This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of The Boys Season 5.
The Boys are back! It’s been a little while, but Prime’s hit superhero show is back for its fifth and final season, and the first two episodes have already provided us with plenty of new material to discuss. In an interview with Variety, showrunner Eric Kripke talks about the big plot points including Ashley’s insane new power, the fact that Kimiko is now able to verbally communicate, and of course, the end of A-Train’s character arc.
First off, Kripke made the call that A-Train had to die in the first episode to really drive home the point that nobody is safe this season. Aside from that, however, it was clear that A-Train’s character arc had run its course and we were now at its natural conclusion.
“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.”
A-Train comes full circle, having kicked off the events of The Boys by killing Robin when he ran through her (literally), and now sacrificing himself to Homelander to protect another innocent bystander by, y’know, not running through her. Throughout the series, we’ve seen that A-Train does have a conscience and he does want to do good. He keeps wavering and going back and forth, and now that he’s finally made the conscious decision to stand up against Homelander, it’s a fitting note to end his arc on.
It’s a little bit cheesy for my tastes, don’t get me wrong, but I guess The Boys has always been a little cheesy.
With Kimiko, Kripke explained that he and actress Karen Fukuhara had to figure out what she would sound like and what words she would use — a deceptively tricky task, especially for a character who’s been shown to communicate in a very specific way for four seasons.
Kripke reminds us that we often hear her words through Frenchie’s translation. ‘It makes you think about all the times she talked to Frenchie, what was she really saying?,’ Kripke states. ‘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.”‘
Finally, we get to Ashley Barrett, who is lowkey one of my favorite characters in The Boys. At the end of Season 4, we saw her gobble up some V and her head started to mutate as she got a new power. The first episode teased us with the little tidbit that she was merely able to read minds, but it’s so much wilder than that.
Ashley straight up has a psychic tumor on the back of her head that helps her read minds and also talks to her. What’s interesting about Ashley’s power, as Kripke points out, is that it’s a direct reflection of what her character is going through, and those kinds of connections always make for more intriguing powers.
Just like A-Train, we’ve always known that Ashley has a conscience. And now, her conscience has literally manifested itself in the form of a talking face on the back of her head. I think it’s quite clear that Ashley is going to flip on Homelander at some point this season, and I’m confident she’ll be the MVP of Season 5.
The Boys is now available for streaming on Prime.
