This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 finale.
In the penultimate episode of The Boys, Homelander (Antony Starr) reacted badly to the news that his biological father, Ben, a.k.a. Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) had simply had enough of him and was leaving. Having tried in vain to convince Ben that he could live a life of fame and fortune with him, Homelander suddenly choked him unconscious and stuffed him back on ice to deal with later.
Soldier Boy did not emerge from cold storage in the series finale, which is now streaming on Prime Video for fans to feast on. However, his absence still managed to overshadow the final episode of The Boys: in the end, Soldier Boy wasn’t just the face of the franchise’s narrative past with his upcoming prequel spinoff series, Vought Rising, but also the potential face of its future, with the character’s fate left undecided in the present.
That’s surely by design. Ackles has been a charming and charismatic presence on The Boys, and much of Soldier Boy’s screen time in season 5 has been paving the way for Vought Rising, even introducing a teammate from his 1950s-set escapades called Bombsight and clashing with Homelander over their relationships with Clara Vought, a fascist Supe who became the first successful test case of Compound V and used those powers to commit crimes against minorities. She’ll also be back in Vought Rising, so the show felt compelled to remind us who she was and why she mattered during its final season. This has often been infuriating for fans, who have gleefully made memes blaming season 5’s perceived creative problems on being “what Clara would have wanted.”
