Eric Kripke announces The Boys season 5 will be the final season

The Boys season 4 premieres on Thursday, June 13, but there's even bigger news about the hit Amazon original series to talk about before the new season premieres.

Eric Kripke announced on Twitter (or X or whatever) that The Boys season 5 will be the final season of the series. There had been talk over the last few years about when The Boys would end. It heated up more recently during The Boys press tour before the launch of season 4. Kripke, who danced around the topic over the last few weeks, finally shared publicly with what the cast has known for quite a long time.

Kripke shared a picture on Twitter of The Boys season 4 finale script. At the bottom of the page, it includes: "SEE YOU FOR THE FINAL SEASON, M***********!"

Why The Boys is ending after season 5

Kripke also shared, via Entertainment Weekly, why The Boys season 5 feels like the right place to end the series:

" Part of it is such a wonky stupid screenwriter thing but three and five are the big magical numbers for writing. Three is movie acts, TV acts are five. Jokes are a runner of three for five. Five just seems like a good round number. It's enough to tell the story but also bring it to a climax without wearing out its welcome. It's been hard because I haven't been able to tell everyone. I was thrilled to finally be able to get the word out there."

Famously, Kripke, who also created Supernatural, left that series after five seasons, which he thought should have been the end of the series. The show ran for another 10 seasons on The CW.

Obviously, it's a bummer when the shows we love come to an end. Personally, I prefer when the creatives have control to do what they want with the stories rather than a network pushing a show to continue or end based on its success or failures. So few shows get the opportunity to tell the story that its creative teams want to tell. Even the biggest and best shows have erred late in the run because things ran too long and other issues emerged.

And, even though The Boys is ending, there are still other stories, I believe, that will be told in this world. It might not be Butcher and Homelander, but Gen V was a huge success for Amazon. There are plans for other spinoffs. This, very much, seems like just the beginning of the expansion of the Kripke Cinematic Universe, even if Kripke isn't going to be involved.

The Boys season 4 premieres on June 13! It runs weekly through the summer on Thursdays on Prime Video. Stay tuned for more coverage of The Boys season 4 on Bam Smack Pow.