The final season of The Boys wraps up a story seven years in the making (or 20 years if you count the comic book) and the question on fans’ minds is: What’s next? Why the fans can’t just be happy with watching the final episodes of The Boys we may never know, but they’re asking it.
The Boys has been a huge success since it premiered in 2019 and season 5 is no exception; it remains the #1 show on Prime Video for 28 days and counting as of publication. And while showrunner Eric Kripke’s larger vision for the series has seen its fair share of KOs since becoming a full-fledged “cinematic universe” — I have bad news for Gen V fans — there is a planned continuation of the core series in the works once Homelander taps out on May 19. A 1950s-set prequel series starring Aya Cash’s Stormfront and Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy has been greenlighted for some date in the future.
Black Noir’s actor got to choose when he would reveal his face on The Boys
Nathan Mitchell talks about playing a (mostly) silent character for five seasons
“It was really fun to deep dive into his past and see where it all came from and really flesh that out a bit,” Ackles told Polygon in a recent interview. “We didn’t change the playbook. These guys with The Boys created such an incredible world and an amazing roadmap. We’re not looking to recreate it. We’re looking to capitalize on it and to continue it.”
The good news is that if any The Boys watcher is worried about going cold turkey on serialized superhero sagas immediately after the finale, there’s another hit right around the corner: Spider-Noir.
Spider-Noir isn’t satire, but still works as a replacement for The Boys
Based on Marvel’s Marvel Noir comics line, but riding the momentum from Into the Spider-verse, Spider-Noir reimagines Spider-Man as a pulp-era vigilante in Depression-era New York. In the original comics, this multiversal version of Peter Parker gains spider powers after investigating a mob-connected antiquities theft tied to crime boss Norman Osborn, who effectively controls the city through corrupt politicians and hired thugs like Vulture. After Uncle Ben’s murder, Peter becomes a masked crusader fighting for the city’s downtrodden while working as a photojournalist for The Daily Bugle. Familiar… but different.
Prime Video’s adaptation keeps the noir atmosphere and hard-boiled crime storytelling, but in this version, Nicolas Cage’s hero is Ben Reilly instead of Peter Parker, which is a whole thing. The series also swaps Osborn for classic Spider-Man mob boss Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson) and turns Black Cat into a lounge singer named Cat Hardy. Similar to how Kripke approached The Boys, showrunners Oren Uziel and Steve Lightfoot appear to be bringing faithful comic energy to the series without losing themselves completely to “canon.”
Deviations have both defined and, objectively, sanded down the edges of The Boys. In wildly departing from the comics, the series has also become more of a traditional superhero show! TV-MA, but indulgent. Yes, it bursts at the seams with scalding hot political takes and scathing satire — even Kripke admits his team couldn’t keep up with a certain real-life president when it came to Homelander’s final arc — but it’s also a show with major VFX-driven set pieces and big twisty reveals. Kripke and his writers want you tuning in every week for every episode. Who could blame them?
So in that respect, Spider-Noir is likely to scratch the same itch (and looks surprisingly like a big ol’ Spider-Man in doing so). But that all depends on in if you know when to watch and how.
How to watch Spider-Noir… early
May TV season has become a kind of annual endurance test as streamers and traditional networks dump everything before Emmy eligibility deadlines. Which means there’s a very real chance Spider-Noir could get buried in the pile — especially because its rollout is already weirdly complicated.
Three weeks from today, the superhero series officially premieres globally on Prime Video on May 27. But technically, subscribers will be able to watch it earlier than that, if they’re willing to pay extra.
Prime Video announced at the end of April that Spider-Noir will actually debut May 25 on MGM Plus, a linear channel you definitely have heard of. Then the series will hit Prime Video worldwide two days later. If you have no idea how to subscribe to MGM Plus good news: you can sign up through Prime Video for $7.99 a month on top of your Amazon bill. Not confusing at all!
So if you’re trying to dodge spoilers during the busiest TV month of the year, Amazon is essentially asking Spider-Man fans to pay an optional “early access” tax. Then you have to decide if you want to watch Spider-Noir in black and white or color. The Boys premiere was not this difficult in 2019, but them’s the times.