The Boys only has two more episodes to go until it is finished forever, so it will come as a shock to fans that the new episode of the final season spends what feels like half its runtime setting up an entirely different show.
Prime’s final ever season of The Boys has not quite had the reaction they will have hoped for so far, with critics loving the season but fans of the show being far more mixed.
One of the main criticisms online has been about the pacing of the TV show, with several suggesting that the season has far too much filler and too many comedic storylines considering we are just a few episodes away from the end.
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The new episode finally brings the story of Homelander, Soldier Boy, and The Boys trying to find V1 to a head, however it commits one of the cardinal sins of TV writing: wasting vital plot points towards the end of a series setting up an upcoming spin-off show.
Warning: The article contains major spoilers for The Boys season five, episode six.
The season has been building up to the idea that V1, a form of compound V that makes its users functionally immortal and incredibly powerful, has been hidden away with a supe called Bombsight.
Fans of the show may have already been questioning why such a massive plot point is centred around a character who was mentioned just once offhandedly prior to the new season.
Why they are doing this becomes obvious in the latter moments of episode six when Bombsight and Soldier Boy have an extended conversation about their past and relationship with one another.
You can’t help whilst watching however to question… why now? Why, in the third to last episode of the entire show, are we hearing about the backstory between Soldier Boy and a character we just met as if it’s something the viewer should already be fully aware of.
The answer, almost certainly, is that Soldier Boy and Bombsight are set to be two of the stars of the new The Boys prequel series Vought Rising.
The show will be set in the 1950s and focus on the pair alongside Aya Cash returning as Stormfront (known at the time as Liberty).
Whilst setting up a spin-off in a final season is not an issue in and of itself, the show is already massively lacking focus on the major characters in the series who have had lacklustre arcs this season.
The interactions between Bombsight and Soldier Boy are intriguing, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me a tad more intrigued in Vought Rising than I was before the episode started.
The best final seasons of TV though are laser focused on their endings. With just a few episodes to go The Boys is meandering its way to the finish line, taking random side quests to set up a spin-off during the most important sequence of episodes in the entire show.
The Boys season five episode six is now available to stream on Prime Video.
Topics: The Boys, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin