The Boys Season 5 finale turns music into goodbye

Composers Christopher Lennertz and Matt Bowen, along with the show’s sound team, describe how “The Boys” shifted from swagger to sorrow in its final two episodes—using more orchestra, sharper sonic choices, and precise timing to make each goodbye hit. From Len

By the time “The Boys” reached its final season. the show wasn’t just ramping up gore. vulgarity. and punchlines—it was tightening its grip on something softer. Composers Christopher Lennertz and Matt Bowen say they felt it most in Season 5’s last two episodes. where goodbye music suddenly took center stage.

“We knew it was the last season. but I wasn’t really prepared for how much emotional music was going to be in the season. especially the last two episodes. ” Lennertz told IndieWire. He points to the brutal schedule of the finale: “We were saying goodbye to multiple main characters in single episodes. so there was a lot more orchestra.”.

The emotional swing, he adds, brought the score full circle. Early in the series. Lennertz says the music leaned more toward what he calls “legit superhero music”—because the audience “didn’t know the Supes were assholes yet.” Back then. the sound didn’t carry the grit. violence. or out-of-tune edges that arrived later. As “things got crazier with our heroes and the Supes. ” the music became “more dissonant. ” and the show’s arc moved from a clean good-versus-bad dichotomy to something ugly—until it finally turned toward the emotion of saying farewell to characters viewers had come to love.

Bowen frames it as a response to the show’s evolution. “In the beginning, there’s a lot of swagger and winking, and then it gets darker and darker. Then we come to this finale where the writing and performing and the edit were all very cinematic. and we got to respond to that with music that was very cinematic relative to where we had been in our universe.”.

One of Season 5’s clearest examples came in the song “Raise Him Up,” written by Lennertz and actor Daveed Diggs. Diggs joined the series this season as O Father, a corrupt religious supe.

Lennertz remembers spotting Diggs’ casting while he was “in London working on a movie.” He didn’t even know the role details, but he texted Eric Kripke anyway: “If Daveed is in this show and we don’t have him sing, we should all be fired.”

Over six months passed, and then Kripke emailed Lennertz with a specific task: they needed a song for Oh Father to sing that would announce that the main bad guy, Homelander (Anthony Starr), is God.

But the first attempt didn’t land. Lennertz says their initial version was. in his words. “a total whiff. ” leaning into what he described as “this Travis Scott/Childish Gambino-like swagger rap thing.” Kripke shut it down with a clear directive: “Absolutely not. He’s an old-fashioned soulful Southern preacher.”.

Lennertz and Diggs went hunting through gospel and rhythm and blues for inspiration, and the result was the rousing, catchy tune that anchored one of the most memorable set pieces of the entire series.

Even beyond specific songs. Bowen and Lennertz say they were constantly trying to give each character a musical language—sometimes by translating expression and gestures directly into instrumentation. Bowen points to Season 4’s Homelander facial tics as a guide. saying there was a “whole other set of facial tics” because Homelander was grappling with mortality.

Initially, the composers used a violin cadenza theme they had created for Homelander earlier in the series, designed to function as a musical “inner monologue.” Kripke rejected it. “He said, ‘We’re in a different part of his brain now,’” Bowen said.

So they built a new idea: “a scratchy, out-of-control cello thing that was all distorted.” Lennertz adds that the cello sound was associated with Homeland’s discovery that he had gray pubic hairs—again undercutting the show’s moments of seriousness with juvenile humor.

That tonal tightrope didn’t belong only to music. It carried into the post-production sound team’s work, supervising sound editor Wade Barnett says, describing the process as an evolution that started in Season 1: figuring out “how far we could go.”

From the beginning, the sound team wanted their audio to express character the way the music did. Barnett says they were “very specific about whose punches sound a certain way. whether they have powers or through their story arc. and adjusted the mix and editorial.” He expected Kripke or Amazon to push back on the extremity of blood and gore sounds. but the response was the opposite. “We were expecting Eric to say to pull it back, but he was saying to go further,” Barnett said.

With the work dialed in over time, the punch details became their own kind of choreography. Re-recording mixer Alexandra Fehrman describes each punch as often made up of over 40 different samples. shaped by another re-recording mixer on the show. Rich Weingart. Weingart compares the process to “a real ballet between us. ” saying Fehrman sets a benchmark with dialogue and music. and he then tweaks it so you hear “every painful aspect of every punch”—not only the powers. but the results of their powers.

And like the score, the sound team learned that volume isn’t always the point. Weingart calls the show “a 10-gallon hat. but we get 20 gallons of material.” The job is constant decision-making: where to emphasize music. where to emphasize sound design. and when silence is more effective than clutter.

Fehrman puts it bluntly. “There are moments where we fill the sonic space. and then we have to peel it back and make it a quieter moment.” Sometimes the question is whether sound design is even needed. “Does it need sound design, or is it actually more tense if we left it silent?. Then we have to make sure that the space really feels empty with the reverb on the dialogue and other ways to do that.”.

Those choices also matter for comedy. Bowen says Kripke often wants the sound team to “get out of the way. ” explaining that the last thing he needs “is for us to actually comment.” Instead. it’s about pushing the joke forward and letting the actors take it away. Lennertz describes the rhythm of it from the music side: “Basically. we tell the joke and [the sound team] does the punchline.” Sometimes the music builds and then stops in time for a sound effect—or cuts to silence—so the joke lands.

Lennertz jokes that it can feel too simple. but the timing works “every single time.” He says the same timing is key for emotional moments. too. In that regard. he recalls Kripke holding back on one of their most unabashedly earnest and melodic cues: “Eric’s very regimented in terms of when he wants the audience to feel things. and he was really holding back [on using one of Lennertz and Bowen’s most unabashedly earnest and melodic cues]. He said, ‘Not yet, not yet. This is the point where we really need to start sobbing.’ And he was right.”.

The team wasn’t only wrestling with creative choices. They were wrestling with time. Fehrman says the hardest part for many artisans wasn’t the emotion—it was getting it finished. “We have to keep moving,” she said, pointing to schedules and the constant pressure to make “every moment” sound better. But she kept stopping herself, remembering the reality. “I kept stopping and saying, ‘Man, this is the last episode. This is crazy.’ I’ve been on other shows for this long, but it doesn’t quite feel the same.”.

From a viewer’s perspective, she calls it “a really satisfying ending,” but “hard to get through from a mix perspective.”

All five seasons of “The Boys” are currently streaming on Amazon Video.

The Boys Season 5 Christopher Lennertz Matt Bowen Daveed Diggs O Father Homelander Anthony Starr Raise Him Up sound design supervising sound editor Wade Barnett re-recording mixer Alexandra Fehrman Rich Weingart Eric Kripke