Why Erik Kripke is ending The Boys with Season 5 / Paul Giamatti boards Star Trek: Starfleet Academy / Nate Burleson tapped to host CBS' Hollywood Squares

PLUS: CBS renews Taylor Tomlinson's After Midnight for Season 2.

The Boys to end with Season 5
Showrunner Eric Kripke, who recently walked back his plan to end The Boys with Season 5, confirmed today that the upcoming fifth season will indeed by the final season. "The Boys Season 4 Premiere Week is a good time to announce: Season 5 will be the Final Season!" Kripke tweeted. "Always my plan, I just had to be cagey till I got the final OK from Vought. Thrilled to bring the story to a gory, epic, moist climax. Watch Season 4 in 2 DAYS, cause the end has begun!" In an interview with Inverse last month after The Boys' Season 5 renewal, Kripke said: “I have learned since then to not try to call the seasons as the person who, and this is without hyperbole, is literally the most wrong in entertainment history of how many seasons their show should go. Someone pointed that out to me and I was like, ‘You're right. That's ridiculous. I need to keep my mouth shut.’ And so I will.”
ALSO:

• Eric Kripke teases final season’s A-listers, says he’s known The Boys would end with Season 5 since the start of Season 3: “I would say near the beginning of writing Season 3, so years — years and years,” he tells Variety when asked how long he’s known. “And it took a minute for Amazon to agree, it took another minute to get them to clear it in all the channels so that we could finally announce it. I’m thrilled to be able to announce it because it was just like a tiny bit frustrating to always answer, ‘I don’t know how long it’ll go! And maybe it’ll go forever! And who can say?’ But the truth was, I just wasn’t allowed to say yet. You can imagine getting permission to finally announce something like that is a pretty complicated deal. So I’m glad to just finally get it out there. I can feel more relaxed, everyone understands and they can go into Season 4 understanding the bigger shape of the huge five-season story. So I’m pleased to get it out there.” Kripke adds: “Look, I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t fun to have 1,000 comments daily about how I suck when I knew the whole time that I knew how the show was gonna end. So that’s only a small part of it. But the main thing is, I think it puts Season 4 in the right context. It’s weird for this show to say, but it’s a slightly more introspective season. We always look at it in the three-act movie way as the end of Act 2 low point before the roller coaster ride of the climax. And I just wanted people to understand where it fit into the larger piece so that they kind of get what this season is supposed to be.” As for the final season, Kripke says: “We’re kicking around some ideas. We have this wonderful list of A-list fans who have told us over the years that they would love to do the show, so we’re going to take a long look at that list and see who makes sense.”
  

Paul Giamatti boards Paramount+'s Star Trek: Starfleet Academy in a villain role
Giamatti will recur on Season 1 as a man with an ominous past connected to one of our cadets. “Sometimes you’re lucky enough to discover that one of the greatest actors alive is also a huge Star Trek fan, and meeting Paul was one of those miraculous moments for us," said co-showrunners Alex Kurtzman and Noga Landau in a joint statement. "The sheer delight with which he dove in on Starfleet Academy is only surpassed by the gratitude we feel about him joining our incredible cast."

CBS renews Taylor Tomlinson's After Midnight for Season 2
“Taylor is a gifted comedian who brings a unique voice, energy and plenty of rizz to late night. I learned rizz is a real word thanks to the show. We’re excited for more of her daily smart takes about the dumbest things on the Internet,” said CBS Entertainment president Amy Reisenbach. Tomlinson's After Midnight took over the post The Late Show with Stephen Colbert timeslot in January.

Nate Burleson tapped to host CBS' Hollywood Squares
The CBS Mornings co-anchor will join Drew Barrymore, who will star as the center square, for CBS' reboot of the classic game show, set to premiere in January.

Netflix's Arcane is ending with Season 2, but there are "many stories to tell"
"Arcane is just the beginning of our larger storytelling journey and partnership with the wonderful animation studio that is Fortiche,” said co-creator Christian Linke in a statement. “From the very beginning, since we started working on this project, we had a very specific ending in mind, which means the story of Arcane wraps up with this second season. But Arcane is just the first of many stories that we want to tell in Runeterra.” ALSO: Watch Arcane’s Season 2 trailer.

AMC orders a third Anne Rice show: The Talamasca
The six-episode The Talamasca, set to premiere in 2025, "revolves around the men and women responsible for tracking and containing the witches, vampires, werewolves and other creatures scattered around the globe," per The Hollywood Reporter. "Members of the secret society have already been introduced in AMC’s Interview With the Vampire and Mayfair Witches, which are the first two shows in the cabler’s Anne Rice franchise. Interview is currently in the midst of airing its second season, while production on Mayfair’s sophomore run is in production in Dublin." The Talamasca will be led by showrunners Mark Lafferty has joined John Lee Hancock.

Frasier revival bringing back two more stars from the original series
Dan Butler and Edward Hibbert, who respectively played Frasier Crane's Seattle radio station colleagues Bob “Bulldog” Briscoe and Gil Chesterton, will appear on Season 2 of Paramount+'s revival series. “Dan Butler and Edward Hibbert have made an indelible contribution to television, and I am overjoyed to welcome them back to Frasier and for the opportunity to work together once again,” Kelsey Grammer said in a statement.

HBO boss confirms Euphoria Season 3 time-jump
HBO's Casey Bloys tells Variety Euphoria creator Sam Levinson "is working on it. There’s been a lot of back and forth … One of the issues I think that Sam is thinking about is that he doesn’t want to have it in high school anymore. That’s where it was set and what made sense then. So when you take it out of that, there’s a lot of back and forth about where to set it and how far in the future to set it and all that stuff. But I think he’s got a take that he’s excited about, and he’s busy writing."

Crazy Rich Asians is getting the TV series treatment
HBO and Max boss Casey Bloys revealed to Variety that a series spinoff based on Jon M. Chu's hit 2018 film is in the development stage.

Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird team for a docuseries on female athletes
Their untitled docuseries, which will be shopped around, will follow athletes from the "WNBA, NWSL, PWHL and more, along with their families, wives, girlfriends, partners and even their situationships." The series promises to spotlight these athletes “as they navigate the complexities of pro-sports and their relationships off the field. With a focus on the unique dynamics within these leagues, such as relationships between teammates or rivals, the show explores the challenges and triumphs of wins, losses and love as a world class athlete.”

ESPN signs Shannon Sharpe to a multiyear contract
Sharpe, who joined ESPN last year after starring on Fox Sports' Undisputed, will expand his role on ESPN morning show First Take.

Sausage Party: Foodtopia's trailer is full of food nastiness
Amazon's spinoff series of the 2016 movie Sausage Party premieres July 11.

Watch Netflix's trailer for Homicide: Los Angeles
The Dick Wolf crime docuseries premieres July 16.

CBS' The Real CSI: Miami gets a premiere date and trailer
The true-crime docuseries spinoff of the CSI franchise premieres June 26.

Peacock reveals the trailer for TikTok Star Murders
The documentary, premiering June 25, tells the story of TikTok-famous couple Ali Abulaban and Ana Marie Abulaban, and his brutal killing of her.