The Boys’ showrunner has a sharp reply for fans upset over “filler” episodes in Season 5: ‘You’re just...’
As the popularity of Season 5 of 'The Boys' keeps steadily rising, creator Eric Kripke has now run into flak territory. Understandably, every popular, long-running show has to balance character development with spectacle. It is needless to say that the superhero satire show bears the weight of audience expectations as it nears its conclusion. The recently aired fifth and sixth episodes of the Prime Video show titled 'One-Shots' and 'Though The Heaven's Fall' have been criticized by fans for consisting of too many passages where no big confrontation or battle occurs. The fans have been speaking up against these 'filler' episodes, and Kripke recently addressed them for the first time while speaking in an interview with TVGuide.
"None of the things that happen in the last few episodes will matter if you don’t flesh out the characters. I’m getting a lot of online dissatisfaction, to put it politely," explained Kripke during the interview. He also added, "And I’m like, ‘What are you expecting? Are you expecting a huge battle scene every episode? One, I can't afford that. And two, it would be so empty and dull, and it would just be about shapes moving without having any import." The creator then went on to state, "At no point during the writing of it was I like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re making filler episodes. So who cares?’ We all thought at the time we’re really getting these important character details. We have something like 14 characters, maybe 15. And I owe it to all of them — in that television is the character business — I owe it to all of them to flesh them out and humanize them and their stories."
The previously aired fifth episode was arguably the most character-driven, shifting the perspective to the Boys' and Homelander's ongoing quest for V1 and to the sinister machinations of Voight as seen by Black Noir, Firecracker, Soldier Boy, Sister Sage, and the English bulldog Terror. Apart from this, the episode titled 'King of Hell' had most of The Boys sharing their innermost thoughts owing to rage-inducing spores. When judged in this light, it becomes clear that the Prime Video show takes care to build character revelations with the same attention to detail as it does for big climactic incidents and battles.
Speaking in this regard, Kripke noted, "It's just sometimes it's a giant character movement. But apparently, just because it's not a plot, you're like, 'Nothing happened!' I'm like, 'Nothing happened, what?' The craziest, biggest moves happened. It just wasn't someone shooting someone else and going, pew, pew, pew. And if that's what you want, you're just watching the wrong show." 'The Boys' is exclusively available on Prime Video.
