The Boys ending explained: Showrunner Eric Kripke reveals why he changed the comics for his series finale

‘All respect to Garth, but it felt unsatisfying’

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke has never been especially faithful to the Garth Ennis comic book series his Prime Video show is based on. He changed Black Noir’s (Nathan Mitchell and Fritzy-Klevans Destine) backstory, rewrote the fate of Billy Butcher’s (Karl Urban) wife, and gave Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) a name rather than just referring to her as The Female. But when Kripke was deciding how to end the series after five seasons, he looked to the comics for inspiration. Sort of.

“The storyline of the show is definitely different than the storyline in the comics,” Kripke tells Polygon. “But that said, there's elements of the comic that we try to use whenever we can. I think the comic is brilliant.”

Ahead of the series finale, we caught up with Kripke to unpack how exactly he adapted the ending of the comic while writing the final episode of The Boys.

[Ed. note: This article contains major spoilers for The Boys’ series finale and the end of The Boys comics]

In both the show and the comic, Butcher goes to extreme lengths to pursue his goal of killing Homelander (Antony Starr). But defeating the world’s most powerful supe doesn’t bring Butcher any peace.

“What I really took from the finale of the comic was that Butcher is a shark who will not stop,” Kripke says. “It doesn't matter if Homelander's dead. It doesn't matter if his goals are fulfilled. He's going to keep doing what he's doing. So ultimately, he does have to be stopped, and Huey is the one who has to stop him.”

Throughout the series, Butcher has referred to Huey Campbell (Jack Quaid) as his canary, a voice of reason who can stop him from going too far in his quest for vengeance. Hughie brings this role up in the series finale when he confronts Butcher, who has decided to release a virus that will kill all supes. When it seems like Butcher won’t back down, Huey shoots and kills him. While the series always focused on the conflict between Homelander and Butcher, Kripke says he sees the conflict between Huey and Butcher as equally important.

“Butcher wanted someone to save him from his worst impulses and then proceeded to do everything he can to denigrate and degrade Huey, so Huey can't stop him,” Kripke says. “But the fact is, Huey passes that test and is able to stop him using his inherent goodness.”

Huey also kills Butcher in the comics, but only after Butcher murdered the rest of his teammates. One of the biggest changes Kripke made is that in comics, all of The Boys take Compound V to get powers. When Butcher decides that all supes need to die, he starts with those closest to him. Instead, Kripke had Homelander kill Frenchie in the penultimate episode and gave the rest of The Boys a happy ending.

“All respect to Garth, but it felt unsatisfying to have these characters that I'd been following for years suddenly be murdered,” Kripke says. “I wanted to keep them alive, but I definitely wanted the Huey-Butcher fight.”

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The Boys is streaming on Prime Video.