The Absence of a Major Character Overshadows The Boys Finale
The Boys took the future of the franchise off the board for its final showdown.
This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 finale.
In the penultimate episode of The Boys, Homelander (Antony Starr) reacted badly to the news that his biological father, Ben, a.k.a. Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) had simply had enough of him and was leaving. Having tried in vain to convince Ben that he could live a life of fame and fortune with him, Homelander suddenly choked him unconscious and stuffed him back on ice to deal with later.
Soldier Boy did not emerge from cold storage in the series finale, which is now streaming on Prime Video for fans to feast on. However, his absence still managed to overshadow the final episode of The Boys: in the end, Soldier Boy wasn’t just the face of the franchise’s narrative past with his upcoming prequel spinoff series, Vought Rising, but also the potential face of its future, with the character’s fate left undecided in the present.
That’s surely by design. Ackles has been a charming and charismatic presence on The Boys, and much of Soldier Boy’s screen time in season 5 has been paving the way for Vought Rising, even introducing a teammate from his 1950s-set escapades called Bombsight and clashing with Homelander over their relationships with Clara Vought, a fascist Supe who became the first successful test case of Compound V and used those powers to commit crimes against minorities. She’ll also be back in Vought Rising, so the show felt compelled to remind us who she was and why she mattered during its final season. This has often been infuriating for fans, who have gleefully made memes blaming season 5’s perceived creative problems on being “what Clara would have wanted.”
Yet, the creatives behind The Boys clearly didn’t want Soldier Boy getting in the way of wrapping up the stories of the show’s main characters, conveniently popping him in a box ahead of the final showdown. This was also problematic, leading to a lack of resolution for Laz Alonso’s Mother’s Milk, whose grandfather was killed by Soldier Boy and who still held a grudge against him when he was simply taken out of the equation with a laughable chokehold that he was arguably strong enough to counter. Still, this might have been a bit less annoying if Soldier Boy hadn’t largely been used as an unsubtle plot device in the slow lead-up to the finale.
Soldier Boy’s feelings for Homelander wildly fluctuated from episode to episode after he returned to the ensemble. One minute, he hated him; the next, he was helping him with his insidious plans, flip-flopping to be whatever kind of character the show needed him to be at any given moment. He shut Homelander in a cell, hoping he would be endlessly tortured with radiation poisoning, only to hand him a shot of V1 so that he could become immortal. He balked at every move Homelander made, but whenever Homelander got close to vulnerability, he stepped up to help him wriggle out of it.
Yes, yes. It’s what Clara would have wanted, but since we only know a few spare details about Soldier Boy’s relationship with Clara before Vought Rising fleshes out their relationship, his season 5 arc felt disingenuous and contrived. Hell, he didn’t even need to be in the season at all. There are plenty of ways that Homelander could have got the V1. Soldier Boy was just the most convenient chess piece to keep fans interested in the franchise going forward.
Setting the stage for a full season of Soldier Boy adventures wasn’t enough for the writers of The Boys, though. They had to make it possible for him to reemerge in future spinoffs set in the present by allowing him to live through the mothership show, and that also seems by design. Like most prequels, Vought Rising will wield little peril for its main character. We already know Soldier Boy makes it out alive. By not killing him in the present and clutching onto the possibility that he’ll be back in the future (perhaps with a more complex backstory shoring him up) it feels like the show took one last swing at gauging our interest in seeing Soldier Boy, and this franchise, survive.