The Boys’ fifth and final season will premiere on Prime Video in Spring of 2026. The final season of the gritty superhero satire show is shaping up to be quite the finale. Based on the Season 5 official teaser, the stakes are higher than ever, and there’s nothing “the boys” aren’t willing to do. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) himself promises, “We’re going all the way.”
Now, for longtime fans of the show, it’s hard to see how The Boys could go much further. The series is known for its over-the-top sex and violence and masterful utilization of the shock factor. No matter how shocking a season is, the show always manages to keep viewers on their toes. Use our guide to revisit the wildest moments in The Boys, ranked by shock factor and effectiveness, to prepare for Season 5.
10. Billy Butcher’s Parasite Reveal In ‘The Boys’ Season 4
After abusing V24 and taking Compound V in an attempt to stave off the effects, The Boys Season 4 reveals Butcher has a parasite. It causes him to hallucinate and squirms under his skin. However, no one could have predicted how the parasite would manifest. In the final episode, Butcher gives in to his darkness and unleashes his parasite. He crashes a meeting between the boys and Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doomit) when enormous tendrils explode from his chest, grabbing Neuman and ripping her in half with ease.
I knew The Boys Season 4 would give Butcher special abilities, but I never thought he’d go full Venom. The shocking reveal, combined with the grisly death, was just unexpected enough to make your jaw drop. I also thought it fit in well with Season 4’s themes, which focus on Butcher’s increasing deterioration and struggle to evade his dark side.
9. Timothy’s Death In ‘The Boys’ Season 2
One of the weirdest aspects of The Boys is The Deep’s (Chace Crawford) attraction to fish, including his relationship with the octopus, Timothy. However, their relationship in Season 2 culminates in one of the most nauseating incidents of the season when Homelander (Antony Starr) sadistically forces The Deep to eat Timothy alive. The scene is shot in excruciating detail as viewers hear the crunch of Timothy’s body, see the black ink dripping down Deep’s lips, and Deep slowly slurp the tendons down. The knowledge that Timothy is the Deep’s friend only makes it more jarring.
The Boys Season 2 is really where Homeland starts to go off the deep end. He doesn’t even try to hide his sadistic side from The Seven, and instead revels in tormenting them. The Deep consuming Timothy is a brutal scene to stomach, but it drives home the extent of Homelander’s sadism.
8. Love Sausage Scene In ‘The Boys’ Season 2
In The Boys Season 2, the boys infiltrate Sage Grove Center, and Mother’s Milk “MM” (Laz Alonso) comes across a few rogue, unusual supes, including a man dubbed Love Sausage (Andrew Jackson). Love Sausage attacks MM with an enormous tentacle protruding from his body and nearly strangles him. It’s only when Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) knocks out Love Sausage that MM realizes, in horror, that the tentacle is actually the man’s penis.
The Love Sausage scene is one that grosses you out but is oddly funny at the same time. I felt like this scene in Season 2 particularly prepared me for some of the even more grotesque scenes in the following seasons. It really establishes The Boys’ unique brand of penis humor, though it’s not even close to as taboo as some of the genitalia scenes on this list.
7. The Airplane Scene In ‘The Boys’ Season 1
In The Boys Season 1, Homelander and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) set off on a mission to save a hijacked plane. However, when Homelander uses his laser vision to kill the hijackers, he damages the plane’s controls, sending it nosediving. Despite Maeve’s pleas, he insists he can’t possibly save everyone on the plane and encourages her just to leave. When the passengers rush at him, begging for their lives, he threatens to laser everyone of them.
Homelander convinces Maeve to leave, letting the plane crash with all its passengers. Season 1 initially keeps viewers guessing at just how corrupt Vought and Homelander are, but it finally reveals all with that dark scene. Although it’s not the goriest or most abruptly shocking, it’s one of the darkest scenes in the show, and it leaves you with a pit in your stomach watching the plane go down. It ensures viewers leave Season 1 with no doubt about the nature of Homelander.
6. The Sauna Scene In ‘The Boys’ Season 4
In The Boys Season 4, the gang infiltrates the alt-right convention, TruthCon, where Firecracker (Valorie Curry) and her assistant, Splinter (Rob Benedict), give a speech. At one point, Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Kimiko accidentally walk in on Splinter in a sauna. The supe, who can clone himself, has created duplicates to form a human centipede. The nude clones stand in a line, performing oral anal sex on another in front of stupefied Frenchie and Kimiko.
It’s one of those The Boys scenes that you can never unsee. While the show has a reputation for its wild sex scenes, it somehow still manages to top almost all the others. It’s a testimony to how, even four seasons in, The Boys still manages to up the ante. As disturbing as the sauna scene is, the fact that it was tame in terms of gore prevents it from ranking in the top five entries on this list.
5. Hugh Sr.’s Hospital Rampage In ‘The Boys’ Season 4
In Season 4 of The Boys, Hughie receives the terrible news that his father, Hugh Sr. (Simon Pegg), suffered a stroke that left him comatose. After a misunderstanding, Hugh receives Compound V, which causes him to awaken. However, the Compound V has horrible side effects, resulting in Hugh suffering memory loss and an inability to control his powers, including phasing through physical matter, including humans. As a result, he accidentally rips out the heart of one patient before phasing through and killing two more hospital patients, leaving him soaked in blood from the waist down.
The scene is the closest The Boys has come to genuine horror, driven by Hugh’s completely unpredictable, erratic, and violent behavior. Finding him in various stages of murdering patients is deeply unsettling. The horrifying sequence is a stark, final reminder of the dangers of Compound V and utilizing it to cheat death.
4. Robin Ward’s Death In ‘The Boys’ Season 1
The Boys has one of the most shocking opening scenes in TV history. Viewers see Hughie (Jack Quaid) and his girlfriend, Robin (Jess Salgueiro), discussing their future together while holding hands on the sidewalk. However, in a split second, everything changes. Robin disappears as blood spatters on Hughie’s face, and he sees her reduced to a puddle of blood on the sidewalk; the only part left is her two severed hands, which he’s still holding. It takes viewers a few seconds to realize speedster A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) accidentally ran through Robin at super speed, killing her instantly.
As someone who walked into The Boys not knowing what to expect, that scene absolutely blew me away. It came out of nowhere and was so fast, shocking, and unexpected that it absolutely made most viewers’ jaws drop. Few TV show moments compare to it, aside from the massacre in Invincible’s (2021) first episode.
3. Congressional Head Popping In ‘The Boys’ Season 2
In Season 2 of The Boys, Butcher convinces former Vought scientist Jonah Vogelbaum (John Doman) to testify against Vought’s corruption. Jonah takes the stand, but just before he can speak, the presiding judge’s head explodes, followed by Jonah’s head. Numerous heads begin exploding among the courtroom, bathing survivors in blood as a supe (later revealed to be Victoria Nueman) commits a massacre in the courtroom.
In the show, the boys are watching the court hearing on television, and react in horror to the carnage. Their reactions likely reflect your own while watching that scene. Just like Robin’s death, it has the advantage of being completely unexpected, to the point that it might even give some viewers a jump scare. The scene proves The Boys Season 2 isn’t just raunchy, but also still able to pack the same shock and emotional punch as its first season.
2. Homelander Kills Protestor In ‘The Boys’ Season 3
The Season 3 finale of The Boys sees Homelander introduce his son, Ryan (Cameron Corvetti), to the world. When a protester throws a can at Ryan, Homelander lasers his head, killing him instantly in front of a large crowd of Homelander supporters. After a few moments of stunned silence, Homelander’s supporters start cheering, and Ryan slowly breaks into a smile.
The protestor’s death was sudden and shocking. However, there’s also an underlying horror to the scene as you watch both Homelander and Ryan smile. Homelander’s smile marks the absolutely bone-chilling moment when he realizes he doesn’t have to hide his violence and corruption anymore. Ryan’s smile signifies he’s not the innocent child viewers thought he was. As shocking and brutal as the scene is, there couldn’t have been a better way to end Season 3 and set up Season 4.
1. Termite’s Sneeze in ‘The Boys’ Season 3
In The Boys Season 3, the boys set off to find the Vought-connected supe Termite (Brett Geddes), who has the power to shrink. They find him at a party, where he goes off with his love interest, Peter (Jarrett Siddall). The pair engage in some unusual intimacy, which includes Termite shrinking down and entering Peter’s penis. However, when Termite sneezes, he accidentally grows to full-size inside Peter, causing Peter to explode from the waist down.
Now, even if The Boys had left it at the weird sex act, it still probably would’ve made this list because it’s the kind of scene that makes you go, “What did I just watch?” However, the show then had to add a gory, brutal explosion and death to ensure no show would ever come close to the wild scenes. Termite’s sneeze is the kind of scene in a show that you never forget, no matter how much you may want to.
