Why Homelander's Jesus Phase Is His "Final Form" In The Boys Season 5 Explained By Eric Kripke

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Published Apr 16, 2026, 9:01 PM EDT

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Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Boys season 5, episode 3.

Homelander has gone off the deep end as The Boys barrels towards its conclusion.

Created by Eric Kripke, Prime Video's hit superhero satire is set to come to an end this spring. Antony Starr's Homelander has served as the show's key antagonist since the beginning, and The Boys season 5 has seen the villainous supe become even more unstable. Episode 3 pushed this further, with Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) appearing in a vision, where she tells him he needs to embrace his role as God.

Speaking with TVLine, Kripke weighs in on Homelander's epiphany in The Boys season 5, episode 3, and its coincidental alignment with President Donald Trump posting an AI-generated image of himself on social media. According to Kripke, the coincidence "just sort of happened," and Homelander's big moment was a result of his unraveling in past seasons:

"We wrote this episode two years ago, even before the election. It just came from us talking about where Homelander was moving, and what his sort of final form would be, as he's been slowly losing his mind over the seasons."

Though the moment evidently isn't far off from reality, Kripke tells TVLine that he originally thought the idea was "crazy" when it was first pitched. Now, he wishes real life would stop mirroring the events in the series:

"My concern was that everyone would think Homelander had gone too far and it had gotten cartoonish," he explains. "That was my legitimate concern. But the world keeps out-crazying us. I just want to be like, 'Yo, we're trying to do satire! Will you slow down for a minute and give us a chance to be crazier than the world?' It's honestly exhausting. I just wish the Trump administration would quit marketing the show for us."

Episode 3 truly pushes Homelander into a new realm of insanity, with Madelyn telling him: "You're about to ascend, become immortal, divine, a true god with the love of the world. I know you think love is weak, but who is more loved than Jesus? And why should he have more love than you? You save more people than he does."

It remains to be seen how Homelander's final form impacts the remainder of the season, but the season 5 premiere already affirmed that nobody is safe as the story wraps up. A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) met a surprising end in the season's debut episode, with Homelander unceremoniously snapping his neck.

In the same interview, Kripke makes clear that A-Train's death could just be the beginning. As it's the final season, he says he and the writers had a lot more freedom in terms of who they could kill off:

"It was really invigorating knowing you don't have to keep anyone alive. A lot of times, even beyond life or death, there's only so far you can go in character conflicts because you ultimately have to keep those characters interacting. We didn't have to do that anymore this season, so you could just explode people — proverbially and literally — into different directions, and that was really fun."

Now three episodes in, there's only five episodes left in season 5. The Boys' core cast has returned for the new episodes, including Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capone, and Karen Fukuhara, among others. Which of these actors' characters lives through the series, however, remains a question mark.

Though many questions remain about The Boys season 5, Kripke's comments make clear that audiences can expect a truly unhinged Homelander in the final episodes. Considering how accurate the show has been thus far, there may also be more surprising coincidences with real-world events.