Amazon Prime Video is officially bringing one of its biggest originals, The Boys, to an end after five seasons.
On Tuesday, ahead of the show’s season four return, showrunner Eric Kripke made the announcement on X, writing: “#TheBoys Season 4 Premiere Week is a good time to announce: Season 5 will be the Final Season!
“Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought. Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax. Watch Season 4 in 2 DAYS, cause the end has begun!”
Several fans have responded to the news, relieved that the show — an adaptation of Garth Ennis’ graphic novels — will have a deliberate ending, rather than being dragged out like Kripke’s last show, Supernatural.
“Good news, everything has to end,” one fan tweeted, with a second adding: “This is so sad but totally understandable! short and sweet.”
“Really sad about this,” a third wrote, “but so happy you wont be dragging it out like other shows do. Thanks for everything Eric.”
After the drama was renewed for a fifth season last month, speculation began swirling that that would be it for the Emmy-winning series.
Kripke had previously shared his desire for The Boys to last five seasons in order to finish the story. He had told fans in 2020 that he had a “rough idea” of how he wanted to end the show. “But I also know better than to say how many seasons a show is gonna have,” he reasoned at the time.
In the past, Kripke’s been critical of Supernatural’s long, 15-season run. “No one in the entire history of the entertainment business has been more wrong than me, giving interview after interview on how I thought Supernatural should end after five years,” he told SFX Magazine.
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The Boys, which debuted in 2019, is “a fun and irreverent take on what happens when superheroes — who are as popular as celebrities, as influential as politicians, and as revered as gods — abuse their superpowers rather than use them for good,” an official logline reads.
It stars Antony Starr, Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Jensen Ackles, Karen Fukuhara and Chace Crawford, and has since spawned two spin-offs: The Boys Presents: Diabolical and Gen V.
The first three episodes of The Boys season four will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on June 13, followed by episodes released weekly.