“I’m never gonna film anything like this show ever again. I have to savor every drop of blood that hits me.”

Jack Quaid says goodbye to The Boys: ‘It’s gonna be pretty gruesome’

"I'm never gonna film anything like this show ever again. I have to savor every drop of blood that hits me."

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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April 3, 2026 3:32 p.m. ET

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Jack Quaid at 'The Boys' event in Rome, Italy. Credit:

Lucia Casone/WireImage

- "It’s not gonna be a fairytale ending. It's gonna be pretty gruesome," Jack Quaid teases of *The Boys*' final season.

- The actor reflects on bringing the R-rated, irreverent series to a close. He wagers, "I'm never gonna film anything like this show ever again."

- "I remember shooting season 5 and just being in really gross situations," he says.

The hazards of Jack Quaid’s particular trade on *The Boys* hit differently now that he’s at the finish line.

One of his earliest scenes on season 1’s Toronto production back in 2018 involved a drug-rattled speedster barreling straight through his character Hughie’s girlfriend. To pull it off, the crew showered Quaid in buckets of fake blood as he clutched onto prosthetic severed hands.

It began a long-standing tradition of coating the actor, the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, in some form of bodily fluids, be it dead whale intestines (in season 2) or whatever was in Tek Knight’s sex dungeon (in season 4).

“I remember shooting season 5 and just being in really gross situations,” he tells **. “I usually am, but I was like, I really gotta take this in. I'm never gonna be inside of a whale again.”

It’s something that came into focus at the start of filming the final season of the R-rated superhero satire that regularly lampoons current culture and politics in ways that would make your grandparents blush. Quaid’s costar, Karl Urban (Billy Butcher), said it best in front of the cast early on: “This is the last time that we get to do this, so really make sure to take this in.”

Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) on 'The Boys' season 4.

“That really stuck with me,” Quaid says in late March, sitting on a bench in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park in between press appearances. “It stuck with all of us.”

Showrunner Eric Kripke announced in June 2024 that season 5 would be the finale to *The Boys*, and now he gets to realize the endgame he’s been planning for some time. Homelander (Antony Starr), the indestructible Superman type, wields complete control over the White House to reshape America into a country that punishes dissidents in concentration camps and demonizes the most vulnerable. (Sound familiar?)

Hughie, MM (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) have all been stuck in one of these “Freedom Camps” for the better part of a year, while Annie/Starlight (Erin Moriarty) attempts to beef up resistance efforts. Butcher, now juiced up with super-powered cancer tendrils, comes back into the spotlight with a plan to reproduce the supe-killing virus that will end Homelander once and for all, even if it means wiping out all supes on the planet.

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“It’s not gonna be a fairytale ending,” Quaid teases. “It’s gonna be pretty gruesome. I didn't know exactly what it would be, but I knew whatever it was wasn't gonna be great for a lot of the characters. I didn't know who was gonna survive or not, and we really went there this season. There are characters that meet their end.”

The shockers start right from the beginning. Quaid recalls a March visit to Rome, Italy, with his cast mates to promote the show. They screened the season 5 premiere there for a full audience. "You could hear a pin drop in the theater,” he says. “It was dead quiet.”

The season 5 tone was an interesting change-up, he adds, from the typically irreverent sense of humor *The Boys* became known for. “We're getting heavy this season in a really interesting, truly grave way,” the actor emphasizes.

Jack Quaid attends an event for 'The Boys' season 5 in Rome, Italy.

Ernesto Ruscio/Getty

The joy for Quaid with season 5 was playing a version of Hughie “with little-to-no fear," something he says he’s never done before. The first few seasons presented a character stumbling to find his footing, to see if he even could do what his recruiter and complicated frenemy Butcher does to defend the meek from supe-kind.

“But at this point, we unlocked this confidence in him because he's been through so much,” Quaid continues.

The same could be said for himself as an actor. The star remembers arriving to the season 1 production in his mid-20s and all the anxiety he brought with him. *The Boys* marked his first lead role on a major TV series. Now in his 30s, he’s since gone on to play a Ghostface for *Scream*, one of Christopher Nolan’s sought-after parts in *Oppenheimer*, an incel in horror hit *Companion*, and numerous roles across animation, including the Man of Steel of DC Comics on *My Adventures with Superman*.

*The Boys*, he acknowledges, was “an incredible bootcamp.”

Jack Quaid on 'The Boys' season 1. Prime Video

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“I just did this movie in London called *Close Personal Friends*,” he says of the project with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. “It was a rom-com and it was really fun to do, but I was shocked when no one exploded. I was never covered in any blood or guts. There was no carnage. No one died in the movie.”

Quaid and his cast have had some time to process the end of *The Boys*, but he keeps imagining a scenario where he’s strolling down the grocery store aisle and starts weeping when a Billy Joel song plays over the intercom — a nod to Hughie’s favored singer. Perhaps in a couple of months, he’ll fully realize this adventure is over.

“I'm never gonna film anything like this show ever again,” Quaid says. “I have to savor every drop of blood that hits me.”

*The Boys* season 5 will premiere two episodes on Amazon's Prime Video platform this April 8, followed by a weekly release.

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