SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the two-episode premiere of “The Boys” Season 5, now streaming on Prime Video.
The final season of “The Boys” is kicking things off with a bang — and by killing off one of its original supes.
After flipping sides and defecting from Vought to help the Boys last season, A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) is murdered by Homelander (Antony Starr) in the closing moments of the Season 5 premiere. A-Train selflessly saves Hughie (Jack Quaid) during his battle with Homelander at Vought’s “Freedom Camp,” then super-speeds away. However, he narrowly dodges a bystander during his dash and crashes in a forest. Homelander then catches up to the speedster and snaps his neck. It was a surprisingly heroic and full-circle ending for A-Train, who was introduced in the series premiere by killing Hughie’s girlfriend Robin during a drunken, high-speed run — which turned out to be the catalyst for Hughie’s revenge quest against Vought’s supes.
Season 5 begins with Hughie, Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) imprisoned in one of Vought’s internment camps, with Homelander set to execute them. Annie (Erin Moriarty), Butcher (Karl Urban) and a now-talking Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) reunite to break into the camp and free them. However, Homelander is waiting at the camp, and a battle ensues. He’s been rounding up anyone who’s spoken out against him now that he essentially rules the country under martial law.
Homelander’s propaganda-spewing mouthpiece Ashley (Colby Minifie) has also graduated from Vought CEO to Vice President of the United States. They’ve gutted most of the country’s government organizations and rule with fear over fellow Vought supes The Deep (Chace Crawford) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell). Homelander is also aided by super-smart Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) as his lead strategist and Firecracker (Valorie Curry) with her pro-Vought talk show.
Episode 2 ramps things up further by bringing back the supe-killing virus introduced in the spinoff “Gen V.” The virus could be the key to finally defeating Homelander, but it would also mean murdering every supe in the world. The Boys give it a test run by killing a new supe named Rockhard, a spoof of Marvel’s The Thing, and wounding Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), whom Homelander awoke from cryostasis. The two-episode premiere ends with The Boys facing a tough moral decision about whether to weaponize the virus — and Homelander is down an ally (and father figure) with Soldier Boy hospitalized.
Speaking with Variety, “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke talks killing A-Train in the premiere, Fukuhara finally having speaking lines after playing mute Kimiko for four seasons and more.
Jasper Savage/Prime Video
We say goodbye to A-Train at the end of Episode 1. Was his death always meant to be a full-circle moment that calls back to the series premiere?
We talked for a really long time about having A-Train hang around at least until the third episode. But the writers had a good point and said, “Eric, you keep saying nobody’s safe: Put your money where your mouth is. We have to drop someone really important in the first episode, so people will go the rest of the season truly feeling like nobody is safe.”
And they were right. A-Train had a really great redemption arc, and a lot of that is due to the job Jessie did. He made the character so nuanced, human and soulful. He’s the villain who starts the entire story in motion and then ends his run by saving Hughie. The moment that I love the most is when he dodges out of the way of this woman, whereas he ran through Robin without thinking twice about it the very first time we saw him. Now in the last time we saw him, he saves this woman’s life, because he has so much more concern for other people and their lives. It’s just a really lovely signpost of what a hero he’s become.
Another big surprise was hearing Karen Fukuhara finally speak as Kimiko. How did she feel after not having dialogue for the whole series?
She was excited. After having no dialogue for four whole seasons, to finally be able to actually speak was great. For the first time, we had to start wiring her with a microphone. That was exciting, but it also was a process, like, “So how does she sound exactly?” It’s unexpectedly challenging when you’ve gotten a character so well-known and ingrained with the audience over four seasons, and now suddenly they’re communicating in a completely different way. How do you feel that that’s consistently Kimiko? It took a minute, honestly. Through trial and error, we had to figure out how she sounded. What was her vocabulary? What words would she use? We got to this place that, in hindsight was obvious, but it was finally asking, “What does the audience think Kimiko’s personality is?” Well, sweet, deadly and doesn’t take any shit.
I think it was nerve-racking for her and me for this late in the game to try something so wildly new. But I think she did a fantastic job. My favorite thing about her is she has no filter because she would never need one. It makes you think about all the times she talked to Frenchie, what was she really saying? Because he’s always translating her in a very polite way. She’s probably saying the filthiest shit to him, and he’s just “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” and not translating it one-to-one. Now to finally hear from her unfiltered was really fun.
I loved the Deep becoming a full-on manosphere podcast host. Were there any real-life podcasters that you based him on?
No one specifically, just overall the whole phenomenon of it. We always only half-jokingly say that the Deep is the Forrest Gump of bullshit entertainment trends. He manages to float from one bullshit, horrible corner of the entertainment business to another. He’ll go from being a #MeToo asshole to being in this skeevy church to writing an autobiography about the skeevy church to capitalize on it to the manosphere. He’s just a horrible person, but it’s fun dialogue to write. Some of this shit they say, man, it blows me away: Basically, in effect, if you boil it all down, hanging out with women and having sex with them isn’t manly. You just go through the looking glass, and it’s just so crazy. I encourage all viewers to, when you’re alone, do a Google search on perineum sunning and see how much the manosphere actually supports that. My favorite part of that commercial is if you look in very small text along the bottom, it says “Warning: prolonged exposure may cause anal cancer.” Our editor wrote that in, and it’s so funny.
Jasper Savage/Prime
The reveal that Ashley now has a psychic, talking tumor on the back of her head immediately reminded me of Voldemort and Professor Quirrell in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” Was that an inspiration at all for her weird new superpower?
No. I mean, when I was speaking with Stephan Fleet, our visual effects supervisor, we were trying to figure out how the hell do we do this? We started looking at some of the “Harry Potter” stuff, but it was not inspiration in the writers’ room. It was more like, how do we give her the grossest possible power? The best powers are a metaphor for what that character is actually going through. She has this conscience deep down, and she keeps shoving it down, but it’s there. It keeps bubbling up. We knew that was going to be her big conflict this season. Is she able to extinguish this little spark of morality inside of her in order to serve in this position? Well, let’s literally give that conscience a face. Let’s talk about her being very literally two-faced.
The inspiration more than anything, now that I think about it, was the mayor in “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” We talked a lot about that character. It’s a politician, and she’s literally two-faced, but one face is actually really good, and then one face is her. It becomes this sort of buddy story. Can these two people come together? That was just a blast, and Colbie’s ability to pull off physical comedy keeps getting crazier and crazier.
Where did the idea for the new supe Rockhard come from?
One of the things that the show does well is try to satirize superhero tropes. One trope that we hadn’t done yet was the Thing, the giant, bulking, character made of stone. The reason we never touched it is because we can’t afford to do it. They’re these massive CG characters. We were trying to figure out a funny character that we could from the superhero world that we could do our irreverent spin on. One morning, I came in and I’m like, “Let’s have him gain so much weight and be so huge that he’s lost the ability to move. So all we really need are two eyes, like in a ‘Scooby-Doo’ painting moving around, that we could plug into this sculpture that we build and could pull off.” Jessica Chou, who wrote the episode, came up with having that Stephen Hawking automated voice where that’s the only way he can talk and he’s so filthy and gross. It was just really such a strange character.
Will this season set up next year’s prequel “Vought Rising” at all? Will fans need to have watched Season 5 to understand the new show?
There are for sure references to “Vought Rising;” a character from “Vought Rising” shows up later in the season. But the goal was to have just enough to get people excited for “Vought Rising,” but not mandatory viewing. You don’t at all need to have seen “The Boys” to appreciate “Vought Rising.” It’s its own story. We’re trying really hard to strike a balance of each series being its own animal, and you don’t have to do homework to enjoy it.
Will this season plant any seeds for the Mexico-set spinoff that’s also in the works?
We’re developing the script right now. Amazon read it, and we had a glowing notes call, which is really good news. There’s still work to be done, but they seem up on it, which is great. Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer wrote a really funny, smart script. It takes place in Mexico City, so its focus is so different and unique than to the other shows in the VCU. It’s a perspective that I don’t have. It’s this very specific Latin American perspective on superheroes and international politics, and their own national politics. It’s such an interesting thing that none of the white dudes who write on this show could do, but Gareth has such an interesting and authentic spin on it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
