The Boys Is Engineering a Villain Scarier Than Homelander — On Purpose

Homelander gets all the headlines, but if you have been paying attention, The Boys has been pointing at something bigger and uglier this whole time: the machine that built him. He is not a glitch. He is the QA-approved version of a bad idea scaled up and sold as heroism.

The monster is the system, not just the guy in the cape

Homelander did not pop out of nowhere. Vought has been cranking out living weapons for decades. Before him, there was Soldier Boy, the blunt-force prototype wrapped in a flag. Homelander refined the model by mixing god-tier power with branding, media control, and some heavy-duty psychological conditioning. And now the assembly line is iterating again, especially with Ryan. Over on Gen V, we are basically watching the bulk-manufacturing arm of this operation in action.

• Madelyn Stillwell ran supes like assets on a balance sheet.
• Stan Edgar treated them as replaceable products in a catalog.
• Godolkin University is the pipeline that turns kids into market-ready weapons.
• Soldier Boy was version 1.0; Homelander is the mass-market upgrade; Ryan looks like the controlled evolution.

Put that together, and Homelander starts to look like legacy tech: unstable, loud, and increasingly inefficient. Taking him off the board would not solve the problem any more than deleting an app fixes a corrupted OS. You would have to tear out Vought root and branch to stop the cycle.

Ryan is the real coin flip. He could be the first break in the pattern… or the most terrifying success story the system has ever produced, something worse than Homelander because he is cleaner, calmer, and easier to package.

Antony Starr says the ending is not going to be cozy

The Boys is heading toward its final stretch, and the fan betting pool says Homelander’s reign is on borrowed time. Antony Starr, who plays him, sounds like he is ready to push the audience off a cliff in the best way. On Josh Horowitz’s show, he said he is already deep into the last season and knows exactly where this lands.

"I am six episodes deep and I know what happens. I know where it ends up and I love it. I think it is great, I think it will be challenging for the audience in a good way and unexpected and true to form."

Starr also pointed out that the series has never chased the neat, correct version of itself. It sticks to its own brutal identity. He is all-in on showrunner Eric Kripke too, calling him a mad genius and saying he trusts where Kripke is steering the finale. Translation: do not expect a safe send-off for anyone, least of all Homelander.

That trailer shot everyone is obsessing over

Prime Video’s first Season 5 trailer dropped a quick, nasty little beatdown from Homelander that kicked off a fresh round of who-is-he-pounding theories. Some folks think it is A-Train or The Deep. Look closer and there is a more unsettling read: it could be Ryan.

There is a split-second hesitation before Homelander throws another punch. That pause plays like recognition, not restraint, and the only person he has shown anything like genuine affection for is his son. If the victim really is Ryan, it suggests two things at once: Homelander has finally lost whatever line he had left, and Ryan might be pushing back hard enough to force it. If the kid sees his father for what he is and stands up to him, that is the kind of trigger that turns Homelander from unpredictable to fully unhinged.

Where The Boys stands right now

Quick snapshot: Eric Kripke’s The Boys has four seasons on the books, sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and streams on Prime Video. Season 5, the last ride, premieres April 8, 2026. All previous seasons are up on Prime Video if you want to revisit the receipts.

Bottom line: Homelander might be the face of the problem, but the problem is a factory. Whether the series ends by breaking the machine or unleashing its sleekest model yet is the scary part… and, if you believe Starr, the show is absolutely going to make it sting.