‘The Boys’ Boss Eric Kripke Breaks Down Soldier Boy’s Reaction to Butcher’s Supe Virus (Exclusive)

What To Know

• The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke breaks down Season 5’s first two episodes, including A-Train’s fate, Soldier Boy’s run-in with the virus, and much more.
• Find out what’s in store after that religious calling for Homelander, Ashley’s power reveal, and beyond.

The Boys Season 5 began with a death and a shocking revival as the series returned to Prime Video with two all-new episodes, and as viewers tuned into the installments, the closing moments of “Teenage Kix” delivered a major twist that could change everything for Butcher’s (Karl Urban) homicidal mission. Fair warning: There are spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episodes 1 & 2 ahead!

While Homelander (Antony Starr) grows stronger, the main mission of Butcher has been to concoct a virus so strong that it will wipe out all supes across the planet. As the second episode of the new season played out, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), who was awoken from his slumber by Homelander, was sent out to track down Butcher and his vigilante gang, making him a guinea pig for the virus.

After a battle with Butcher, Soldier Boy is tricked into following Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) into the basement of the Teenage Kix team, where they had released the virus in a sealed environment. As the concoction had an immediate effect on Soldier Boy, Hughie and Frenchie sealed the rest of the doors and made a run for it with the rest of their team.

Unbeknownst to them, though, Soldier Boy wasn’t dead as he sat up in the body bag he’d been packed into. What does that mean for Butcher’s mission moving forward? Showrunner Eric Kripke breaks down the implications of that reveal, Episode 1’s major A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) death, Homelander’s calling toward religion, and Ashley’s (Colby Minifie) bizarre power.

Prime Video

The season is starting out strong with that A-Train death. How did you decide to go there this early on in the final chapter? 

Eric Kripke: I hated that call. I had to call him once we knew for sure because I had to tell him, don’t lease an apartment in Toronto this year. It’s so hard because you really come to think of everyone as family, and so it’s just such a tough conversation, but he was amazing about it, and then proceeded to show up and absolutely crush it. I think at one point in the writer’s room, we were talking about maybe keeping him around till Episode 3 or so.

He was always going to be the first on the hit list, but not the last. The writers really campaigned successfully with me, they said, you keep saying nobody’s safe, put your money where your mouth is, you have to drop someone big in the first episode, so then for the rest of the season, the audience just never knows what to expect, and they know anyone is in danger of getting killed, and they’re right. So it was really important. Then I was like, alright, if we’re gonna do that, over those three episodes, we really have to make the page count, and give us story space so that we can really give him his proper due, really make it one of the prime storylines of the opener.

Then we started adding the scenes of he goes to France, and he reconciles with his brother, and he gets to hear that his mom is proud of him, because the story we were always gonna tell, we just ended up telling a more compressed version of it. He’s running scared from Homelander; he’s been running scared since the end of last season, and then finally like stops running and faces Homelander to see that Homelander’s not scary at all, he’s just pathetic, and that was always gonna be the story. So it was making sure that we could write in enough of those beats in this episode to feel like he had a satisfying final run. I think it’s so beautiful the way he dodges that woman at the end, and that’s what trips him up, as a signpost from the very first time we meet him to the very last time we see him, and I thought that it really showed how far he’s come as a character.

Prime Video

Soldier Boy survives the deadly supe virus administered by Hughie and Frenchie. What are the implications of that moving forward?

Yes, it is true that Soldier Boy is not dead, and the reasons that he’s seemingly immune to this virus are what really set up the primary MacGuffin of the season. It really turns everything on its head. Suddenly, there is a way to survive the virus, and so it becomes a race of who acquires it. If Homelander acquires it, it’s game over.  If The Boys acquire it, then maybe the people that they love can survive, and so everyone’s battling for the future. Can they survive this war? Can they survive this particular virus? And this storyline becomes a big driver of the season.

Homelander hears this voice, which he takes as some kind of sign from god. What can you say about the religious direction his ambitions take after reaching the upper echelon of America’s government? 

It’s more about how, as Sage says to him, “Whatever power you accrue, it’s still not going to make you happy.” And so we find Homelander begin the season, having achieved the upper echelon of power. There’s no more powerful person on the planet than what this guy has achieved, and he’s still miserable. And so he always thinks, well, if I can make it to the next step, then I’ll finally be happy, not understanding that what he needs to do is look inside at the gaping vacant void that is his soul, but he doesn’t; he is unable to see that.

The next step of power is as some kind of deity, and that really gets fleshed out in upcoming episodes, but Homelander for seasons now has been talking about himself as if he’s a god, and we tried to make good on that in our insane Boysian way. We have different targets in different seasons. Season 4, elections were a big target, white nationalism in Season 2, so in Season 5, we are taking quite a big fat shot at Christian nationalism, and this idea that Christianity should make you supportive of violent and occasionally racist policies, which run against everything that Christianity stands for. The fact that politicians are saying that Jesus is blessing this administration with a straight face is something that we really wanted to take a shot at.

We uncover the results of Ashley’s Compound-V injection. Will she use that mind-reading ability and inner voice to do something good? 

Yeah, I mean, the character’s official name is Back Ashley, but we call her Bashley for short. The thing I love about that power, beyond the fact that it’s just gross and silly and absurd, is that the best powers are metaphors for what that particular character is going through, and what we wanted to do with Ashley this season is she’s demonstrated on several occasions that she has a spark of a conscience and will she ever listen to it or will she keep subsuming it? So she’s a little bit at war with herself, and so it was just like, let’s give voice to that conscience, let’s have Bashley be a really likable moral character who is trying to convince Ashley to do the right thing, who represents who Ashley used to be.

And so Ashley finds herself in this bizarre buddy movie where she’s fighting with this other person about what is the best way forward, and can they come together. It’s almost like a bizarre sister story, and that continues all season. Will she ever listen to Bashley, which is really listening to herself, or will she keep being a bootlicker?

The Boys, Season 5, Wednesdays, Prime Video