Note: There are spoilers for “The Boys” Season 4 below
Yeah, Season 4 of “The Boys” just ended, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get you ready for everything that’s about to go down in Season 5.
What a wild season filled with relevant, exciting storylines. From Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) murdering Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) to A-Train leaving The Seven and Vought CEO Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) pumping herself full of Compound V, there’s no telling what Season 5 will have in store.
And that’s just what went down in Season 4 of “The Boys.” We’re sure even more details related to Season 5 will come out of “Gen V” Season 2, which is currently filming, so we’ll update this doc with those items at a later date. In the meantime, here’s everything we know about the fifth season.
Does “The Boys” Season 5 have a release date yet?
There are no confirmed details about when Season 5 of “The Boys” is slated to arrive. However, based on the last two seasons, which both had June premieres and took about two years to complete, the series will more than likely land sometime in June 2026.
“Usually from about when you start the writers room, and we started like about a month ago, five weeks ago, to when generally you hit the air, it’s about two years and change,” Kripke told Deadline at the start of Season 4.
Urban confirmed the expected release window in a social media post after the Season 4 finale, telling fans “See you in …2 years (wish it was sooner) for the final season.”
Season 4 of “The Boys” debuted on June 13 with its first three episodes.
When is Season 5 filming?
In early June, Kripke told Variety that no exact date had been locked but, they would start shooting “around mid-November” and will continue filming “well into” the middle of 2025.
How many episodes are in Season 5?
Kripke also confirmed that “The Boys” Season 5 will have eight episodes, the same episode count as the first four seasons.
Is Season 5 the last season of “The Boys”?
Yes, Eric Kripke confirmed that Season 5 will be “The Boys’” last season.
“I like five seasons,” he previously told TheWrap after the show announced the news. “People have been asking me why that number and I think honestly as a TV writer, I was trained on five acts and so it just makes sense to me to stretch out for that long. It gives you enough time to delve into the characters but it’s also not so long that it wears out its welcome.”
What do we know about Season 5’s story?
Not a whole lot, but Kripke teased to LadBible that the final season is the “show’s version of the apocalypse.” Yikes! “I think the finale of season four really shows you that we’ve been planning five years all along, because there’s no way a show goes one more season after the events of that finale,” he said, pointing out that the finale leave homelander with “everything he has wanted from the beginning, which is to completely remake the United States in his image.”
At the same time, The Boys are at their “lowest point,” with most of the team captured, incapacitated, or, in Butcher’s cast, possibly beyond redemption.
“That’s sort of the end of the second act of a movie where everyone’s really at their low point, and they’ve all faced their own personal demons,” Kripke said. “Now, they need to really come together in the fifth season and save the world.”
All the key events from Season of “The Boys” that set up for Season 5’s plot
Season 4 had a lot going on, and there’s a lot you’ll need to remember for Season 5. Here are all of the key events that will without a doubt impact the storylines in the show’s next chapter.
After Ryan Butcher murdered The Boys founder Grace Mallory, there’s no telling whose side he’ll be on in Season 5.
That’s right, the young supe murdered CIA Deputy Director and “The Boys” founder, Grace Mallory, whom Ryan used to refer to as his “aunt.” While visiting a dying Butcher in a CIA-operated hospital, Grace tried to convince Ryan to join forces with The Boys and get trained to murder his biological father, Homelander, as he’s the only being strong enough to take him on. The idea didn’t sit too well with Ryan, and when Grace tried to block him from leaving the facility, he fatally pushed her into a wall with his mighty strength. Believing that Butcher and Co. merely want entrap him and force him to fight Homelander, Ryan left the building.
If The Boys can’t get persuade Ryan to join their mission against, the squad will have even bigger challenges in Season 5.
A-Train isn’t riding with The Seven anymore
After switching sides and helping The Boys out with dirt on Homelander and Co.’s insidious plots, it was only a matter of time before The Seven learned A-Train was the leak, especially after finding out it was never Cameron Coleman. His cover was completely blown in Episode 7 of Season 4 by an unexpected visit from The Seven’s The Deep (Chace Crawford) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) at The Boys’ headquarters. Initially, Annie/Starlight and Butcher faced the two supes alone, but A-Train came in for the save, revealing his partnership with Homelander’s enemies. The Deep and Black Noir went home beaten and defeated. Knowing his stay would ultimately end with Homelander taking his life, A-Train decided to leave the country.
Butcher is a full-blown tentacle-slanging supe and he’s going to let it all hang out next season
The moment we’d all been waiting finally came during “The Boys,” Butcher has officially shown off his super-abled abilities, and it’s pretty morbid. He literally has an endless amount of tentacles that he can shoot from his chest to attack enemies. The arms are able to grab, pierce and throw targets, making Butcher a great weapon for The Boys in Season 5.
Homelander is creating a supe-controlled America
Thanks to Sister Sage’s plan, Homelander got what he wanted: he’s officially in the White House. In the Season 4 finale, Sage explained how she set Robert “Dakota Bob” Singer up as a main suspect behind the murder of Victoria Neuman. With Singer out of the picture, former Speaker of the House Steven Calhoun has slid into the role of commander-in-chief and he’s pledged his allegiance to Homelander.
On top of that, Calhoun declared Martial Law, deputizing hundreds of superheroes nationwide who will report directly to Homelander himself. This means tighter laws, more restrictions and jail time for any Homelander naysayers will likely be the case for citizens in the fifth chapter.
Victoria Neuman is dead … just when she was ready to help The Boys
Just when Hughie got Victoria to team up with The Boys, Butcher used his tentacles to rip her in half. This all went down in the Season 4 finale.
Now that Victoria is dead, her daughter Zoey was forced into the care of the Red River Institute, the orphanage her mother Victoria’s adoptive father, Vought CEO Stan Edgar, found her in. There’s no telling whose side she’ll take in Season 5 if she’s released. Not only did Butcher kill her mother, he also chopped off her father Sameer Shah’s leg and forced him to create another vile of the supe-killing virus.
Kimiko and Frenchie share their first kiss
After four seasons, Kimiko and Frenchie are officially boo’d up. In the Season 4 finale, the two share a long, romantic kiss after Kimiko admits her true feelings. We even got to hear Kimiko’s voice, though in the most heartbreaking way possible. The two were kidnapped together by “Gen V’s” Cate Dunlap and Sam Riordan and Kimiko cried out to him as Cate mind-warped him to walk away from Kimiko without a thought.
Vought CEO Ashley Barrett is officially a supe
After Ashley overheard Homelander instructing The Deep and Black Noir to murder a list of informed Vought staffers, Ashley scurried off to nab one of Homelander’s vials Compound V to inject herself with. We haven’t seen Supe Ashley just yet, but her reaction to V so far appears to her head growing to an enormous size. After years of enduring abuse from Homelander and Vought as a whole, it wouldn’t surprise us if she joined forces with The Boys in Season 5.
The Boys have been kidnapped
In the last few moments of the Season 5 finale, some familiar faces showed back up, including Cindy (Ess Hödlmoser), that freakily strong test subject supe that escaped from the Sage Grove Center in Season 3, plus Godolkin University supes Cate Dunlap (Maddie Philips) and Sam Riordan (Asa Germann) from “Gen V.”
Cate and Sam attacked Frenchie and Kimiko, Mother’s Milk was taken down by supe Love Sausage (Derek Johns), and Hughie was grabbed by Cindy while Starlight flew away.
There’s no confirmation yet, but we can bet the captured Boys will likely be taken to the same prison Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway), Jordan Li (London Thor, Derek Luh) and Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo) are being held in.
The only members of The Boys who evaded capture are Butcher and Starlight. Even though the two hate each other’s guts, there’s no doubt the pair will have to work together in the next season break their crew free.
Who is in the “The Boys” Season 5 cast?
While there are no confirmed cast details for Season 5, the main cast will surely return. The stars include Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Erin Moriarty as Annie/Starlight, Laz Alonso as Mother’s Milk, Karen Fukuhara as Kimiko Miyashiro, Tomer Capone as Frenchie, Antony Starr as Homelander, Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, Chace Crawford as The Deep, Jessie T. Usher as A-Train, Susan Heyward as Sister Sage, Valorie Curry as Firecracker, and Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir.
“Supernatural” star Jared Padalecki is also expected to join the cast at last, just before the window of opportunity closes. “We have talked [about a role]. As a matter of fact, we talked today,” Padalecki told Deadline. “I think at this point in my acting life, I only want to work on projects that I really care about or with people that I really care about, and obviously Eric and I are indelibly connected forever.”
Speaking with Variety, Padalecki expanded: “It’s not been written yet, but I think he was saying [the final season] doesn’t even film until 2025. So yeah, I’m going to go play in Kripke’s newest playground. I had a great time the first time around, so I’m sure I’ll have a great time here again. I love the show. I think it’s hilarious and exciting.”
Several “Supernatural” actors have made their way onto “The Boys,” most notably fellow Winchester brother Jensen Ackles, who joined as Soldier Boy in Season 3, and Winchester pops Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who just played Joe Kessler in Season 4.
Who all died in Season 4 of “The Boys”?
Hugh Campbell Sr.
In Season 4, Episode 5 of “The Boys” Hughie was forced to kill his father after he turned into a deranged supe who could phase through objects and went on an accidental rampage.
Everything started off amazing. Hughie’s mother Daphne Campbell (Rosemarie DeWitt) gave Hugh (Simon Pegg) the Compund V that fell out of Hughie’s pocket, and at first Hugh felt great. But things quickly went south after Daphne and Hughie found Hugh covered in blood from accidentally going through a hospital worker. In shock, and seemingly suffering from dementia, Hugh panics, while mistakenly slaughtering people in the facility. Sadly, Hughie is forced to put his father to sleep, as he deduced that the V seems to have a distorted reaction on braindead people. Now, it’s just Hughie and his formerly absentee mother.
Victoria Neuman
In the Season 5 finale of “The Boys” Season 4, Butcher ripped her into two parts after breaking bad following the death of Grace Mallory, and the last viewers saw of Victoria was her bleeding out on the floor. Now, Neuman’s power is blood-bending and it seemed like she had more to do in “Gen V,” so perhaps this isn’t the last we’ve seen of her, but actress Claudia Doumit has been pretty consistent in her interviews that Neuman is dead for real.
Cameron Coleman
Fearful of becoming Homelander’s next victim, Ashley framed Vought News Network anchor Cameron Coleman (Matthew Edison) — who just so happened to dump her as his dominatrix partner — as the person who leaked the footage that proved Starlighters actually didn’t murder three Hometeamers (Homelander’s fan base). The entire Vought squad took turns beating Cameron to death. This all went down in Season 4, Episode 5 of “The Boys.”
Ambrosius
In Season 4, Episode 7 of “The Boys,” The Deep murdered his aquatic love Ambrosius after she confronted him about his affair with Sage. In a rage, The Deep bashed up Ambrosius’ fish tank and left her gasping for air until she died.
Tek Knight
After Kimiko and Annie/Starlight saved Hughie from Tek Knight’s sex dungeon in Episode 6 of “The Boys” Season 4, Tek Knight’s butler Elijah strangled him to death.
Webweaver
Homelander ripped Webweaver (Dan Mouseau) in half after he lied about being a rat for the Boys in Episode 7 of “The Boys.”
Vought lab employees
In Season 4, Episode 4 of “The Boys,” Homelander paid a visit to the Vought lab he grew up in and was experimented on. After torturing several of the scientists, Homelander seemingly blasts them into bits, leaving their blood splattered everywhere on the walls. The only person he let survive was a woman named Barbara Findley, who also is lab worker but appears to have a deeper relationship with John Gillman, or excuse us, Homelander.
What characters could return in Season 5?
There are some characters we haven’t seen for a while, or some whom have made their exits in the fourth season of the superhero series. Here are the stars we think will make an appearance in Season 5.
Soldier Boy
In the Season 4 finale of “The Boys,” now-President Steven Calhoun showed Homelander that they’ve been keeping Soldier Boy alive in a secret storage center in a regulated coma. Hopefully, Soldier Boy won’t be manipulated to take Vought’s side in the fight against The Boys.
Queen Maeve
In the Season 3 finale, Maeve put her life on the line to save New York City by taking on a deathly power blast from Soldier Boy. While Maeve kept her life, she lost and eye and her powers. Fans knew we wouldn’t see Maeve for a bit of time as left the city and strolled off into happiness with her girlfriend Elena (Nicola Correia-Damude). We didn’t see her all Season 4, and “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke already said this won’t be the last we see of her. Unless Maeve is making an appearance in “Gen V,” we can bet she’ll pop up in Season 5. It is the last season, after all.
A-Train
While he’s dipped off to some location in the world, you can best believe he’ll be there to join The Boys in their fight against Homelander. He may need some convincing from his pal Mother’s Milk though.
Victoria Neuman?
As we mentioned above, the camera showed Victoria bleeding out. Key word: bleeding. And this is exactly why her death is somewhat in question, as she’s blood-bending supe. So who’s to say that she won’t use her powers to regenerate herself? Plus, Victoria made a lot of promises to “Gen V” character Marie Moreau — her fellow blood-blender — in the show’s first season, so we’re not too sure this is the last of the supe. That said, Doumit maintains her character is really dead in her post-finale press.
