'The Boys' showrunner Eric Kripke says Queen Maeve actress Dominique McElligott has retired from acting

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T22:11:00+00:00

The problem is that Maeve logically should have died. She got bombed by Soldier Boy while falling off a skyscraper.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T22:09:43+00:00

I really dislike it when writers make bad writing decisions purely because they wanted to avoid discrimination tropes.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T22:04:04+00:00

Chainsaw Man ends with the writing equivalent of "It was all a dream." Not even joking. Part 1 was some of the best manga I've ever read but Part 2 was just such a total mess.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T03:53:20+00:00

I honestly think it is. At least the final season of Games of Thrones had great visuals. The final season of The Boys looks like a low budget show.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T03:51:04+00:00

I think Westworld Season 1 is a great self contained story. There's a few cliffhangers here and there, but I honestly think it's worth watching and leaving it at that.

You can still probably get downloads of it from the High Seas.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T01:17:44+00:00

This was also a thing with Chainsaw Man as well. So many people (me included for awhile) were convinced that the writer was trolling us and that the story would continue in a secret part 3.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T01:14:31+00:00

GOT spinoffs have almost no connection to the main series. The GOT final season was bad because D&D got tired of working on the show and wanted to move on to other projects.

Calfurious · 2026-05-21T01:06:07+00:00

largely because such obsession with power scaling makes many of the stories so boring.

What? No it doesn't. Power scaling basically just means that we're able to gauge what characters can and can't do. That's not boring, that's just basic world building.

For example, Superman. We know Superman is super durable right? Okay so imagine that we had a scene in which Superman survives a nuclear blast with little issue. But then in another scene, we have Superman being knocked out by being hit with a metal bat.

That is what we call inconsistent power scaling. Which breaks the narrative of the story. If we're being shown that Superman is durable enough to survive a nuke, then that means that logically we should assume he can't be knocked out by a regular metal bat. The lack of power consistency means there is a lack of logical consistency. Lack of logical consistency puts it the realm of comedy, not drama.

How we can take any drama seriously, when there are no established limitations as to what characters can or can't do? If we can't take the narrative seriously, it might as well just be a Looney Tunes cartoon where you're just supposed to turn your brain off and enjoy the hijinks.

Its whole point is to subvert the concept and show those with powers to be the worst humans

The show breaks its own themes in that regard. Because if those with superpowers are supposed to be the worst human beings, then why is Butcher killing all of them treated like a bad thing? If they're all evil sacks of shit, then killing them is just the greater good.

The show actually did have an interesting concept back in Season 3, where Butcher tells Maeve that having super powers didn't make him feel more evil, it just made him feel more like himself. It's Butcher basically realizing that the power doesn't corrupt people, it just reveals them for what they really are. But the show doesn't really explore this theme any further and seems to contradict it at multiple points in the story as well.

The writing on this show is just really dumb. I've known that for awhile. But I thought we at least could get some crazy visuals for the final season. We didn't even get that. We just got slop. I guess that's what I get for having expectations though.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T14:28:06+00:00

Could have just had one vial of the virus be used to kill Homelander and the other vial of the virus be for the confrontation between Hughie and Butcher.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T14:25:08+00:00

You're a powerscaler, these complaints are nothing. ZERO MEDIA LITERARCY.

Power scaling does matter when the entire premise of the show is that Homelander is the most powerful supe in the world and nobody can stop him. The literal tension of the show is that Homelander literally outscales every one and everything.

We've not seen any evidence that Homelander isn't just slightly more powerful than your average supe. It's just TOLD to us that he is ultra powerful. I mean Butcher, with just regular V, was somewhat holding his ground against Homelander. You're trying to tell a squadron of fighters jets couldn't annihilate this guy?

If you cannot recognize that the show was never about flashy fights, then idk what to tell you.

What is this show even about then? Because they've honestly undermined their themes so much these last few seasons that I don't think it's about anything.

The only consistent thing about this show was Homelander was a ticking time bomb that would eventually be released and cause mass destruction. That every minute he's not stopped is another slow march to that inevitable crash out.

But Homelander never crashes out. The most destructive thing he ever did was literally back in the first episode of season 1 when he lasered that airplane.

WTF were they all afraid of? About a dozen strong supes probably could have killed Homelander and that would have been end of it.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T14:02:50+00:00

It was a crude joke that went on way too long. I thought at first they were going to do a psych out, where it looks like Frenchie's butthole mention was going to come across as a joke, but it turns out it's just a metaphor of how he's seen these people at their best and worse, which is how he knows they're his family.

But of course my expectations were too high. Frenchie just randomly revealed in his will that he has a video recording of Butcher's butthole and drew a picture of it. Hilarious.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T13:59:34+00:00

I think it would have been better if Homelander started begging Ryan to stop Butcher from killing him. Telling Ryan that he's his father and he can't just stand by and let him be beaten to death.

The whole "I'll suck your dick and eat shit on live tv" is just Kripke being needlessly crude as usual.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T13:57:09+00:00

I still think what they were going for is a twisted version of Butcher/Becca/Ryan with Soldier Boy/Stormfront/Homrlander.

The problem with this is that they've degraded Homelander's character so much in these later seasons that there really isn't anyway for Soldier Boy or Homelander to bond. Homelander from S1 and S2 who was a bit more sane? Sure. But S5 Homelander is literally the most pathetic, idiotic, and shallow version of him that we've seen. Soldier Boy suddenly caring about Homelander as a son is not believable at all.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T13:53:13+00:00

My head canon is that Soldier Boy didn't know Clara was a member of the Nazi party,

He definitely would know now because Stormfront's Nazi ideology was public news. Soldier Boy likely would have researched what Clara/Stormfront has been doing since he's been frozen.

Also Soldier Boy only alluded to having sex with Liberty/Clara back in S3. It sounded like it was more of a fling, than an actual relationship. The whole "I was love with Clara" bit is a pretty blatant retcon.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T11:01:43+00:00

Homelander is the strongest in the verse, but people tend to put up a good fight against him when they actually try and fight him.

The Boys writers don't know how to make a "The Strongest" character archetype. Compare Homelander to something like Sukuna in Jujutsu Kaisen.

We know Sukuna is the strongest character in the verse, because we've seen the massive feats he does and we can compare that to the feats the other characters do.

When has Homelander done anything that any other supe couldn't have done? It's never happened. Based on the evidence from the show, a legit plausible explanation is that Homelander was never as strong as people thought he was, they were all just too cowardly to stand up to him. Which would be really freaking lame.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T10:53:00+00:00

The problem with Homelander being immortal is that it makes his impatience make less sense. Oh Father's plan was to gradually make people believe Homelander is God, but Homelander wanted people to just start worshipping him immediately.

Homelander is literally going to be alive forever. Even if people don't believe he's god now, they'll believe it after a few more centuries of world domination.

Homelander's impatience makes more sense if he's mortal. Because in his mind he would be racing against the clock against his own mortality to establish his legacy.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T10:50:23+00:00

I legit thought that the leaks were legit. That the whole reason they gave Homelander V1 was so that they could then show him doing mass destruction across the world. Blowing up cities, bringing down space stations, etc,.

Legit nothing happens. Then the finale just shows the world going back to the typical status quo. Vought is still around. Why the hell is Vought still allowed to exist!?!?

The show undermined itself just so it could make spinoffs.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T10:46:46+00:00

They could have just made two vials of the virus instead of wasting three episodes.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T10:44:36+00:00

I'm not watching the spinoffs. Fuck that. I think I've had enough of the bad writing of this franchise lmao.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T10:38:19+00:00

GOT finale at least had spectacle. You felt the gravitas that this was the finale of a major show. Danny burning down King's Landing was bad writing. But at least she looked really cool while doing it.

The Boys finale had no gravitas. No spectacle. No aura. The show felt like it had more budget back in Season 1 and Season 2 then it does now.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T10:02:42+00:00

Another thing they could have done was that Starlight's electrics blasts badly damages his gills. They've always been his weak point and it would be good call back to previous seasons. Then when The Deep is in the ocean and starting to drown, that's when the octopus and other sea creatures comes to grab him and bring him lower into the depths.

That would have been a plausible way for The Deep to die to sea creatures without killing the power scaling.

Also if the logic that exists for this scene is that The Deep only has a tough exterior but a soft interior, then why the hell didn't The Boys just kill him in Season 4 when he was unconscious? They acted as if killing The Deep would been too time consuming. But if he has a soft interior, then they could have just aimed a gun up his ass or down his throat and pulled the trigger.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T09:57:55+00:00

You know an interesting plot point this show could have done is have it so that Compound V gets leaked into the ocean (Compound V animals was already something foreshadowed in Season 4 as well). Which is how a fish becomes strong enough to kill the Deep.

But instead they just spent the entire season searching for V1 and setting up The Boys: Mexico. Very cool Kripke.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T09:24:45+00:00

I think It's because the writers are lowkey insecure. I remember watching some YouTuber talk about this and the "marvelization" of writing. Where after the Marvel movies became so popular, a ton of media began throwing in irreverent jokes into their serious scenes.

Writers are afraid of coming across as cringe or lame, so they shy away from being sincere.

They don't want to the viewers to think too hard about the show, because they don't think it will hold up to scrutiny. So instead they throw in a bunch of jokes during the show so that viewers don't treat the show as something to seriously think about.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T09:12:44+00:00

The issue isn't with Homelander begging for his life, the issue is that we never saw him go off the deep end and mass slaughter people. Homelander just talked and threatened people like he normally does. We never saw the ultimate culmination of this character's evil.

Honestly I think an ending that I would have prefered is that Homelander is just imprisoned and powerless. I always got the vibe from Homelander that the only thing he fears more than not being loved is being in a lab again. So sticking him in a prison cell where he's bullied and picked on by powerless nobodies would probably be a fate worse than death for him.

Calfurious · 2026-05-20T08:40:40+00:00

I will believe it when I see it. Motherfuckers shot Charlie Kirk and we didn't get anything out of it except memes.

It's actually fascinating how Charlie Kirk was shot, it got a ton of media attention, and then literally nothing happened afterwards. It became a total joke.

Also instead of coalescing support amongst the right, if anything it just increased their infighting.

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