• The Boys' creator has hit back at complaints over its fifth and final season
• Some fans have reacted negatively to what they describe as "filler episodes"
• Eric Kripke says people are "watching the wrong show" if they're unhappy with how the story is progressing

The Boys' showrunner has defended its fifth and final season's plot amid growing fan complaints that it's full of "filler episodes".

Speaking to TV Guide, Eric Kripke suggested that some viewers were "watching the wrong show" if they held that opinion, and/or believed that the Prime Video program's last hurrah would include "a huge battle scene [in] every episode."

Kripke's comments come in the wake of increasing fan frustration over The Boys season 5. Indeed, since its debut in early April, sections of its fanbase have responded negatively to its plot pacing, the introduction of new characters who are superfluous to the narrative and then killed off not long after their arrival, and tedious adult humor.

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Such reactions have littered threads on the ResetEra forums, The Boys' Reddit page — including in its season 5 episode 6 post-discussion thread — and other social media platforms, such as X/Twitter, since the Amazon TV Original returned. And, while these individuals only represent a small portion of the show's global audience, it's their feedback to each chapter that Kripke sees first.

With the satirical superhero franchise's main show set to end after its next two episodes, it's little surprise that a clearly frustrated Kripke has chosen to reply to those who are aggrieved over how The Boys' final season is unfolding — and he doesn't hold back in his criticism of their criticism.

Full spoilers immediately follow for The Boys season 5, up to and including episode 6.

"None of the things that happen in the last few episodes will matter if you don't flesh out the characters," Kripke responded when asked about the aforementioned fan hostility.

"I'm getting a lot of online dissatisfaction, to put it politely, 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."

"It was important, for example, to really wrap out where Firecracker was," he said of the alt-right Supe before her demise in episode 5. "It was important to evolve Soldier Boy and Homelander's relationship and to hear how hopeless M.M (Mother's Milk) feels in episode 4. It was important to see that The Boys are fracturing between people who are gathering around Butcher and people who are gathering around Hughie.

"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.

"It's just sometimes it's a giant character movement," Kripke added. "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."

Before the interview ended, Kripke also offered his thoughts on why he felt some fans thought season 5 had largely spun its wheels in its first six episodes.

"Another thing I'll say that's interesting is, it might be — you can tell I've thought a lot about it, because I'm not obsessively online looking at people mad at me, you are! — but I think it might be a by-product of a weekly release," he mused.

"For as much as I love the weekly release — because we should take time to have people talking and arguing about the show — my guess is if you were bingeing it or watching it all at once, you would have a very different experience than watching one episode a week that you might find slow or slower than usual, and then you have to wait a whole other week for the next piece. I think that aggravates people, probably.

"To be clear, I'm a proponent for this release schedule," he said before adding, "But, I've been wondering if that was one of the side effects."

Have you been enjoying The Boys 5? Let me know by voting in the above poll and/or in the comments below.

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