Summary
- The Boys needs to avoid overstaying its welcome like other superhero franchises, as it risks alienating its fan base and becoming stale.
- The franchise should know when to end things and build towards a satisfying conclusion, rather than continuing indefinitely.
- As a parody, The Boys should be held to a higher standard and handle its ending better than the franchises it satirizes.
As the franchise expands into spin-offs and additional seasons, The Boys needs to avoid the biggest mistake that other superhero universes have made. The Boys is a hilariously NSFW satire of traditional superhero comics, with a sociopathic Superman, a pansexual Batman, and a murderous Flash. The show has mocked all aspects of existing superhero media, from its blind hero worship to its neverending onslaught of new content. But, based on recent developments with the franchise, The Boys risks becoming the very thing it set out to satirize.
In a recent interview, The Boys creator Eric Kripke backtracked his previous comments about the show’s future. He initially projected that The Boys would end with its fifth season, but he’s since decided against making such predictions and will instead let the series run its natural course. This is good news for The Boys fans, because it means they have more than two seasons to look forward to. But it also means that The Boys runs the risk of falling into the same pitfalls it has parodied from other superhero media.
The Boys Should Avoid Overstaying Its Welcome Like Other Superhero Franchises
With Gen V getting a second season and The Boys extending beyond its original five-season plan, the franchise needs to avoid outstaying its welcome with fans. The excitement surrounding franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the less successful DC Extended Universe (soon to be rebooted as the DCU) has waned after too many movies, reboots, and intertwined projects. Even when they’ve reached a natural conclusion, like the satisfying finality of Avengers: Endgame, these franchises have just kept going until their audience got fatigued.
There’s no problem with The Boys having spin-offs and more seasons. Everything the franchise has delivered so far has been great, including the animated anthology series The Boys Presents: Diabolical, so it’s in no immediate danger of overstaying its welcome and alienating its fan base. But, at the same time, it shouldn’t go on forever. The Boys franchise would benefit from knowing when to end things and building towards that. When The Boys reaches its own Endgame, it shouldn’t keep going in the aftermath.
Why The Boys Needs To Avoid This Common Ending Problem
No franchise wants to be around so long that it goes stale, but The Boys especially needs to avoid this problem, as it makes fun of other franchises that do this. The characters of Gen V are inundated with new superhero content on an oversaturated streaming service. The Boys can’t do the same to Prime Video. As a parody, The Boys has to be held to a higher standard than its satirical targets – and let’s be honest, it would serve as a meta-joke if The Boys handled its ending better than the franchises it makes fun of.
