The Boys: what happened to Ryan after that fight with Homelander?
The Boys spent five seasons building to a father-son reckoning, and when Ryan finally squared up to Homelander, it didn't go the way anyone hoped.
So what happened to Homelander's son after that fight — and where does he land once the dust settles? Here's the full story.
Spoilers for the whole of season 5 ahead.
How it ends for Ryan
Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) doesn't just survive his father — he helps finish him. After being beaten half to death earlier in the season, he comes back for the finale, flies into the Oval Office, and holds Homelander down while the killing blow lands. Then he walks away from all of it. He turns down Butcher, cuts ties, and chooses himself — ending up a powerless, ordinary young man living alongside Mother's Milk.
Ryan and Homelander actually come to blows twice across the season:
- Episode 3 — Ryan confronts his father alone, even draws blood, then gets beaten unconscious and left for dead.
- The finale — Ryan returns to help Butcher and Kimiko, pinning Homelander for the blow that ends him.
The beating that nearly killed him
That first clash is brutal. Ryan tracks Homelander down expecting a reckoning, gets a couple of real shots in — and briefly makes his father bleed, something only Queen Maeve had managed before. Then Homelander loses control and pummels his own son into the ground, leaving him motionless. Butcher finds him barely breathing. Barely. The show deliberately keeps it unclear whether Homelander walked off thinking he'd killed him. Ryan recovers in hiding, having been holed up in Russia.
Turning on his father in the Oval Office
The finale, "Blood and Bone," opens with Homelander made effectively immortal by a dose of Compound V and ready to use a live televised address to launch a purge of non-believers. When he gets the upper hand on Butcher and Kimiko, Ryan flies in — done, at last, with chasing his father's approval.
"I am nothing like you." — Ryan, in the series finale
He and Butcher pin Homelander while Kimiko unleashes the Soldier Boy-style radiation blast that strips Compound V from the blood — depowering Homelander, and catching Ryan and Butcher in it too. A mortal Homelander begs for his life on camera. Butcher ends him with a crowbar through the head.
Where Ryan ends up
With Homelander gone, Butcher offers Ryan a fresh start somewhere. Ryan says no — Homelander may have been a monster, but that doesn't make Butcher a good man either. In a striking show of maturity, he severs ties for his own sake. He chose himself.
The epilogue finds him living with Mother's Milk, who seems to take him in, and standing as a witness when MM remarries his ex-wife Monique, alongside MM's daughter Janine. No powers, no Vought, no Homelander.