The Boys finale explained: Every death, twist and fan theory breakdown

Dubai: Spoilers ahead for The Boys Season 5 finale, Blood and Bone.

After five seasons, seven years and more blood than any show has any right to contain, The Boys signed off on 20 May with a finale that delivered on almost every promise the series ever made.

Here is everything that happened, everyone who died and how the fan theories stacked up.

What happened

The finale opens with a rapid-fire recap of every terrible thing Homelander has ever done, which takes a while. Having injected himself with V1 earlier in the season to achieve near-immortality, Homelander is at his most delusional, preparing to declare himself a literal god on live television from the White House.

Butcher and The Boys infiltrate the White House to stop him, and the centrepiece of the episode is a brutal, chaotic brawl in the Oval Office. The key to bringing Homelander down turns out to be Kimiko, who was transformed by Frenchie's experiments earlier in the season into a Soldier Boy-type supe-neutraliser, capable of stripping powers entirely. Butcher and Ryan, Homelander's own son, hold him down long enough for Kimiko to hit him with an atomic blast, draining all three of their powers and leaving Homelander ordinary, mortal and terrified.

What follows is a powerless Homelander, crying and begging for his life, is beaten to a pulp by Butcher before a crowbar is driven through his skull, live on camera, fulfilling the promise Butcher made to Becca all those years ago.

Homelander's death, arrives only halfway through the episode. The second half belongs entirely to Butcher.

Convinced that as long as superheroes exist another Homelander will eventually rise, Butcher steals the supe-killing virus and heads to Vought Tower to trigger a worldwide supe genocide. Hughie follows him, the two fight in a bloody brawl and Hughie shoots Butcher, not realising in the moment that Butcher had already chosen to stop. Holding him as he dies, Butcher tells Hughie that seeing him do what he himself should have done is what finally broke through. It is a gut-punch of an ending for the character, and one that mirrors his arc in the original comics almost exactly.

A time skip closes the episode. Starlight is pregnant and working in a tech store with Hughie, still moonlighting as a superhero. Hughie is offered a government role keeping tabs on Vought. Stan Edgar returns to Vought promising more oversight. The world moves on, imperfectly, as it always does.

Everyone who died

Homelander, beaten and crowbarred to death in the Oval Office by a very satisfied Butcher. Oh Father, killed by his own vocal powers when Mother's Milk used his bondage gag against him, causing his head to explode. The Deep, lured to the beach by Starlight, thrown into the ocean and swarmed by the sea creatures he spent years exploiting, an octopus tentacle through the skull bringing a fittingly poetic end to one of the show's most pathetic villains. And Butcher himself, shot by Hughie in Vought Tower in one of the most emotionally complicated deaths the show has ever pulled off.

Frenchie also died earlier in the season, his experiments on Kimiko setting up the pivotal moment that brought Homelander down.

Were the fan theories right

The internet got several things correct and a few things spectacularly wrong.

The theory that Soldier Boy's radioactive blast would be the key to depowering Homelander was broadly right in spirit, even if the specifics were different. It was not Soldier Boy himself but Kimiko, transformed using the same underlying ability, who delivered the killing blow. Close enough to count.

The Ryan theory was entirely correct. Fans who predicted Homelander's emotional dependence on his son would be his undoing were right, though the execution was more action-oriented than most expected. Ryan did not break his father emotionally, he helped pin him to the floor while someone else took his powers away.

The Butcher redemption theory was both right and wrong. He did not get a clean heroic ending, but he did, in his final moment, choose to stop. Whether that counts as redemption is genuinely up for debate, which feels very on-brand for this show.

The theory that Homelander was never the real villain and that the system would survive him turned out to be the most accurate of all. Stan Edgar returning to Vought in the final minutes, promising oversight while clearly back in control, was the show's last and most unsettling joke. The monster is gone. The machine rolls on.

The Boys is now streaming in full on Prime Video.