'The Boys' Showrunner Slaps Down Filler Episode Complaints

Last week’s episode of The Boys was exactly as it said on the box, “One Shots.” It delivered a series of character-centric vignettes in a dense 70 minutes, and one of the highlights was the focus on Firecracker, who immediately became the show’s most poignant allegory.

If you’re a dummy, you’d complain that the episode didn’t move the final season’s story forward even though it clearly did in several ways. But like any fandom, The Boys has its fair share of loud mouths, who have started hurling around accusations of “filler episodes,” which makes zero sense. But don’t take my word for it.

Showrunner Eric Kripke has fired back in a new interview with TV Guide:

“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,” he said. “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.”

Kripke added that the writers room felt that “crazy, big things” were happening in every episode. “It’s just sometimes it’s a giant character movement. But apparently, just because it’s not 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.”

If you’ve been watching the final season, Kripke’s words probably sound very familiar. In this season’s fourth episode, The Worm is working with The Seven to help reveal to the masses that Homelander is God now. During the launch meeting, Worm gets criticized for writing the Lamplighter: Light of Justice season finale, and drops this line: “Okay, I had to service 14 main characters and cross over a bunch of a**holes from the Avenging Squad prequel. You try and make a good finale out of that.”

There have been theories that the Worm’s line was the writing team prepping people to lower their expectations for The Boys finale, but considering they’re dropping that bad boy in theaters, I don’t think that’s the case. What the real problem with The Boys is that it became what it was mocking: An actual cinematic universe. And it is collapsing under that weight.

While The Boys final season has been a marked improvement over Season 4 because the show finally stopped kicking the can down the road and let Homelander snap, there is a nagging problem and no, it’s not filler episodes. I don’t even know how you land on that. The big issue is that too much of this season feels like setup for Vought Rising, and dear God, was that the case in Episode 6 “Though the Heavens Fall.”

For those of you who don’t know, Vought Rising is an upcoming prequel series starring Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy and Aya Cash’s Lady Liberty/Stormfront. There’s a reason why Soldier Boy has been so prominent this season, and it’s not entirely because of Homelander’s mommy and daddy issues. (Although, that is a pretty big thing.) You’re watching a backdoor pilot. It’s a very Marvel move and extremely rich for a series that constantly dunks on that exact thing.