Did The Boys Showrunner Spoil Soldier Boy's Series Finale Fate?

Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: the boys

Did The Boys Showrunner Spoil Soldier Boy's Series Finale Fate?

During an interview, The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke dropped an interesting line about Soldier Boy's (Jensen Ackles) role in the finale.

Published Fri, 15 May 2026 18:01:09 -0500
by Ray Flook
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With only days to go until the series finale of Prime Video's The Boys, Showrunner Eric Kripke may have dropped a bit more about Soldier Boy's (Jensen Ackles) role in the big finale than maybe he intended. If you've seen this week's episode, then you know that his deal with Homelander (Antony Starr) left things with a huge question mark. While their assumptions that could be made, there were other possibilities that could've been in play – but apparently, that's not the case. Now that we're done being annoyingly vague, we're throwing on the "MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!" sign and throwing down an image spoiler buffer before we do a deep dive into details.

As you already know, S05E07: "The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother's Milk" saw Homelander killing the President of the United States, disbanding The Seven, and revealing his big "god" plans to his dad. But Soldier Boy wants nothing to do with any of it, taking a minute to remind Homelander what he thinks of him before taking off. But he doesn't get far, with Homelander dropping him with a chokehold and putting him back into stasis.

Speaking with Collider for a post-penultimate episode interview, Kripke was asked about Soldier Boy's "fixing up the old Impala bullshit" line being a reference to the long-running Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins-starring series that Kripke created.  In his response, the series's creator and showrunner confirmed that it was, noting that the scene would be the last we see of Soldier Boy in the series.

"Knowing that that was going to be Jensen's last scene in the series, we wanted to put in one last reference. Honestly, Slem wrote, and we shot that it was a Ford. It was, 'Working on the old Ford.' The danger of having [director] Phil Sgriccia and I, sitting next to each other in editing, which we would do, was that we were watching it and Phil was like, 'Should it be 'Impala'?' And I was like, 'Yeah, it probably should be 'Impala." And so, Jensen looped in 'Impala' just to do one last nod." So, Soldier Boy's role in the finale will be… that he doesn't have one.

While Soldier Boy not being a factor in the finale may not seem like a huge spoiler, it does eliminate the possibility that our heroes could've reawakened him. Considering how time is running at this point, it wouldn't seem that he would've been in a deep freeze so long that he would need a ton of time to recuperate. Especially when you factor in how pissed off he would be at that point. Of course, there's also the possibility that Kripke is swerving us, or that something might go down during an end credits scene.

The Boys: Eric Kripke Feels "A Fair Amount of Terror" About Finales

During Sony's "Creator to Creator" podcast, Kripke and Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent) had a chance to share what life is like as a showrunner, and if there were two people who have the resumes to have this conversation, it's Kripke and Ryan. Beginning at around the 33:50 mark in the clip above, Kripke reveals his mindset in terms of crafting a series finale that remains true to the show's creative vision while satisfying the faithful viewers. "I am in a fair amount of terror about a series finale," Kripke shared. "You can count in one, maybe two hands, the truly great series finales… the graveyard is literally filled with terrible series finales."

Kripke continued, "How do you tie up the stories? How do you do it in a way that is emotional and satisfying? How do you do it in a way that creates — frankly — the illusion that some detail that you dropped in Season 1 or Season 2 is now suddenly coming back to pay off?" He continued," You could have the greatest show for years, but if you stiff that ending, and that's what's sending everyone out in the parking lot, they go, 'Oh, maybe that show wasn't that good'."

Regarding series finales that hit and hit hard, Kripke shared what he learned from writers and how they approached the lead-up to Breaking Bad S05E16: "Felina" (written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan). "'Breaking Bad,' to me, is as good as a show gets, and I was able to ask some of those writers, I'm like, 'The way you tied everything together, how did you do that?' And they said, 'Oh, we had just a list of loose ends on our board that we had no idea what to do with them, that we would keep compiling over the seasons. And then when it came time to do the final season, we would just start checking them off of like, how do we pay them off, cuz we're gonna look like geniuses because the Season 2 storyline becomes this.'"

During the fifth and final season of Prime Video and Showrunner Eric Kripke's The Boys, it's Homelander's (Antony Starr) world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims. Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are imprisoned in a "Freedom Camp." Annie (Erin Moriarty) struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) is nowhere to be found. But when Butcher (Karl Urban) reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. Set to join them are Jessie T. Usher, Chace Crawford, Nathan Mitchell, Colby Minifie, Jensen Ackles, Cameron Crovetti, Susan Heyward, Valorie Curry, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In addition, Daveed Diggs, Mason Dye, Jared Padalecki, Misha Collins, and some other folks you might just recognize are also joining the final run.

The Boys is based on The New York Times best-selling comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, who also serve as executive producers, and was developed by executive producer and showrunner Eric Kripke. Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, Phil Sgriccia, Michaela Starr, Paul Grellong, David Reed, Judalina Neira, Jessica Chou, Gabriel Garcia, Ori Marmur, Ken F. Levin, and Jason Netter also serve as executive producers. The Boys is produced by Sony Pictures Television, Amazon MGM Studios, with Kripke Enterprises, Original Film, and Point Grey Pictures.

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