It appears The Boys is heading down the same road we have seen with The Walking Dead, albeit it’s going to reach the ending a lot sooner than that show did. The Walking Dead ended after 11 seasons, having already launched one significant spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead. Then we had limited series World Beyond and anthology series Tales of the Walking Dead. Then, three main-cast spin-offs, Dead City, Daryl Dixon and The Ones Who Live, the first two of which are getting second seasons and may last indefinitely.

Now, The Boys is starting on that path. It has been confirmed that the main storyline of The Boys will end with season 5. However, like The Walking Dead, it has already started up a spin-off in the form of Gen V, which Amazon expects to continue on for some time given the positive reception to season 1. Also in the works is The Boys: Mexico, which hopefully gets a better name than that, but the new-country concept is being spearheaded by Andor’s Diego Luna and Werewolf by Night’s Gael Garcia Bernal who may also star. That’s moving slowly, apparently, but we also may get a third concept for a spin-off soon enough.

If Butcher’s story ends, the idea may be that they want a Butcher-adjacent character to take over for a new story. And it’s very ironic that it has a direct connection to The Walking Dead, as we’re talking about Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s new character Joe Kessler, a CIA Case Officer now running Butcher. Morgan being Negan from The Walking Dead who is currently starring in one of those spin-offs, Dead City.

“To pull that off, you need another leading man, you need someone who’s as charismatic and good as Karl, and let those guys go toe to toe. Thank God this was all around the time that Jeffrey and I were texting.”

Morgan and Kripke of course worked together for a long while on Supernatural when he played John Winchester in and out of the show for several years.

There is no source material here that could obviously lead into a spin-off, but that was also true of Gen V, and clearly that’s working so far. Whatever the case it does seem likely that Amazon will want to expand its web of The Boys content even if the main show ends. Kessler of course is not a major character on the series currently, and it stands to reason that like The Walking Dead, perhaps other characters could branch out on their own (The Deep spin-off? Please?). We’ll see what’s in the cards.