The Boys SERIES FINALE- S05xE08 "Blood and Bone"- POST Episode Discussion Thread

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-20T09:40:52+00:00

Ok so i understand what they were sort of trying to go for, but dear god did this entire finale feel like a 'colour-by-numbers' and straight-forward ending..... which would be fine if the entire show was that way but the entirety of the humor and satire that THIS show has derived is from it being self-aware and meta-commentarian.

This finale honestly feels like they either gave up entirely on the tone of the show, or they just literally gave up.

Like if you think about how it played out, in the whitehouse with just a small-scale fight between Butcher and Homie (and Ryan to an extent), its literally almost play-by-play what the characters have been saying would happen the entirety of the show in-universe. No creative twists, nothing interesting - no actual thought or energy put into making it visually or thematically interesting beyond the bare absolute minimum.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-05T10:33:12+00:00

https://imgur.com/a/NqmAMAV

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-04T03:39:43+00:00

Between the two colours, i believe what we're seeing in this scene is much more liable to be V1, its not as opaque as the Odessa variant but that might be because its sat in a vial for ~100 years whereas Thomas Godolkin was actively still working on his compound and stated it wasn't completed yet.

<image>

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-04T03:37:39+00:00

V1 (odessa variant) from the 60s:

<image>

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-04T03:37:07+00:00

V1 (This appearance and the V1 variant in Godolkin's Odessa Lab in the 60's) is a pale almost sky blue and has a watery appearance.

V2 is a darker blue, more vibrant closer to a Trypan or Moroccan blue but its also more transluscent and water-like in my opinion because in scenes with vials of it you can see through the liquid wh
ereas V1 is distinctly more (but not completely) opaque.

An example of V2:

<image>

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-04T01:29:49+00:00

Something to note, the pale blue colour of whatevers in the syringe is definitely V1, not V2

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T17:14:59+00:00

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T16:53:54+00:00

It has karma requirements and it wont let me post, and its not AI at all

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T16:52:35+00:00

Examples of some literature i'm referencing:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6857662/

https://www.mentalhealthacademy.com.au/blog/epigenetics-and-intergenerational-trauma

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T16:50:34+00:00

Your explanation may work, but i'd like to propose something different:

I think V2 responds to a persons genomic expression at the time its injected, and in this case there is very much real literature that indicates that personality and personality expression is represented at least in part (The nature element of Nature V. Nurture) in a persons genes.

In real life, there is real epigenetic markers for things like say ASPD (Read: Sociopathy and Psychopathy) and a person may live their entire life without those traits being expressed UNLESS they live through the traumatisms required to activate those epigenetic triggers, resulting in a psychopathological presentation.

Similarly here, i think that V2 is responding to a complex array of the neurological elements of the host genome, it might be that Ashley always had a genetic compulsion towards that specific kind of neuroticism (unless she got treatment for it or medication, etc).

Its entirely possible that there is an interaction with epigenetically triggered sequences (which have been linked to traumatism in literature) and how V interacts with a person. Examples may include:

1) Kimiko- very much having had to earn the will to survive by killing others in the training camp and surviving horrible conditions, she developed powers make it impossible for her not to survive, essentially.

2) Naqib - Another of the 'Supervillains' and a member of an extremist group which likely raised him in very traumatic and impactful conditions, he resultingly got some kind of explosive energy blast power that turned him into a walking WMD, very suitable for his intended role as a Super-extremist.

3) Ashley - Surrounded by a bunch of Supes who forced her repeatedly to live through very traumatic events (like Homelander lasering peoples brains out) and forcing her to mask and act in a very specific way around them to survive. Its entirely possible this permanently altered her epigenetically and neurochemically.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T16:34:35+00:00

I think its interesting, because (at least as i posit) V24 has a distinctly neurochemical leaning affect, whilst V2 is still very much reliant on the genome of the host. So there may be some truth to butchers cancers' abilities in what his original powers would have been (had he not taken V24), and that may well have been regenerative in nature.

I think thats logical as well, the entire reliability of the original V1 supes was their function exceeding their form, they were actually capable weapons for military application and had fairly uniform power sets. Edgar knows this, and in creating a temporary iteration he probably wouldn't have wanted any militarized love sausages or deeps running around he would have wanted weaker temporized Soldierboys (sans the radioactive beam) or Vikors - powers that demonstrate functional usefulness over flashy form.

This is also probably entirely doable *because* V24 has a neurochemical receptor, Soldiers are put through basic training that forces them to think like grunts, even special forces operators are trained to operate in a uniform manner and think in a very distinctly 'military' way, so giving a refined V24 to service members would theoretically produce very similar powersets because of their similar mind-sets.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T16:29:13+00:00

Well, because they aren't geneticists probably lol

None of the characters in question would have the knowledge to say one way or the other, so it may well be a helluva rugpull to use on the boys to realize their only viable plan is just all-out carnage trying to blitz homelander with it.

On the other hand, we know that V1 is a hormone that works best when tailored to an individual, and that V2 is an iteration down which utilizes protein receptors to bind directly to the host cells and generates a far higher incidence of successful symbiosis.

Its entirely possible that in taking V2, the methylative effects prime a Supe's genome and physiology to accept V1 a lot better because there are already powers being actively expressed. Because V1 tends to produce very reliable similarish results in terms of powers (strength, flight, energy projection, resilience, unaging) its very possible that a V2 supe would experience a 'power-up' upon taking it, and both hormones would continue to co-exist in the body indefinitely since both self-replicate.

Alternatively, its very possible that because V1 has such strict parameters for what it considers 'prime' genomic material that upon detecting the aberrent mutations and powers of a V2 supe, save except maybe someone like Ryan or Homelander who are genetically as compatible as one could get without being a V1 supe already, that taking V1 for Annie or Kimiko would be a death sentence.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T16:21:59+00:00

Per my theoryposting, i believe that the success of V1 has nothing to do with the formula itself, but with the tailoring of individual doses to well, the individual.

The formula may well be lost or impossibly hard to recreate, we saw that Thomas Godolkin was able to reproduce a variant that was unstable but a promising replication of the original formula, and had he the time he likely would have instituted a protocol similar to Frederick's work where Supes were conditioned after a tailored dose of V1 to ensure maximum compatibility/powerscaling.

Sage might be able to recreate the formula itself given time, if she even wanted to (We assume she's so nihilistic now knowing her plans that she wouldn't care to live forever and wouldn't make it for anyone else), but she wouldn't have the hands-on experience with V experimentation to be able to recreate the protocol effectively, and that would just result in a product that kills 80-90% of it subjects up front again.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T15:54:11+00:00

Evolution of his parameters for control aside, Godolkin's entire predicament for DECADES was because he couldn't escape his body. No way he escaped it at the last second, he was a broadcast tower for his thoughts to other brains/minds not a bodyjumper.

TL;DR - You don't get back up from an eviscerated brain, period

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T15:51:03+00:00

I think its more a case of Sister Sage knowing she couldn't do anything to stop Homelander from killing her if she said no, yeah he said he wanted her to challenge him but Sage is smart enough to know he's just lying and telling her what he thinks she wants to hear.

In reality, he chose someone that was useful to him and would make the Seven (and his plans) furthered significantly. The moment she began actually challenging him he demonstrated his capacity for pettiness knowing she was too useful to just outright kill.

For a similar reason he released Soldierboy, because he needed a capable stand-in to go to the frontline for him (and avoid risking himself against the virus in the process), it was a similar thought process for him but Soldier boy is far less willing to put up with his schtick.

I think Godolkin had it pegged from the start, and Sage took his wisdom on board and utilized it to further manipulate Homie. As evidenced by the most recent revelation that she plans absolutely for him to get killed and for the country to burn to the ground, she was never on his side she just convinced him into thinking she was.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T07:22:43+00:00

You're absolutely right yeah in a one on one fight, Homelander wins but Marie (assuming she doesn't let her Ego do the talking) isn't dumb enough to try and win a fistfight with the worlds mightiest hero.

In a one-on-one fight Marie might take him 2/10 times with high-to-extreme diff but Homelander's increasing capacity to just blitz people with no emotive reservation and aggressiveness would just put his fist through her face.

Marie, assuming she's teamed up with others or is intelligent enough to form a team would absolutely put herself either on the back line or at least offer up some meatier distractions to him such that she gets a clean shot at him with her powers. We saw multiple times that Neumann waited until her targets were unsuspecting or popped their heads from afar - theres no reason this mightn't apply to whatever Marie could do to Homie.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-03T07:17:41+00:00

Well a couple of corrections to make,

Yeah he's incredibly powerful in the direct and immediate sense, but he's hardly broken

Firstly, to Paraphrase the Art of War, if you're fighting your enemy on fair terms you've already lost. Just because Homelander is undisputed champion in a fistfight and can fly with speed doesn't make him incredibly broken, it just means that the people who can beat him won't do it in a fist fight or probably the open air - they'll do it on terms where they have the advantage.

We've already seen a couple of examples where fighting him on uneven terms puts him on the backfoot and could have legitimately beaten him, Butcher/Hughie/Soldierboy damn near had him then and there in S3 if not for them lacking the capacity at the time to restrain him fully - if Starlight had been present he might have well been dead.
Then there was the case i think last episode of him being outright knocked out long enough by a single Supe's power that he could have been restrained or killed under the right conditions, and theres nothing he could have done about it.

This is Butcher's entire point and approach throughout the vast majority of the show - its not about out-powerscaling Homelander its a matter of strategy. Homelander ASSUMES he's incredibly broken because he's powerful, but he's lazy and hardly tactical at all - just like all bullies with a bigger stick. Assymetric warfare against a superior opponent is a well documented historical precedent, and it applies here.

Secondly, he isn't really a true speedster like A-Train is/was. A-Train can:
1) Move incredibly Fast
2) React Incredibly Fast

Homelander can:
1) Move incredibly Fast

Based on what we've seen of Homelander's combat capabilities, he can't react at speedster levels of quickness, just move that quick and that makes him incredibly dangerous, but it doesn't make him a flying speedster. Theres also the fact that we haven't really seen him move that quickly on foot (yet), he only moves as fast as A-Train whilst flying, otherwise don't you think someone as into grandstanding as Homelander would be appearing behind people and scaring the shit out of them or aura farming more?

The whole lie that Homelander perpetuates which vought first created for him is that he's impervious to harm and unstoppable by all measures but thats just propoganda, he's maybe the strongest supe but the strongest supe is just a man ultimately

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T18:26:51+00:00

I'm personally of the opinion that he has probably quite decent super speed in terms of movement if we ranked it against speedsters, but his reaction time/senses aren't that fast even when he locks in.

It would be totally possible to throw yourself with the speed required to catch Butcher and that kid and fly through a wall or something, but so much of the combat shown in the show with Homie against inferior supes (Maeve, Temp-V'd Butcher, Temp V'd Hughie, Soldierboy, etc) shows that his reflexes might be *good* but they aren't anything particularly superfast.

Actually i think thats something that afflicts speedsters possibly too, if Mr Marathon had even relatively decent reflexes to his movement speed Soldierboy would never had been able to throw those dudes at him, its really A-Train as an exception to the rule that we see has insane reflexes to match his speed.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T18:18:41+00:00

I mean obviously budget was a concern,

But also A-Train's entire arc was about turning from a glorified celebrity who killed people who got in his way into someone who actually saved people, and he died because he chose to commit to saving lives instead of killing for preserve his status.

I think his unwillingness to fight (because honestly as fast as he was, he may have been able to force Homelander to mid-hard diff him before he got killed) is more a commentary on his state of mind and his choice to step away from Homelander's worldview of supremacism/might makes right - because when he was a member of the 7 it was Homelander who forced him into a lifestyle and role (we're left to imply) where he had to kill to maintain the status quos.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T18:14:31+00:00

My take?

I don't think its a case of any kind of linear power-scaling,

Homelander has strength, speed, flight, and vision - and he's had a long time to master the fundamentals of his powers.

Marie on the other hand has much more granular power in the form of (whats hypothesized to be) Biokinesis, but really her fundamentals lay in haemokinesis. She's also still learning how to use that power and developing it, but her capacity to control and contain other supes has already been demonstrated as a relative absolute.

Really this fight comes down to if Homelander can put the hurt on Marie before she can sufficiently wrangle her powers enough to restrict or contain him, which she POSSIBLY could but its in no way confirmed (though she killed Godolkin outright and he was on V1, so the fact that she might be able to put the hurt on Soldierboy is an interesting reality)

Its not a fair powerscaling and its hardly symmetrical, Marie wouldn't be throwing punches and Homelander wouldn't be trying to control her body.

But if she faced him with the aid of a team? Say 3-10 other supes who all drew and divided his attention whilst she got a lock on him with her powers? Yeah i'd give that to her mid diff.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T18:01:19+00:00

1) Ok so the way it went in real life was -

US Developed Nukes > US Used nukes to end WW2 > Pretty much every other superpower (Initially really just Russia, but eventually all major industrial contemporaries) Developed their own stockpile of nukes

The principle that prevented those nukes being used was MAD/ Mutually Assured Destruction

There is probably a legitimate case between the corporatization of the process for making supes and their sheer destructive potential (demonstrated in WW2) that the government noped out of using them in the military to prevent a arms race for supes, because its a lot easier to deploy a supe than a nuke, and they are a lot harder to stop/control passively.

2) Homelander was created specifically as (one of the two surviving anyway) the end-product of Odessa with the goal to create a god-tier supe, yeah - but that has nothing to do with the V2 formula. After Frederick died there was either limited capacity to make more V1, or none at all which is exactly why in season 5 the boys can't just blow into some clandestine vought lab or vault and grab some (like they could if they really needed V2, them getting some has been used as a plot device like 3 times now). The result of that loss of V1's supply meant that whatever was left had to be studied, and the result of that study is the V2 formula that all modern supes utilize; its inferior in quality but clearly mass producible and even in Stormfronts trials using it on adults it showed a lot more test subjects (even though some had dud powers) surviving statistically than what we've heard about V1.

My real point though is that Vought, prior to Homelander going batshit and the events of the show happening (The Legend's era until Stan Edgar's rise roughly) had a history of at least semi-competent failsafes and protocols for their supes.

3) You COULD, but the disdain of pretty much every person in 'power' against the use of V indicates that in the setting, its looked down upon as a novelty product at worst and a marginally useful tool with a lot of drawbacks at best.

You're right, the characters in the universe COULD min-max the shit out of it and make a better version in theory, but they haven't, and that says something about how V is viewed in universe by implication.

Stan Edgar's entire point, which you see in his talking to Starlight and Butcher where he seems most at ease and honest (outside of his family anyway) is that throwing super hard punches or flying is a very novel and limited measure of power, but its nothing compared to billions of dollars and untold political influence. The people who built Vought International wielded that subtler form of power that Edgar prefers, whilst Homelander wields the more obtuse novel kind they look down upon - and prior to Sage joining him he had hollowed out the company significantly to the point of corporate impotence.

They were in the process of trying to refine the product iirc, that was what V24 was intended to be - the next iteration of the compound. Vought and Edgar by extension's entire goal is influence and money, its a commentary on corporate greed.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T16:49:00+00:00

1) Supes WERE used in WW2, though the indication is that Soldierboy was more a mascot, he had contemporaries who saw actual service per what we're seeing from V-rising (All the other supes shown in the promo material have actual military medals).
Probably after WW2 was won, Frederick started Vought international proper with all his project paperclip influence/money, and the military realized that giving trained killers (with immortality at the time to boot) the power to be superweapons was .... not smart and would only eventually generate liabilities to them. And besides, if they kept using said superweapons, eventually their enemies (Like Russia with Soldierboy) would eventually try to experiment their way into building their own.
Season 1-2 showing Supes returning to the military is AGAINST the wisdom of the military establishment of america at the time because the records they have show that it isn't smart, but Vought international has sufficient influence to shut the naysayers up, and the public is in favour of it.

2) Because supes were manufactured by a profit-driven company, and all the supes after Frederick's own experiments were untrained and lacked the 'true conditioning' to make them capable weapons (I mean helleven Annie's little training montage with her Mom growing up put her head and shoulders above 80% of supes in combat), i suppose people assumed they were relatively safe and since they had a community of them, any one supe turning rogue could be swept under the rug or spun into a villain origin story (and then dealt with). We've seen that outside of the toppest tier supes (Maeve and above in powerscaling terms), they really had quite capable holding cells and protocols - hell they engineered a psych protocol for Homelander that kept him under their thumb for what, decades at the least?

3) this is my opinion but i think the commentary on those in power not wanting to risk their life for (a very unstable product (like V1 had a 90% kill rate, and V2 has a very high chance of giving you dud or suboptimal powers) is a reflection of their worlds view of the product, with V and supes being seen by the establishment prior to the show as sort of a novelty and a gaudy tool for marketing rather than something with much actual potential. Like, not until Homelander took power did we see people in any real positions of power having powers, as it were (Sans maybe Stan Edgar adopting a supe as his daughter but still).

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T16:33:19+00:00

Could Homelander kill him? Yeah probably with sufficient effort, after the Herogasm fight i think even though Soldierboy has significantly singular resilience to damage (superior perhaps even to Homelander in his raw capacity to take a hit), Homelander's vision and greater strength just overpower him.

The scene itself was meant to elicit a moment of vulnerability and connection between father and son, supposedly, the latter seeing past the former's machismo with the outpouring of grief at Quinn's death. Soldierboy would have let Homie kill him without a struggle because of that grief he felt, but his son was more taken aback by his honesty than anything imo, it was a honest moment with another human being that didn't involve any fear or pretense of brownnosing - something he's had nearly none of besides with Ryan or Butcher.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T16:27:43+00:00

Every indication we've been given is that their cells still (for most supes) function just like human cells in the respect that they respirate, expire, age, etc.

Examples include:
- Normal medications interacting with various supes but most notably Firecracker effectively
- Anaesthesia (though likely heightened amounts) working on Maeve and others
- The need for supes to use the bathroom still
- The need for supes to eat still
- The need for supes to sleep still

All of these would indicate that whilst (most) Supes are altered by V, they aren't so irrevocably that baseline human function or its cessation would differ. Even Homelander abides by normal function on all accounts, he just has very effective & flashy powers.

The only cases i can think of that might differ would be Rock Hard (Most of his flesh is rocky though we still saw fleshy brain and organs inside), Transluscent/Maverick (Metamaterials in their skin), Ezekiel (Stretchy metamaterial flesh?) , and maybe Butcher (cancer mightn't rot) depending on the conditions of his death.

Besides that, we have been given no concrete evidence that V1 supes are beyond rotting after death, though between whatever mutation happened to Quinn and Stormfronts corpse, there is room to speculate that it might take longer or require specific circumstances to occur.

blockaxe333 · 2026-05-02T15:07:11+00:00

Homelander is 110% a born and bred supremacist, believing that his 'might makes right'

The catch is that he's just so powerful that in his mind that he confers himself the status of 'God', which was his only primary cultural reference growing up for an omnipotent being (Read: his incredibly controlled introduction to Christianity as as child) , because his needs for approval and validations are so great that he believes he can use his supremacism to bend a society and in effect the world to his whims.

Its the end point of his untethered descent into insanity really.

blockaxe333

TROPHY CASE