Eric Kripke announced today that Amazon’s superhero series The Boys will be coming to an end with its fifth season. The fourth season of that show will premiere on Thursday and the fifth-year renewal had been announced in advance. The show’s creator and showrunner confirmed in a tweet that it will be wrapping at that point:
#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/3p7Wt4jGA6
— Eric Kripke (@therealKripke) June 11, 2024
Kripke had previously indicated that he wanted the show to wrap up around its fifth season, and it appears that Amazon is okay with those plans. The news does not come as a huge surprise, even though the show is one of the streamer’s most-watched originals. The Boys is very expensive to produce, and the streaming model is not designed for shows to run for many seasons. The number of subscriptions for an original usually drops each season, and these shows get to the point that they cannot justify the money that is being pumped into them. Netflix is ending its hugely popular originals Stranger Things and The Witcher with their fifth seasons, and Paramount+ just wrapped up Star Trek: Discovery with its fifth year. And typically only the most-watched shows make it that far as it is much more common for streaming originals to cap off around the third or fourth season.
The fifth season of The Boys will not be the end of the franchise, though, as spin-off Gen V is heading into its second season and could stick around for a few more years. In addition, a Spanish-language series set in the same universe is in the works, and I expect more spin-offs to hit the lineup in the coming years. The show has expanded into a franchise, and Amazon will definitely work to get the most from that.
The Boys already counts as renewed for the current season and its final year will not arrive until the 2024-25 season at the earliest. So the Cancellation/Renewal Score remains the same at 26 renewed sci fi and fantasy entries (39% of shows tracked) vs. 15 cancelled and ending (23%). You can see the breakdown of the numbers and the full list of shows for the current and prior seasons at our Cancellation Watch Page.
The Boys follows a group of vigilantes who are trying to bring down the superheroes known as “The Seven” who work for the corrupt company Vought International and who have been abusing their powers. It stars Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Dominique McElligott, Jessie T. Usher, and Laz Alonso and it is based on the comic book series created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson.
We are almost at the end of the 2023-24 season and I expect more announcements to come over the next week or so. You can see the status of all this season’s shows at this link. And be sure to follow this site and the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for updates and breaking news.
Be sure to follow the Cancelled Sci Fi Twitter Site for breaking news and updates. And for the latest news and discussions on sci fi and fantasy television, follow r/SciFiTV
Follow our Sci Fi TV Schedule for all the currently airing and upcoming sci fi and fantasy television shows, and you can see the premieres for all the upcoming genre entries at this link.
I get that people like this sort of over the top gory, nihilistic, morally reprehensible take on superheroes is popular – just like walking dead, GOT and all that stuff. I just find it hard to understand why without really wondering about people.