The final season of "The Boys" premieres on Amazon Prime Video on April 8, and the reviews are in. Variety calls it "a heavy, blood-soaked finale." RogerEbert.com says it remains "the most pressing superhero show of our time." Consequence says it is "no longer that fun." Inverse says "everything clicks into place."[1]

The reviews are unanimous: the final season is the best season. They are also unanimous in what they do not say — that a show about fascist superheroes is premiering on the eve of a day when the American president has threatened to bomb every power plant in another country.[2]

Eric Kripke's satire has always been about the intersection of power and performance — superheroes as politicians, corporations as governments, violence as entertainment. In its first four seasons, the show was a commentary on the American tendency to confuse strength with virtue. In its fifth season, it is something else: a mirror held up to a moment when the commentary is no longer satirical.[5]

The Reviews

Nerdist: "Brutal, bonkers, and brilliant." Slashfilm: "The last and definitive word on superhero media as a whole." Yahoo: "One of the most brutal, bonkers, and brilliant shows in decades." The repetition of "brutal" and "bonkers" is not accidental — it is the vocabulary of a show that has always pushed past the boundaries of taste and found something on the other side.[3]

But the word that matters is "pressing." RogerEbert.com used it deliberately. "The Boys" is pressing because it is about the things that are pressing on us right now: the normalization of authoritarianism, the weaponization of patriotism, the way that violence becomes entertainment and entertainment becomes violence.[4]

The Timing

The premiere date — April 8 — was set months ago, before the Iran war, before the ceasefire proposal, before Trump's "Power Plant Day" threat. But the timing is not irrelevant. A show about a fascist superhero who believes his own propaganda and a president who threatens to destroy another country's infrastructure in the same week is not a coincidence. It is a convergence.[6]

The show's creators did not plan this timing. But the timing plans itself. Satire is most effective when it is unnecessary — when the thing it is satirizing is so obvious that the satire becomes redundant. "The Boys" Season 5 is unnecessary. That is what makes it brilliant.[7]

The Final Word

This is the last season. Kripke has said so. Amazon has said so. The reviews treat it as a conclusion, not a continuation. And the conclusion is that the satire has caught up with the reality — that the show's vision of fascist superheroes is no longer a warning but a description.

The Boys goes out swinging. The question is whether anyone is still watching.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles