It's Officially The End Of An Era For Prime Video

Warning! This article contains spoilers for The Boys’ series finale.

Since the unprecedented rise of Netflix changed the way we watch television, just about every tech giant and legacy media company has thrown its hat in the ring and launched a streaming service. The streaming wars have yielded successes like Disney+ and the re-rebranded HBO Max, cautionary tales like Peacock and Paramount+, and unmitigated disasters like Quibi.

Arguably the most successful Netflix imitator is Prime Video. Not only does Amazon’s streaming service come with free next-day delivery on almost all Amazon deliveries (a dystopian nightmare for the free market, but a major convenience in today’s economy); Prime Video also has some of the best original content of all these services. Reacher and Jack Ryan have made Prime the home of dad TV. Invincible is a visually stunning, relentlessly bloody deconstruction of the superhero genre. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a heartwarming look at a trailblazing female comic during a bygone era of standup comedy.

For the past seven years, The Boys has been Amazon’s flagship show. Back in 2019, The Boys was the first breakout hit that really put Prime on the map. It made Prime a must-sub streaming service in the same way that Stranger Things made Netflix a must-sub and The Mandalorian made Disney+ a must-sub. During the show’s run, a big chunk of the streamer’s subscriber base was just sticking around to see if Billy Butcher would ever succeed in killing Homelander.

Well, after five seasons, The Boys has finally ended (and yes, Butcher did manage to kill Homelander), so Prime has lost its flagship show. This is the end of an era for Prime, and it’ll have to find its next The Boys-sized hit to keep people subscribed. So, which series is “primed” to take over as the poster child of Prime Video now that The Boys is over?

What Will Be Amazon's New Flagship Show After The Boys?

Over the past couple of years, as the Duffer brothers have been working toward the final season of Stranger Things, Netflix has been trying to establish a new flagship I.P. to take its place. Wednesday seems to have tapped into a lot of the same demographics, KPop Demon Hunters has very strong franchise potential, and Greta Gerwig’s Narnia franchise is sure to be a fun and faithful adaptation of one of literature’s greatest fantasy sagas. But it still remains to be seen how Netflix will fill the Stranger Things-sized hole in its lineup.

And now that The Boys has finished its fifth and final season, Prime is facing the exact same challenge. Much like in the case of Stranger Things, they can’t just replace their flagship show with spinoffs from the flagship show. Amazon just cancelled Gen V, but it’s ramping up the marketing campaign for Vought Rising, a Boys prequel revolving around Soldier Boy and Stormfront’s love story (which has already been done to death in The Boys before the prequel even happens). Offshoots like Vought Rising and Stranger Things: Tales from ’85 will attract some of the franchise’s hangers-on, but they’re ultimately just feasting on their predecessors’ leftovers.

Will Amazon’s next flagship property have to be a brand-new show, or can one of the streamer’s existing shows step up to the plate? Last year, Fallout successfully avoided the sophomore slump in its thrilling New Vegas-bound second season, so it’s in a good position to take over as the face of Prime Video. Walton Goggins’ The Ghoul has arguably become just as iconic as Antony Starr’s Homelander.

Alternatively, Prime has a couple of exciting new shows on the horizon for the coming months. Blade Runner 2099 could be the sci-fi blockbuster that Amazon needs right now, or Prime’s God of War TV show could break out the way The Last of Us has on HBO.