The Boys Finale: What the Show Got From the Comics

The Boys TV finale turned out far more faithful to Garth Ennis's source material than most fans expected. After five seasons of divergence, showrunner Eric Kripke snapped a lot of the big beats back into place for the ending.

Here's how the two line up.

Where the Show Followed the Comics

Both versions build to a White House showdown where Butcher kills the supe responsible for Becca's death with a crowbar. In the comics, Black Noir kills Homelander first, then Butcher turns the crowbar on Noir. In the show's Oval Office version, Kimiko strips Homelander of his powers with a Soldier Boy-derived blast, and Butcher kills a now-mortal, begging Homelander directly.

Hughie killing Butcher is also pulled directly from the page. Both stories end at a final confrontation between Hughie and Butcher over Butcher's plan to release a virus that eliminates everyone with Compound V in their system. Butcher doesn't fight back hard. He doesn't really mind how it goes.

The aftermath mirrors the comics too. Six months later, Hughie is offered Butcher's former role overseeing supes — by Susan Rayner in the comics. He accepts, but on his own terms, and leaves Butcher's methods behind.

Dynamite Entertainment

The Boys

2006

72 issues

Where the Show Pulled Back

The biggest departure is how brutal the comic ending actually is. After dealing with Black Noir at the White House, comic Butcher turns on his own team. He kills Love Sausage, Mother's Milk, Frenchman, and the Female before Hughie stops him at the Empire State Building. Kripke told TheWrap that giving Hughie a solo survivor arc felt wrong, and they deliberately softened that part.

The Black Noir clone twist doesn't exist in the show at all. In the comics, Noir reveals he's a Vought-created clone of Homelander, built to replace the original if he went rogue, and responsible for committing atrocities in Homelander's name to frame him and drive him insane. The show killed off its version of Black Noir in season 3, so they rerouted entirely.

Homelander's death also plays out differently on the page. In the comics, Black Noir kills Homelander at the White House before Butcher finishes Noir with the crowbar. There's no moment of vulnerability for Homelander, no begging. The show inverted that: Kimiko uses the power from Frenchie's experiment to strip Homelander of everything, and it's a now-mortal Homelander who pleads for his life before Butcher ends it.

Same Destination, Different Roads

The show borrowed the skeleton: White House climax, crowbar kill, Hughie stopping Butcher over the virus, Hughie inheriting the oversight role. What it filed off were the most nihilistic edges. Ennis wrote an ending where the team that fought monsters ended up becoming one. Kripke gave most of the Boys a real goodbye instead.

Neither version is wrong. They're just different answers to the same question the series always asked: what does fighting monsters do to you?

If you haven't read the original Garth Ennis run, now's the time to see how dark the ending was always meant to be.

Explore the full series on VerseDB and add it to your reading list.