Now that I have finally finished The Boys season 5, I am ready to talk about what the show actually got right. The plot may have started losing steam by the final season but the female characters kept me watching until the end. This list covers the full series run, not just season 5, because some of the best women in this show did not make it to the finale. Here are my five, ranked from least favorite to favorite.

5. Starlight

I have to give Annie January her flowers because she earned them. Starlight built a movement against Vought from the inside, exposed their corruption at great personal cost, and played a major role in Homelander’s eventual defeat, something we have all been hoping and wishing for. Side note: I have never hated a villain the way I hated Homelander, so the show did a great job on that end. But I will be honest with you, she never fully connected with me. Her arc felt underwhelming for most of the series and even her fight sequences left me wanting more every single time.

She would start using her powers and I would lean forward thinking this is the moment, and then her powers, which never seemed to be fully working if you ask me, were always a letdown. I wish her entire storyline had been handed to Queen Maeve instead. But credit where it is due, she fought hard and she won. That counts. I guess.

4. Ashley Barrett

Ashley was one of the funniest characters in the entire show. She spent most of the series managing superheroes who could kill her without blinking, navigating Vought’s chaos with nothing but her wits and her anxiety, and somehow kept surviving.

Giving her powers in the final season was the right call. Psychic abilities on a woman who already knew how to read a room was a natural fit. Was she problematic? Absolutely. Did she redeem herself in the end? Well, enough for me. But honestly even if she had not, she was making this list anyway.

3. Sister Sage

Hear me out. Is she a sociopath? Yes. Is she problematic? Obviously. Is she on this list partly because she is one of the only Black women to hold a prominent role in this series? Yes and what about it. Representation matters even when the character is a villain. But beyond that, Sister Sage is genuinely fascinating.

The smartest person on earth who cannot read a room to save her life. There is real commentary in that, a woman with unmatched intelligence who was never given a healthy relationship in her life, so every connection she forms is transactional. Her blind spot was not stupidity. It was emotional isolation. Or bad writing. Either way, she helped take Homelander down in the end and I love a brilliant wicked woman who ultimately lands on the right side.

2. Kimiko

Kimiko is the kind of character who does not need words to make you feel everything, which makes it fitting that she spent most of the series without them. First introduced as a prisoner, the Boys mistake for a victim, she quickly makes clear she needs no saving. It  took me a while to adjust to the chatty version of her character, but once I settled into it she quickly rose to the top of my list. Her arc across the full series is one of the most complete in the show. A woman who survived unimaginable trauma, lost her brother, lost her voice literally and figuratively, and still found her way back to herself.

I never fully connected with her romance with Frenchie but their friendship was something else entirely. The fact that she is the one who strips Homelander of his powers in the finale is full circle storytelling and I simply enjoyed watching her get there.

1. Queen Maeve

My love for Queen Maeve runs so deep that to this day I wish she had been the protagonist instead of Starlight. I said what I said and I will not be taking questions. Maeve is what happens when a genuinely good person is slowly dismantled by a system designed to use her. She started as an idealist, became a cynic out of survival, and then chose to fight back anyway even when it cost her everything, including her powers. Her arc is the most human in the show. Not because she was perfect but because she was not, and she knew it. Not to mention her powers were actually exciting to watch and never disappointed me when in use. The Boys gave us a complicated, bisexual, traumatized, deeply moral woman and then gave her a happy ending. Love that for her.

Final Thoughts

The Boys was not a perfect show, especially in its final seasons. But the women it created were worth showing up for. Complex, flawed, occasionally monstrous, and always compelling. That is exactly the kind of female character Vixen Cinema exists to talk about.