Season 5 of Prime Video's The Boys must avoid the final disaster that ruined Netflix's anti-superhero series

There is enormous pressure The boys to stick the landing in Season 5, but Netflix's failed attempt to end its own subversive superhero series should serve as a cautionary tale. The abundance of superhero movies and TV shows that dominated the 2000s and 2010s triggered an anti-superhero wave in response. At the forefront of this counter-movement were Prime Video's The boys and Netflix The Umbrella Academybut now this second rebellious wave began to gently retreat.

The Umbrella Academy ended in August 2024 with its fourth season, while The boys season 5 will bring the Prime Video show to a close in 2026. Netflix may have jumped off the “superheroes with a twist” train first, but the form and execution of that jump left a lot to be desired. The Umbrella Academy Season 4 went about as well as Hughie's New Year's resolution to go an entire season without being covered in blood, and reviews and reactions were much lower than previous seasons. Next, it is The boys'turn, and The Umbrella AcademyThe failure of Homelander and his gang shows exactly what not to do.

The Boys & The Umbrella Academy have been brother shows since they started

Two very different responses to MCU domination

THE Boys and The Umbrella Academy share a lot of DNA beyond just positioning themselves as anti-superhero superhero franchises. Both debuted in 2019 as mainstays of their respective streaming services, and both were based on existing non-Marvel/DC comic book franchises – The boys in a graphic novel by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, and The Umbrella Academy from the original story by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá. At a central level, both The boys and The Umbrella Academy began exploring the dark side of superheroes at a time when Marvel's MCU dominated the media landscape.

The boys investigated how the facade of being a superhero resulted in corporate corruption, unbridled greed, and declining morality, while The Umbrella Academy looked at the more personal impact of joining a superhero team – the pressure, the pain, the daddy issues. With The boys and The Umbrella Academy, Prime Video and Netflix were effectively taking different routes to the same destination. The boys adopted a more grounded and crude tone, reveling in the censored antics of its characters, while The Umbrella AcademyThe My Chemical Romance connection naturally made it more quirky, eccentric and gothic.

Despite emitting very different vibrations, The boys and The Umbrella Academy have existed together for the past five years. Throughout The boysHomelander leveraged the entire superhero system to gain more power, creating a divide between those who have powers and those who don't.

The Umbrella Academy played out in a very similar way, as the Academy itself was revealed to be a tool used by Sir Reginald Hargreeves to rewrite reality at the expense of destroying the multiverse. The boys can be more political and The Umbrella Academy more fantastical, but both stories point the finger at the concept of superheroes.

What went wrong with the end of The Umbrella Academy

The Umbrella Academy rivaled Game Of Thrones in the “Bad Ending” stakes

The Umbrella Academy Season 4's problems began with the announcement of its end. After season 3, The Umbrella Academy still had a number of mysteries, plot points, and character arcs to resolve, and while wrapping it all up in a single season might have been practically possible, reducing the episode count from 10 to six negated any chance of giving the Hargreeves brothers a send-off. adequate. . With so little time, The Umbrella Academy completely abandoned entire stories – Sloane and Ben's disappearance on the subway are just two examples.

The strands that survived were then hastily completed, and what was left was a confusing cauldron of undeveloped concepts that were lost in the ether. At the same time, it cannot be said that The Umbrella Academy season 4 did the best of the six allotted episodes.

The out-of-nowhere love triangle between Five, Lila and Diego was as frustrating as it was nauseating, and ending the story with The Umbrella AcademyThe deaths of the seven main characters made the entire show feel pointless. The Umbrella Academy at least tried to navigate serious topics in Season 4 – Klaus's addiction relapse was the most obvious – but without any narrative space to grow, such stories became redundant.

The Umbrella Academy Finale Is a Warning That Even a Great Show Can Fail

No Show is safe from failure at the end

To The boysthe most worrying conclusion of The Umbrella AcademyThe almost disastrous ending of is that the Netflix series wasn't in a sharp decline before season 4. The Umbrella Academy seasons 1 and 2 were very warmly receivedand although season 3 drew a more mixed response, there were extenuating circumstances due to filming in the midst of COVID. Certainly, there were no obvious warning signs in terms of quality that The Umbrella Academy season 4 would collapse as drastically as it did.

Throughout its four seasons so far, The boys largely maintained a high standard of quality. The first two seasons were widely acclaimed, and although the third season received a range of criticism The boysIn Herogasm's underwhelming episode, the overall season was still a resounding success. The boys season 4 continued this tradition of high qualitybut it has undoubtedly suffered the most controversial responses since the series began.

Much of this was politically motivated, but The boys Season 4 also suffered from slow pacing while preparing the board for Season 5. Characters and stories often seemed treaded water, deliberately saving big swings for later, and other ideas fizzled out into an anticlimax – most notably the long-awaited arrival of Hughie's mother in The boys season 4. Elsewhere, a sensitive angle involving Hughie and Starlight's look-alike was misplayed for laughs.

If the small drop between The Umbrella Academy seasons 2 and 3 were a prelude to the much larger gulf between seasons 2 and 4, it's plausible that the gentle lapse in quality between The boys Seasons 2 and 4 should be seen as a worrying omen before Season 5 wraps up. If The Umbrella Academy may accidentally stumble into a disappointing climax from a position of critical acclaim, The boys'Strong track record is no guarantee that Season 5 will have a satisfactory conclusion.

Why The Boys Are Well Positioned To Avoid The Umbrella Academy Mistakes

Boys have two main advantages

It is disconcertingly easy to draw parallels between the fates of The boys and The Umbrella Academybut several key indicators suggest the former is in a much better position to finish successfully. On the one hand, Prime Video's investment in The boys how a franchise looks – at least from the outside – much stronger than Netflix's investment in The Umbrella Academy it was near the end. Intentionally or not, the decision to undress The Umbrella Academy The fourth season, with six episodes, felt like Netflix was very ready to pull the plug on The Hargreeves Project.

The boys It may be ending, but Prime Video still has success Generation V spinoff of his books, and more shows are in the works, including a The boys spinoff set in Mexico and a Vought prequel starring Jensen Ackles' Soldier Boy and Aya Cash's Stormfront. Although the main show is coming to an end, the franchise in general appears to be in poor health, giving The boys a much better chance of ending your story properly.

Most importantly, The boys is ending at a considerably more natural point in its story. In terms of available material, The Umbrella Academy could have easily been extended into a fifth season, with the origin of the Commission, Sir Reginald's home planet, Season 4's Phoenix Academy, Luther and Sloane's romance, and more all ripe for further exploration.

In contrast, The boys Season 6 would be overkill. The boys Season 4 ends with Homelander as the de facto president and Billy Butcher preparing to commit genocide against superheroes perfectly primed for Garth Ennis' comedic finale, and the series will be left with nowhere to go when the battle is resolved. The Umbrella Academy season 4 found itself cramming as much as it could into the final six episodes, but The boys left you the ideal amount of space to reach your intended destination. That's an important balance to strike when wrapping up any long-running TV series.