Despite a wave of criticism on social media, the fifth season of "The Boys" has become the most successful season of the series in terms of viewership. According to Prime Video, the final season is already averaging 57 million viewers per episode worldwide – the best result in the show's history, even though only five weeks have passed since its premiere.
In addition, the season entered the top ten most-watched seasons among all Prime Video series and provided the platform with the largest three-week audience growth among films and series.
The series' showrunner, Eric Kripke, admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that the negative reaction online initially seriously worried him. According to him, constantly reading comments creates the feeling that the criticism comes from the entire audience at once.
"I went through a period where I was reading everything on social media and the internet, and it felt like that was the whole world. It was scary, there was an incredible heaviness inside. And then you see the ratings and you think, 'Oh, of course. How many more times do I need to learn the same lesson: online is not the real world?' It's just a small part of very loud, confident people, and bless them. They have the right to their opinion. But it doesn't reflect what's happening in the real world at all. As soon as I saw the numbers, I immediately calmed down."
However, Prime Video counts as viewers everyone who watched at least a few minutes of an episode, so record numbers do not necessarily mean that the audience watches every episode to the final credits.
The final episode of "The Boys" will be released on Prime Video on May 20 at 10:00 AM Moscow time. The episode will last just over an hour and will conclude the main story of Butcher and Homelander. However, the franchise will continue to live on: in 2027, a prequel, "Vought Corporation Rising," about Soldier Boy and Stormfront, will be released, and a spin-off, "The Boys: Mexico," is also in development.