“The Boys” showrunner has addressed fan criticism of the final season of the show and that finale about which discussion is still ongoing.
Much of the talk about the final episode has centered on the dialogue that Anthony Starr’s Homelander says to Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher as the former pathetically grovels for his life.
Elon Musk gave a one-word review of the finale, calling it “Pathetic” and Eric Kripke, who created and serves as showrunner, retweeted that calling it a great review. That led Musk to double down with further tweets which Kripke kept retweeting.
Kripke, who has previously talked about how he reads fan reactions ‘obsessively’ and understands the season hasn’t worked for everyone, this week spoke with Rolling Stone and discussed the backlash to the overall season:
“For whatever reason, there are definitely people that the show is not working for this season. Whether it be pacing, whether it be lack of giant fight scenes — I read all the comments obsessively, one might say. To an almost unhealthy degree, one might say.
But all I can say is I set out to tell a particular angle on this story. I did what we do every season, which is try to focus on the Boys and try to make it a world that’s recognizable to the one we live in. I really wasn’t interested in a post-apocalyptic world. That just wasn’t ever gonna be in the cards.
It was always gonna be a fun-house-mirror reflection of the world we’re in right now, and its slide towards fascism. And I don’t regret it. I’m happy with how it turned out. And luckily, the majority of the audience agrees, and that was a very comforting piece of information.”
Kripke also revealed Homelander’s grossest piece of grovelling, the eat your s— line, was come up with by Starr himself. Kripke warned Starr ahead of time that the character would go out in the most pathetic way possible and the actor said: “Of course. He has to. This is the end. He has to get a comeuppance that befits the horror that he’s been inflicting for the last seven years.”
