‘The Boys’ Boss Eric Kripke on Homelander’s ‘Tragic’ Quest for Love & What It Means for Season 5

Sometimes Going Rogue Pays Off

For exclusive news and updates, subscribe to our The Boys Newsletter:

The Boys may be gearing up for its final chapter at Prime Video, but showrunner Eric Kripke is taking a look back at Season 4’s standout moments.

While the series about a titular group of vigilantes who aim to keep misbehaved superheroes in line was originally presented as a battle between well-intentioned rule-benders and an ignorant group of self-serving “Supes,” it has been revealed as an eerily timely reflection of our current politically charged climate. At the core is the never-ending push-pull dynamic between Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and the all-powerful American Flag-clad Supe Homelander (Antony Starr), which continued into Season 4 and will carry on in Season 5.

As viewers will recall, Season 4 opened with Homelander on trial for publicly lasering a protester to death and concluded with an essential coup of the government, placing Homelander’s allies in the White House, where they implemented the deputization of Supes. In other words, a Supe with a god complex was handed unfettered power over the masses, despite his previously being on trial status.

Vivien Killilea / Getty Images for IMDb

Meanwhile, Butcher’s Season 3 usage of Temp-V, a serum that temporarily grants the user Supe abilities, fully backfired as his body became riddled with cancer and lingering aftereffects that left viewers wondering, is there any decency left within the former Boys leader? With so much to consider ahead of Season 5, below, Kripke is reflecting on the show’s eerie connection to current events, some of Season 4’s most outrageous moments, and Homelander and Butcher’s ongoing battle. Plus, he weighs in on the father-son themes woven into these characters’ journeys and what that could mean for Homelander, who uncovered the whereabouts of his biological father, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), in Season 4’s final moments.

One thing The Boys is consistently lauded for is its ability to hold a mirror up to our own world. Did you anticipate the world would be in its current state when crafting Season 4? How do you feel about its eerily predictive nature?

Eric Kripke: Yes, I find all that deeply troubling. I mean, yes, we set out to be this funhouse mirror reflection of what we’re seeing in the world. Another metaphor is we like to be like the kid in the back of the classroom throwing spitballs at authoritarian — authority — figures because that’s healthy. The way some of these things line up, like us opening with a trial as certain former presidents were on trial and the way other world events seem to line up to the show are totally coincidental and frankly a little freaky.

Prime Video

And all I can say about it is it’s a show that’s about authoritarians who present as celebrities, and it’s a show about late-stage capitalism. And both of those things are dumpster fires right now. So when you’re swimming in those waters every single week, you’re bound to have some coincidences line up with what’s going on in the world. But I’m really proud that our weird superhero show is also maybe the most current show on television.

Season 4 was filled with outrageous moments from that Homelander breastfeeding scene to flying Supe animals, and everything in between. Did you have any favorites or scenes you couldn’t believe made it to TV screens in Season 4?

I would say it’s the Splinter [Rob Benedict] scene in the sauna. I mean, a human centipede of butt eating is just a nutty visual. It’s just a crazy visual. And I know we’re onto something when I cover my mouth whenever I see it, and I think we did that. But our goal is we use that stuff [as] our flash and sizzle to get through a lot of our discussions and conversations about politics and society. I think that sense of outrageousness helps some of those other issues go down.

One of Season 4’s standout episodes is when Homelander visits the lab where he was raised. When it comes to the intense emotions and violence that play out in that episode, how do you gauge how far you can take things onscreen?

I mean, my north star is just the characters, because I don’t know. So for me, it’s like, is it true to those particular characters? Are we so locked into what we think that character is thinking and feeling and would do? And if we think we’re showing that character the appropriate diligence and discipline, it’s a good bet the audience will follow them, too, because it’s as airtight as we can make it.

Prime Video

That particular story, where Homelander goes down to the lab, that’s a really heartbreaking story. And a lot of that comes down to Ant[ony Starr], who really wanted to play it like a little boy. He had this really smart, insightful observation that when you go home, you revert to whoever you were when you were at that home, and he was a scared little boy then. Now he has all this power, but he’s still that little kid, and so, it made him, weirdly — to the extent to which Homelander can be — sympathetic [or] at least empathetic. You could at least understand how that torture led him to become the person that he is today. I think Ant pulls off an incredible magic trick to make maybe the most evil and sociopathic person on television understandable to the audience. And that is no small thing.

So is it the fact that Homelander knows he’s aging, or an acknowledgement of the fact that he’s aging, that he’s even able to face those people now?

Yeah, exactly. His story in the season was one of mortality and legacy. He’s getting older, so he wants to go back and face his childhood and try to put all that behind him. He wants to try to be this good father and create this legacy moving forward, and all that’s very intentional, and it’s also exactly what Butcher’s going through. And by design, we always love it when we can put Butcher and Homelander around the same emotional journeys and see how they react to them because they [have this] two sides of the same coin thing where they’re the epic hero and villain of the show. So anytime that we get an opportunity to mirror what they’re going through, we take it.

Fathers and sons have been a huge theme throughout the series. What emotions are going through Homelander as he uncovers Soldier Boy’s frozen body at the end of Season 4? Jensen Ackles will also play a series regular role in Season 5. Is there anything you can tease about Soldier Boy and Homelander’s upcoming dynamic? 

Prime Video

Yeah, no, he is. The thing about Homelander — and I was just talking to Antony about this yesterday — is it’s sort of tragic, actually, but ultimately, the guy just wants someone to love him. He tries amassing all of this power just so someone somewhere will love him, but they’re all scared of him because of all that power. And I think the same goes for Soldier Boy…. [Homelander] just wants a dad to love him and be proud of him. And without spoiling anything in Season 5, I would say, because the revelation that Soldier Boy was his father came so late in Season 3, we never really got the chance to play it, but actually playing this father-son relationship between those two characters, there’s a lot of material to mine there and a lot of fraught emotional turns. So we’re able to dig into that in Season 5, and it has been a blast watching those two actors play off each other in the dailies.

Related

'The Boys' Season 5: Burning Questions We Need Answered

On the other side of the main conflict, Butcher went full Supe in those final moments of Season 4 when he killed Victoria. Is there any shred of goodness left in him, or has the cancer and its malevolent powers taken over?

Is he a man or a monster? And does he have to turn himself into a monster in order to defeat Homelander? And is there any part of him left that’s still human? I think what you’re asking is the big question of the series, and so I don’t want to give that away. It’s a big concern. In many ways, it’s a show about humanity and how power, vengeance, and violence take it away. And so, how are you able to hold onto it? And we’ll just have to see. At the end of Season 4, there’s no question that the monster wins, but we’ll have to see where that goes in Season 5.

The Boys, Season 5 Premiere, TBA, Prime Video