The creator of the hit Amazon Prime series The Boys, Eric Kripke, sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about his series. The topics included his history creating genre shows, the continuing relevance of The Boys, and his (not so subtle) political messaging within the show. In a follow-up interview, he also addressed the show’s recently announced final season. Here are a few highlights from the interview.

How Does The Boys Stay So Relevant?

The latest season of The Boys feels eerily relevant to current events, asking questions about criminal prosecution of those in power. When asked how his team seemed to foresee world events from the writing room, Eric Kripke shared his surprise at the coincidence “It’s happened now almost every season, and we write them sometimes close to two years before they air”. Kripke boiled it down to a very simple answer “We write what we’re either scared of or pissed off about”.

Is The Boys Too Woke?

When Kripke was confronted with the various accusations that The Boys has become too “woke”, he remarked, “Anyone who wants to call the show “woke” or whatever, that’s OK. Go watch something else. But I’m certainly not going to pull any punches or apologize for what we’re doing”. He also responded to those fans who see the character Homelander as a hero, “The show’s many things. Subtle isn’t one of them. So if that’s the message you’re getting from it, I just throw up my hands”.

Eric Kripke Remembers Supernatural

When the topic of conversation found its way to Eric Kripke’s other hit show, Supernatural, he mused about how the media environment changed over the course of Supernatural’s fifteen seasons, saying “When we started, it was the network of Gossip Girl and 90210. We were the one Goth kid in the back of the class… by the time we left, the entire place was genre-nerd central. Now the market demand is to just make really expensive stuff — like us, Fallout and House of the Dragon”.

Later in the interview, Kripke also expressed his affection for his die-hard Supernatural fans, “My Supernatural fan base is a massive, loving, and terrifying force. I don’t dare cross them, and I’m grateful for their existence”

What is The Boys About?

Close to the end of the interview, Eric Kripke explained his vision for his mega-hit show. He described what he thinks The Boys is really about. “The Boys is about people that are fans of politicians or demagogues or movements. Even then, to me, the problem isn’t the followers. The problem is the leaders manipulating people, shamelessly, to solidify their own power — to the point where it’s worth it to rip the country apart for the gain of a couple fragile egos, a couple corporations and a couple billionaires. The regular person is out-the-fuck-gunned.”

The Final Season of The Boys

Following the initial interview, Kripke announced that season five of The Boys would be the end of the series. THR reached out to him to get his reasons for ending the series despite its continuing popularity. He said, “The show is a serialized story that is about Butcher and Homelander slowly crashing into each other… you just can’t keep that going on forever, you have to let them smash into each other.”

Kripke declined to give details on events in the final season. He admitted that even he doesn’t really know what will happen, saying that they “very intentionally leave a lot of space in there for the writers to surprise me and to take a left turn if we feel like it”. However they get there, we can be sure that the final conflict between Homelander and Billy Butcher is coming.

Eric Kripke’s show The Boys has been controversial from the very first episode. First, it was for its depictions of sex and violence and later for its fierce satirizing of modern-day capitalism and hero worship. With these comments, it doesn’t sound like Kripke has any intention of dulling his sharp social commentary.