With four head-exploding seasons in its wake, The Boys Season 5 is primed to stand out as one TV’s biggest final outings ever, given the extreme stakes that creator Eric Kripke has planned for Homelander vs. Billy Butcher. With filming having started up in December 2024, it’s not entirely clear yet whether new episodes will arrive on the 2025 premiere schedule, but we have a good idea what Kripke will be avoiding at all costs when his time on The Boys is done: newsy doom-scrolling.
Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic series The Boys was political in a way that most fictional projects were before Donald Trump’s first presidential run: generally shady and conspiratorial. But when Eric Kripke first began pitching a live-action take, the landscapes of politics and news were already shifting, and he’s since addressed The Boys becoming a reflection of our modern, ever-evolving society. Now? He’ll be perfectly happy to rid his daily life of such research.
Speaking with Forbes, Kripke talked about The Boys being a career high point, and addressed his hopes for what’s to come.
It's the best job I've ever had. I'll be sad when it's over. This cast is uniquely amazing, not just as actors, but as people. You come to think of the crew and the writers as your family. It's just the best group with the most fun I've ever had at this particular job, writing the thing that I think is probably weirdly most personal to me. I think I've been forced to become a news junkie in a way that I'm really looking forward to not being when it's over. I wouldn't mind being able to turn off all that, which I, up to now, have had no choice but to dive into all of it.
Not that I'm anywhere near Erik Kripke's position in life, I can 100% relate to working in careers where paying close attention to the news is a must. Despite any attempts to keep things positive, staying current with news can have not-so-glorious effects on anyone's mental state, whether it's local, national or global.
Granted, it probably helps to be able to turn all that research into an array of the wildest moments on TV in whatever given year The Boys airs episodes. And if the streaming show's creative team hadn't made the news cycle from the jump, Chace Crawford's entire arc as The Deep would likely share little in common with the Me Too-inspired story that viewers got. (Alas, there can be no justice for his octopuses Ambrosius and Timothy.)
What Eric Kripke Learned About Superheroes From Working On The Boys
Considering Kripke spent years bringing his creativity to a totally different battle between good and evil on Supernatural, shifting over to a superhero-fronted narrative seemingly made a lot of sense for his career. But while it made him more cognizant of how modern audiences envision themselves while watching, Kripke also shared his less hopeful revelation. As he put it:
I think what I've come to realize is superheroes in the real world are dangerous. Superheroes in the fictional world can be inspiring because what I realized was people don't view themselves when they're watching a superhero movie as the person who needs rescuing - they view themselves as the rescuer. They put themselves in the superhero's shoes, not the people on the planet. And so, it like gives them a positive role model and there's something good about that. It's just in the real world, strong men suck. That's all.
Since there are many months left to go until The Boys Season 5 has made it through filming, post-production, promotional campaign and debuting on Prime Video, hopefully Kripke will get to start curbing his newshound tendencies as soon as filming is complete and scenes can no longer be changed on the day. Though I guess additional dialogue can be recorded well after the fact to reflect newer headlines...
Of course, that's all said with the mild assumption that he won't be heavily invested in the creative directions of Gen V Season 2, the in-development Mexico-based spinoff, and the Jensen Ackles-starring Vought Rising spinoff. Perhaps the latter show's 1950s timeline will make it easier to avoid any and all the latest updates. Or maybe it just means Kripke will be spending more time bent over a microfiche reader.
