How Does ‘The Boys’ End? Where Every Character Stands After the Season 5 Finale

At the top of the finale episode, Sister Sage gets blasted by Kimiko’s newfound powers. She doesn’t die, but she does lose her powers, giving Sister Sage a sense of peace she’d long been yearning for.

Read Susan Heyward’s pre-season five finale interview with The Hollywood Reporter here.

Oh Father gets caught in the crossfire as the Boys make their way into the Oval Office to fight head-to-head with Homelander. He suffers a gruesome death, one that resulted when the ball gag sex toy that his wife Ashley gifted him earlier in the season is placed over his mouth as he tries to use his sonic scream power.  

Ashley Barrett finally has a slight change of heart in the finale episode. She goes against Homelander and reroutes the Boys when they’re trying to break into the White House, and is sparsely heard from the rest of the episode.

After the intense fight between the Boys and Homelander, Ashley, as president of the United States, delivers an address to the public where she claims her innocence. However, she’s quickly impeached, never to be heard from again. 

The Deep does not make it out of The Boys alive. When the Boys arrive at the White House to fight Homelander, Annie/Starlight flies him to a beach nearby and the two fight it out. Before he’s able to get away, Annie blasts The Deep into the ocean, where he meets his match.

The ocean animals, as they promised, arrive and kill him for betraying them by causing the Alaskan oil spill.

Solider Boy does not appear in the season five finale of The Boys, leaving viewers to assume he’s still in the cryochamber by the end of the series. 

This won’t be the last Boys fans see of Jensen Ackles though, as he’s set to lead the next spinoff prequel series Vought Rising next year.

The Boys finally did it.

Before the series finale ends, Homelander finally dies at the hands of none other than Billy Butcher. After the Boys broke their way into the oval office, Butcher and Kimiko traded blows with Homelander before his son, Ryan, joined them to finish off the job.

Butcher and Ryan held Homelander back as Kimiko blasted him with her new radiation, Soldier Boy-like power, leaving him powerless. After begging on his knees for Butcher (and offering up literally everything) to spare his life, a less-than-super Homelander is stabbed by Butcher in his forehead. 

Mother’s Milk finally is able to return home to his wife and daughter at the end of The Boys. But when he departs the group, he’s not alone. (More about that below.) 

Ryan ends The Boys and makes way for life with no superpowers living alongside Mother’s Milk. The finale was dramatic for him, having aided Butcher and Kimiko in such a prominent way to kill his father Homelander. 

Kimiko runs off to France by the end of The Boys, in honor of the late Fenchie. It’s more than deserved, as she is the one who ultimately saved the world and stripped Homelander of his powers in the Oval Office. 

The final episode shows that Frenchie’s experiment worked, and that Kimiko is able to replicable Solider Boy’s chest-blasting radiation power. Once Billy and Ryan are able to properly hold Homelander down in the Oval Office, she uses the power on him and strips him of his powers.

But before she works up the strength to utilize her new power, Kimiko is met with a vision of Frenchie, who gives her the final push she needs to help the Boys triumph.

Annie/Starlight does not die in the season finale of The Boys. She has an intense episode, battling with The Deep before ultimately launching him into the ocean where he faces his death. In the end, she’s able to live a normal life with Hughie.

The very last scene of The Boys season five, too, reveals that Annie is pregnant, and that she and Hughie’s child’s name will be Robin, after Hughie’s late girlfriend.

Read THR’s mid-season interview with Erin Moriarty here.

Hughie Campbell goes through quite the journey in the finale episode. After Ryan, Kimiko and Butcher successfully defeat Homelander, it appears that all will be well in the Boys’ world. However, that’s not the case, because Hughie realizes that Butcher still has plans to release the lethal supe-killing virus.

After following him to the Seven Tower, Hughie attempts to sway Butcher, but he can’t. They get into a physical altercation before Hughie shoots and kills Butcher. 

Hughie is asked to return to lead the Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs by Robert Singer, but he denies the opportunity as he’s taken on a new opportunity, as the business owner of the audio store he worked at at the top of the series. There, we also learn that Annie is pregnant with their child, who will be named after his late girlfriend, Robin, who was killed by A-Train in episode one.

Billy Butcher finally reaches his goal of killing Homelander in the final episode of The Boys. With the help of Ryan holding him down and Kimiko stripping the supe of his powers, Butcher puts the final nail in Homelander’s coffin, so to speak, by stabbing him.

Once the Boys return to their safe house, Butcher quickly learns that his dog Terror has passed. That’s the moment when he decides it’s time to risk it all and release the deadly supe-killing virus Frenchie made earlier in season five. 

He travels to the Seven Tower, where Hughie finds and attempts to stop him. Butcher and Hughie get into a fight, and Butcher nearly has a change of heart when he sees his late brother in Hughie. However, he’s too late, and Hughie takes the chance to stop him from killing all supes and shoots him dead.

In the end, Butcher does end up where he always wanted to be: Right beside his late wife Becca, as the two are buried right beside one another.

Read THR‘s feature with Karl Urban here.

All eight episodes of The Boys season eight are now streaming on Prime Video. Read all of THR’s coverage of The Boys season five here.