Why Did Homelander Choke Soldier Boy in ‘The Boys’ Season 5, and Is He Actually Dead?
Few shows on television have built a villain as terrifyingly layered as ‘The Boys‘ has with Homelander, and the penultimate episode of the final season proves exactly why. Season five has been relentless in its escalation, pushing every major player to a breaking point while steadily dismantling the last structures standing between Homelander and total authoritarian rule. By the time episode seven arrives, the world of the show feels genuinely hopeless, and that mood is entirely by design.
As the fifth and final season winds down, Homelander has successfully transitioned Vought International into a multidimensional Christian nationalist movement, motivated by an engorged ego and a desire to make people revere him as a god. The groundwork for this has been laid across the season, but episode seven crystallizes it with punishing clarity. Episode seven follows the aftermath of Soldier Boy handing the V1 virus over to Homelander, effectively making him unstoppable, as he murders the president and begins tightening his control through Vought propaganda and fear.
It is in this context that the moment so many viewers are searching for arrives. After disbanding The Seven as part of a Vought rebrand, Homelander excitedly unveils plans for a new theme park called Homeland and assumes he has finally earned his father’s approval. Soldier Boy, however, shatters that illusion completely. He reveals he only gave Homelander the V1 serum because Stormfront would have wanted it, and goes on to tell him he is not a god and is simply too weird, which was basically Homelander’s worst nightmare to hear. Rather than stay and play the role of a Vought poster boy, Soldier Boy declares his intention to head to Bogotá, Colombia, and spend the rest of his life on his own terms.
When Soldier Boy tries to walk away, Homelander grabs him from behind and chokes him out, and Soldier Boy is later confirmed to be alive, placed back into cryostasis by his son. The chokehold works not because Homelander is overwhelmingly stronger, but because Soldier Boy is caught off guard by an attack from behind, robbed of any chance to charge up his radioactive blast. The power gap between the two supes has always been narrow, but the element of surprise does what brute force alone never could.
Homelander chose to freeze his father rather than kill him outright, which strongly suggests Soldier Boy will play a vital part in the final showdown going into the series finale. The logic tracks with everything the show has established about Homelander’s psychology. He cannot stand the idea of Soldier Boy living freely and denying the god narrative, but killing his own father would shatter the last illusion of family he clings to. Cryostasis is the only option that satisfies both his cruelty and his need.
Meanwhile, the Boys are hatching a risky plan to use the same radiation treatment that created Soldier Boy to turn Kimiko into something capable of taking Homelander down, while a plan to expose Homelander’s endgame goes sideways. Frenchie puts up one last fight against Homelander to protect Kimiko but is no match for the all-powerful supe, dying in her arms in the episode’s most devastating sequence.
With one episode remaining, ‘The Boys’ has set up a finale where Homelander has never been stronger or more isolated, Soldier Boy is frozen and waiting, and the Boys have lost one of their own. If you have theories on whether Soldier Boy wakes up in time for the final battle, or whether Homelander finally meets his match, the comments are the place to hash it out.
