The Boys Season 5's Biggest Unanswered Questions

After five seasons soaked in blood and other bodily fluids, "The Boys" has come to an end. The Prime Video series introduced fans to a whole world of super-powered beings that stretched, and often broke, the definition of "hero." From the beginning, Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) have been trying to kill the most dangerous supe of them all: Homelander (Antony Starr), an all-powerful sociopath who's been destroying lives in the pursuit of his own pleasure for decades.

"The Boys" Season 5 brings the conflict with Homelander to a dramatic and satisfying conclusion, but the show doesn't necessarily wrap up every loose end. Season 5 introduced spin-off series characters and hinted at future storylines for a possible continuation. The story of the Boys themselves may be over, but the universe they inhabit is growing faster than ever before. Some of the questions that "The Boys" series finale didn't answer might be addressed in "Vought Rising" or another spinoff series, but others will probably remain unanswered for years to come. 

Speculation is all part of the fun when it comes to a superhero story as expansive as this, and there's no better way to keep "The Boys" going post-finale than to talk about all the things we still don't have answers to.

The final season of "The Boys" wrapped up a Butcher plotline that's been running for years, but the show ended the story entirely offscreen. The ending of "The Boys" Season 3 revealed that Butcher's usage of Compound V had given him cancer. Throughout Season 4, Butcher had a clock ticking over his head, and his methods got more extreme than ever because of it. 

Butcher's V-fueled cancer caused him to hallucinate his old war buddy Joe Kessler (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and gave him a whole new set of powers, including super strength and disgusting flesh tentacles. At the end of Season 4, Butcher's sentient cancer drove him to kill Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), abandon his friends, and head down the path to full-blown insanity.

When Butcher first walks onscreen in Season 5, his internal struggle with the cancer has been completely resolved. Although Butcher's as violent and angry as ever, he's in full control of his own actions. He doesn't have any hallucinations, and he doesn't seem concerned about the cancer potentially killing him before he gets to Homelander. Butcher quips about making peace with his affliction, but he doesn't actually explain what changed between seasons. Now that Butcher's entire story is officially over, we'll likely never know how he overcame his super-powered disease.

After being freed from a Russian science facility only to get shoved into a cryopod in "The Boys" Season 3, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) finally gets to stretch his legs again when Homelander thaws him out in Season 5. Soldier Boy spends most of the season trying to escape, but when Soldier Boy learns that Stormfront (Aya Cash), who he dated back in his time, loved Homelander, he reluctantly decides to help his son find V1. After injecting Homelander with the immortality super-serum, Soldier Boy wants to go live his own life, but Homelander attacks him and puts him back on ice. 

Soldier Boy doesn't get to be part of the big finale, and he's presumably still locked up inside Vought Tower when the show ends. It's hard to say what's next for him in the current world of "The Boys," but we do know that Soldier Boy will have a big role to play in the prequel series "Vought Rising." The show will explore the early days of Soldier Boy's career and Vought's rise to global dominance.

It might seem like a prequel series can't answer any lingering questions about Soldier Boy at the end of "The Boys," but showrunner Eric Kripke says differently. Speaking with ScreenRant, Kripke talked about Soldier Boy's unceremonious icing in the penultimate episode of "The Boys" Season 5, saying, "I can only be very annoyingly coy to say that because we're deep into 'Vought Rising' and we know what that story is ... A lot will make sense that might not make sense to the viewers at this exact moment, but hang in there, it all will." One way or another, Soldier Boy's story isn't over yet.

Every season of "The Boys" needs some kind of MacGuffin, and in Season 5, it's V1. Throughout the series, we've seen different versions of Vought's supe-creation serum Compound V, but Season 5 reveals that the very first formula was the strongest. V1 kills most recipients, but those who live don't just get superpowers — they become immortal.

Tracking down V1 becomes everyone's main focus in Season 5. Vought supposedly destroyed all of the doses back in Soldier Boy's time, but we learn that at least one vial of the serum managed to escape the company's grasp. After plenty of searching and some back-and-forth with the Boys, Soldier Boy gets his hands on V1 and gives it to Homelander. In the end, the immortality serum doesn't stop the Boys from finishing Homelander off, but it's easy to imagine how dangerous V1 would be in the hands of any other ill-tempered supe.

"The Boys" never really makes it clear if any other doses of V1 still exist. Homelander only needed a single vial to become immortal, so after he was injected, everyone else stopped searching for it. There could absolutely be more V1 out there, and Vought itself might still have the formula locked away. The Boys may have killed Homelander, but another threat could easily rise in his place.

Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) is the CEO of Vought before Homelander wrests control of the company away from him. During the events of "The Boys" Season 5, Stan becomes Homelander's prisoner at Vought Tower. Homelander uses Stan to help find V1, but the entire time Stan is secretly looking for an opportunity to pull himself back to the top of Vought.

Near the end of the season finale, a news clip reveals that Stan has retaken control of Vought in the wake of Homelander's death. While addressing a pool of reporters, Stan explains that superheroes the world over have gotten out of control and need oversight. Of course, maintaining control over the strongest supes in "The Boys" universe will require a lot of resources that Stan will get to oversee.

Stan says that Vought will be listening to ordinary people and adjusting its strategy, and he also confidently asserts his belief that the company's best days are ahead of it. Stan is supposedly acting as Vought's interim CEO, but it's clear from his comments that Stan is planning on making big changes at the company. We don't know what his plan for Vought is, but after waiting so long to regain power, we know Stan won't give it up easily.

Killing Homelander isn't the end of the road for Butcher. As the Boys are celebrating their victory, Butcher takes the supe-killing virus that Frenchie made and loads it into the sprinkler system at Vought Tower. Butcher plans to set off the sprinklers as soon as supes arrive at the tower for work, but Hughie follows him and tries to put a stop to the plan. In the end, Hughie shoots Butcher to prevent him from potentially killing every supe on the planet. It's a heartbreaking ending to Butcher's story, but it also doesn't feel fully resolved.

After Hughie kills Butcher, how does he remove the virus from Vought Tower? The show doesn't explain, but if there's still a virus in Vought's water, then the tower is a ticking time bomb. Maybe viewers are supposed to assume that Hughie finds a way to covertly drain the entire sprinkler system, but that still doesn't explain whether he safely disposes of the virus-tainted water. Much like the V1 formula, there's still a chance that the supe-killing virus exists out in the wider world of "The Boys," and it could be a major threat in a possible future spin-off series.

In the very last scene of "The Boys," Hughie gets a surprising phone call from the new President of the United States. Former defense secretary Robert Singer (Jim Beaver) is back and in the Oval Office, and he's got a job offer for Hughie. According to President Singer, after everything that happened with Homelander, the government has decided to relaunch the Bureau of Supe Affairs. Hughie had a fairly successful career with the Bureau in the past, and as essentially the world's leading expert on combatting supes, he'd be perfect as the new Bureau chief.

Hughie turns down the job in favor of continuing to enjoy a relatively quiet life with Starlight (Erin Moriarty), but President Singer's call is an interesting story thread for "The Boys" to introduce at the last minute. Combined with Stan Edgar's press conference statements about supes needing more oversight, President Singer's call implies that the government is going to have a more adversarial relationship with supes in the future. 

If the world really is ready to crack down on ill-behaved supes, then the Bureau is going to have its hands full for a long time. The Boys may be disbanded, but the government's new supe-fighting team could have a show's worth of its own stories to tell. It's hard not to wonder if Hughie or any of our other heroes will find themselves working with the Bureau at some point or another.

Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) arguably has the most heartbreaking story of any character on "The Boys." Growing up with his mom, Ryan never realizes just how strange their isolated life is. Then Homelander reveals that he's Ryan's father and turns the boy's life upside down. After Ryan's mom then his guardian both die, he ends up essentially living on the run from his obsessive, super-powered dad.

In the Season 5 finale, Ryan shows up at the White House to help Butcher and the Boys defeat Homelander, but after the battle, his future is more uncertain than ever. Butcher offers to live with Ryan, but Ryan emphatically refuses. Ryan wants Homelander's death to be the end of his involvement with supes altogether. After rejecting Butcher's offer, Ryan goes off to presumably find a peaceful life of his own, but it's tragically hard to see that working out for him. 

Being raised as a Vought company secret, Ryan doesn't have very much real-world experience at all, and there's no reason to believe he has things like a birth certificate or Social Security number that would help him reintegrate into normal society. Ryan might not have powers now, but it's also hard to imagine that Vought will leave him alone. He knows company secrets, and even after Homelander's death, Ryan's full life story could seriously damage Vought's reputation. We don't know what happens to Ryan after he leaves Butcher and the Boys, but we can sadly assume that he has a long and difficult road ahead of him.

Season 5 of "The Boys" didn't spend much time exploring United States politics, but the events of the plot throw the entire government into chaos. At the beginning of the season, Homelander is quietly pulling the government's strings thanks to Vice President Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie). Then Homelander violently kills the President and takes even more direct control over the government. After Homelander's death, Ashley briefly remains President, but a news clip near the end of the finale reveals that she gets unanimously impeached and removed from office.

All the turmoil of the President's death, Homelander's brief tenure as President-God, and the new President's impeachment could provide fuel for an entire political thriller series. Obviously "The Boys" doesn't have time to really explore how those events would play out in real life, but the show leaves us with some huge questions about how anything like a normal government could reestablish control over the country.

We know that by the end of the series, President Singer is in office, but we don't know how he was elected or what state the government is really in after Homelander's power grab. It would be great to know how normalcy is restored or if the Singer administration is still struggling to track down Homelander loyalists within the government. As it stands, we have to just assume that the country is okay and President Singer is a legitimate leader, despite all the questions we still have.

The best part about the ending of "The Boys" Season 5 is that the show manages to give all of the main characters a satisfying conclusion. Frenchie and Butcher both tragically reach the end of their stories before the show's final credits. Hughie and Starlight get to live a life together, operating a small audiovisual store and fighting crime. M.M. goes back to his daughter and remarries his wife, while Kimiko heads to France where she can finally live on her own terms.

All those endings are gratifying, but we still have some questions about them. Hughie and Starlight have taken a step back from the front lines, but they're still using their skills to fight the good fight. M.M. and Kimiko, on the other hand, seemed to have entered retirement, and we have to ask: Really? No one deserves a happy ending and peaceful life more than those two, but it's also incredibly hard to imagine them really putting their supe-fighting days behind them for good.

M.M. has grown a lot, but even though he's no longer fueled by a desire for revenge, will he really be able to sit back and fully relax when he knows other evil supes could be out there? Similarly, Kimiko has talked about wanting to settle down and have a family, but will she be able to ignore the rest of the world when her powers could be saving other families? Fans might want to imagine M.M. and Kimiko finally living the good life, but realistically, they still have a lot to offer the world.

One of the most surprising reveals in "The Boys" series finale is that Hughie and Annie are going to have a baby. At the end of the episode, we find out that Hughie's opened his own audiovisual store, and that he's running it with Annie. When Hughie gets to the store, he brings Annie an odd assortment of ginger-flavored snacks and saltine crackers, and that's when we see her belly.

Apparently Annie's pregnancy isn't slowing down her work as Starlight, though. She and Hughie are using the store's equipment to monitor emergency frequencies, and after hearing a call, Annie takes off to save the day as Starlight. Fighting while pregnant might seem dangerous, but based on everything we know about Compound V, Hughie's future daughter Robin is likely safe.

Superpowers can be passed down genetically, which we know because Ryan got his powers from Homelander. There's enough wiggle room with the Compound V lore that it's possible Hughie's daughter is a normal human, but more than likely, she'll end up with powers similar to Starlight's. Will Robin become part of a new generation of naturally born superheroes? Will she join Starlight and Hughie and turn street-level crime fighting into a family business? The ending of "The Boys" leaves fans with those tantalizing questions to think about for some time to come.