“The Boys” enters its 'endgame': Creator teases final season, 'period superhero show' “Vought Rising” (exclusive)

As Antony Starr's Homelander stands before a podium at the White House to address an anxious nation, you might as well get Doctor Strange over here in voiceover to declare, "We're in the endgame now."

The Boys season 5, now in production, will be the final run of the R-rated superhero satire series that began in 2019 and grew to become one of Amazon's top shows. Series creator and executive producer Eric Kripke tells Entertainment Weekly this year's ominous (and perhaps a bit too-close-to-home) season 4 finale gave the writer's room a chance to "really trigger the endgame."

"It's just such a gift to know, as a filmmaker anyway, when your story's ending because you know when to just blow the doors off it and completely change the world of the show," Kripke says. "You don't have to maintain it because you've got six more seasons. You've got to squeeze out of it that it's time to bring on the endgame. So, that's what that finale was built to do."

Related: The Boys' Antony Starr doesn't subscribe to the Homelander-Trump comparisons: 'It's low-hanging fruit'

He confirms the big developments of that episode, which dropped on Prime Video July 18, are big setups for season 5: Hughie (Jack Quaid) "solidly learning what it means to be human," Butcher (Karl Urban) "completely committing to being a monster," and Homelander "successfully taking over every single thing and changing the country into basically a Homelander-led kingdom," Kripke points out.

"Instead of having a villain talk about a thing they're going to do, which then our heroes stop from coming to pass, it's just so fun that he really did it," he says. "He took over the country. It's his country now. What does that look like in season 5, and how do our characters fight against it? Which has led to a lot of fun in the writer's room. I'm really excited with what we're coming up with."

While The Boys may be ending, the other spinoffs live on. Gen V, the college-set spinoff, continues on with the forthcoming season 2. Meanwhile, Vought Rising, a prequel following Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy and Aya Cash's Stormfront, was announced over the summer.

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"No one's really done a period superhero show that deals with U.S. history, with Joseph McCarthy and Judy Garland and Ronald Reagan and Hoover," Kripke comments on the latter. "I think it's just such a fascinating idea for a show whether The Boys existed or not." That's the bar he's looking to hit whenever another idea for a spinoff comes up. "Quality control to me is the most important thing, that each one of these series is fun to watch on its own," he adds. "It doesn't need the other one to exist."

Related: The Boys season 5 adds Daveed Diggs in mystery role (exclusive)

Spinoffs, Kripke notes, "were not even a twinkle in my eye" when he first started work on The Boys season 1. It was only over time that the mythology (and, obviously, the success) of the show led to other interesting ideas. As for other potential offshoots, including that The Boys: Mexico treatment, he says, "We're just taking it show by show, episode by episode."

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