor,
Every season, but particularly this season, from episode one, you’re like, ‘Oh wow.’ Nobody is safe. Fatalities right from the get-go. Let’s go! Last season! It’s all on!
Even Billy Butcher’s head is on the block this season (pun absolutely intended). When we last saw the character in the Season 4 finale, he was not only on the verge of death thanks to his usage of Compound V but also completely insane – hallucinating friends who had died years ago. Because of his V usage, he now has powers tied to the darkest part of himself, specifically the ability to generate vicious black tentacles, and he is in possession of a virus that could wipe out every supe on the planet.
Both Butcher’s continued existence and the virus pose extreme danger to all of the main characters on The Boys… but let’s also not forget that Antony Starr’s Homelander has complete control of the United States government thanks to the machinations of Susan Heyward's Sister Sage. That power is guaranteed to result in a massive body count, and there are few people that Homelander wants dead more than the members of The Boys.
It feels like it was just yesterday that The Boys debuted and wowed audiences with its diabolical and razor sharp satire – aimed both at superhero culture and disturbing developments within our own reality. Set to debut on April 8, Season 5 is arriving a little less than two years after the finale of Season 4 in July 2024, and if you need a refresher on everything that’s happening, you can rewatch all of the previous episodes of both it and the spinoff Gen V with an Amazon Prime subscription.
