The Boys Cast and Crew on Season 5’s First Major Death
Warning: This article contains major spoilers for the first episode of The Boys Season 5!
If there’s one thing The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke has tried to get across about the show’s fifth and final season, it’s that no one is safe. The end is nigh, and there’s no telling who might perish on the road to the final confrontation between our heroes and the almighty Homelander. That fact is borne out in the Season 5 premiere, which culminates in the death of a major character who’s been at the forefront of the series from the very first episode. Let’s pour one out for Jessie T. Usher’s A-Train.
It’s certainly a dark way to kick off Season 5, but also a necessary one. This satirical superhero universe has grown darker than ever now that Homelander has taken control of the country, mirroring the ways our own world has changed politically in the uncertain landscape of 2026.
We recently spoke with Kripke and the cast of The Boys to break down A-Train’s death and explore why the series has only grown more timely and relevant in its final season. Is hope the ultimate superpower in the Boys universe? Let’s talk about it…
The Tragic Death of A-Train
Season 5 opens with several of our heroes imprisoned inside one of Vought’s new “Freedom Camps,” prison camps where the company tosses anyone they view as dangerous or disruptive to Homelander’s new regime. Episode 1 follows Starlight and Billy Butcher as they organize a jailbreak to bust out Hughie, Frenchie, and Mother’s Milk before Homelander can execute them for their “crimes.”
The good news is that Starlight and friends have a powerful ally in the super-speedster A-Train, who finally made a break from The Seven in Season 4; unfortunately, A-Train proves to be the first hero to fall in Season 5. Ironically, he dies doing exactly what he wouldn’t do back in the series premiere – avoiding running through an innocent bystander, losing his footing, and allowing the vindictive Homelander to catch up to him. At that moment, A-Train’s fate is sealed.
“When I say we, I mean the writers, we had decided a while ago that A-Train should probably be the first to go,” Kripke tells IGN. “It felt like Homelander’s anger towards him would be so red-hot that it was difficult to figure out a way to write around.”
Unsurprisingly, the parallel between A-Train’s crime in the series premiere and his self-sacrifice in the Season 5 premiere was very intentional. It was a way to show how far this character has come and remind us that some superheroes in this universe are actually capable of living up to the title.
“I think it was really important to us that A-Train go out a hero,” Kripke says. “And there’s this lovely moment that Paul Grellong wrote. In the very first time you saw A-Train in the pilot, he carelessly runs through a woman. And the very last time you see A-Train in the series, he very carefully dodges a woman, but that causes him to trip and costs him his life. But he goes out a hero, and it’s a really great bookend to show how much he’s grown as a character and how much more human and humane he’s become.”
It’s not only a big moment for A-Train himself, but for Homelander too. Here we see Homelander confronted with a former ally who’s now one of the few people on Earth completely unafraid to stand up to him and speak truth to power. What was going through Homelander’s mind at that moment? For that, we turn to actor Antony Starr.
“I looked at it like it’s a necessary thing, but I think in the moment, it was really just [that] it had to be done,” Starr says. “It was another person that betrayed him and the ledger had to be balanced no matter what. I think he thinks he’s doing the right thing according to what he needs to survive and advance in his life. So I think as far as he was concerned, A-Train fully deserved it.”
But was Starr himself surprised by this twist? “Yeah, a little bit. But at the same time, no, because the show has a history of not pulling its punches, and it just felt like the… Of course something like that was going to happen. It didn’t surprise me as much as it was just a surprise. It was more the ‘who’ than the ‘what’ of the situation. Unfortunately, heads rolling early on in final season is good for business.”
As Sister Sage actress Susan Heyward notes, A-Train’s death is all about the idea of sacrifice and redemption. Is anyone in this sordid superhero universe actually capable of redemption? Apparently so.
“It was also a great moment to think about the theme of redemption, what redemption could look like, and what being a hero might look like,” Heyward says. “The world can kind of be cynical sometimes, I think it’s safe to say. I think the first episode is going to give the audience a really beautiful moment to meditate on what being a hero actually is. It’s not always a costume, and cameras, and comfort, and fame. Sometimes it looks very, very different.”
Filming The Boys In Our New Political Climate
The Boys has always made a name for itself by parodying our fraught political climate. The series originally debuted at the tail-end of the first Trump administration, and Homelander himself is clearly modeled after Trump in some ways. Now, in the years since Season 4 first aired, Trump has been reelected, and there’s new conflict at home and abroad.
Season 5 wastes no time before digging into this new era and parodying the current state of the US, and that’s despite the fact that much of Season 5 was broken down and written before the 2024 election.
“Look, it’s really hard to make satire when the world is crazier than your superhero exploding penis show,” Kripke says. “We broke and wrote most of Season 5 before [the] election. So, we actually thought we were writing speculative fiction about what authoritarian creep would really look like under Homelander’s reign.”
Kripke continues, “But then there was an election, and a lot of the things we wrote about have horrifically come to pass, stuff that we thought was really out there. As a reference to Episode 1, we thought it was hard to think of anything crazier than a series of internment camps across the country. And yet now, here we are.”
For Kripke, the key to dealing with this difficult subject matter is something the show has always relied on heavily; only through the power of humor can The Boys take bleak topics like internment camps and the rise of authoritarianism and make us able to look them straight in the eye.
“So, it’s hard. It’s really hard,” Kripke says. “But I think one thing that I think the show does is [that] it spits in the eye of all of that, and holds it up to ridicule. And I think laughter is a really powerful tool. I think it makes something that feels so scary and big a little more manageable if you can just laugh at it. And that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Season 5’s real-world parallels are pretty impressive considering that, again, these episodes were largely written before the election and everything that’s happened since. But as Heyward points out, history is nothing if not cyclical; all of this has happened before and will happen again.
“I would say the stories follow things that have happened before,” Heyward says. “The ambition, the pursuit of ambition, is a story as old as time. It has a certain set of rules, of beats, that it’s going to hit as a story. Depending on whatever country you’re in, whatever time you’re in, whatever empire you happen to find yourself in, there’s a certain rhythm that that story takes.”
Heyward adds, “I think what’s great about the show is it uses satire or it uses fantasy to place the audience in a world where they can be grossed out, they can laugh, they can be shocked, and then they can step out of it and look at the moment that they find themselves in and place themselves there.”
Firecracker actress Valorie Curry reveals that the series has actually been therapeutic, giving her a way to channel her own fears and frustrations and work through them in a larger-than-life setting.
“In terms of the reflection of current events and the fact that it has always existed as a satire of our culture and of our politics, corporate capitalism, celebrity, media, one of the things that is truly wild is how far in advance the scripts are being written, and that they’re just… Maybe they’re reading the room really well, and maybe they’re freakishly prescient, but things are sometimes uncannily reflective of what’s going on,” Curry says. “I know as an actor, I’ve been very grateful to have a place to process feelings of frustration, feelings of fear, feelings of anger. I will miss having that place to do it.”
Yes, the series is ending soon, but as Heyward reminds us, the Boys universe will continue on through various spinoffs like Gen V and the upcoming Vought Rising.
“I’m very excited to see what happens as the world expands,” Heyward says. “Vought Rising is going to take the baton in Gen V. We’re going to continue to carry the baton of what else is going to be satirized and what else will we need to process in the coming days. This cast might be gone, but the world will still be there.”
Speaking of Gen V, what of Jaz Sinclair’s Marie Moreau and her young friends? How do these supes impact the plot of Season 5 now that they’ve thrown their lot in with Starlight? Kripke says not to expect too much from Marie and the gang, as the focus is going to stay on the show’s main cast in Season 5.
“I’d say Episode 1 is a good example of what we like to do, which is make some references, some easter eggs, but by no means is it required viewing. I mean, I want you to watch it. Please watch it.,” Kripke says. “Some of the Gen V kids do show up later in the season. You saw it in the trailers, but anyone thinking that Marie Moreau is going to be the hero who takes down Homelander, I think you’re going to be disappointed. This isn’t her show. She has a show. This is a show about The Boys, and The Boys have to take center stage in a way that you can enjoy without feeling like you have to have homework to do or required viewing to do.”
The Importance of Hope in The Boys Universe
As dark and cynical as The Boys often is about our current sociopolitical climate, there’s also an inherent optimism fueling the series. We see that in Episode 1, as we learn that Jack Quaid’s Hughie is able to maintain hope despite everything that’s befallen our heroes since the end of Season 4.
“I love the scene I got to have in the first episode when I’m talking with the other prisoner about this idea of hope and how hard that is to hold onto and sometimes that’s all you have,” Quaid says. “And I really didn’t want any of that to come across as Hughie being naive or overly optimistic, because I think Hughie has weirdly been through so much, and for him to wind up on the other side with hope, I think is really beautiful.”
Quaid continues, “He’s a character that’s been knocked down so many times, but he keeps getting back up. He also … I don’t know. At this point, what can Homelander do to him that hasn’t already happened? But I love this idea of hope being an act of resistance, and hope being brave, and hope being kind of badass. And I think that Hughie really embodies that this season. And I think it’s been wonderful to play a character for so long because you get to see him grow, and I feel like this season, he’s more grown up than he ever has been.”
Kripke makes it clear that the struggle to maintain hope in a hopeless time is one of the dominant themes of Season 5. “I think it’s something that a lot of people can relate to, and it’s certainly something that the writers and I were feeling in the real world,” Kripke says. “Like, how do you hold onto hope when things can be so dark without becoming cynical, without burying your head in the sand? Because it’s heroic. Just the simple act of holding onto hope. The simple act of getting up every time you’re knocked down, win or lose. That’s heroic and that makes the world a better place.”
We also see in Episode 1 how this sense of hope gives Hughie a newfound strength. In one pivotal scene, Hughie proves brave enough to stand up to Homelander despite having no powers and no way of defending himself. It’s a stunning sign of just how much the character has grown and evolved over the course of five seasons.
“I mean, oh, God, Hughie, he started at having his girlfriend evaporate literally in his hands,” Quaid says. “He’s been through the ringer and then some. So I think he sees through Homelander’s bullshit and he has for a long time, but this is the first time where I think he’s just been through so much that what can Homelander do at this point that would at all make him flinch?”
Quaid adds, “And I loved playing that scene, because I’m used to being in a scene with Homelander and just playing that very real fear that Antony is so good at eliciting. But this was really fun to flip the script and have Hughie … To play Hughie not from a place of fear was so interesting this season, and so fun and so full circle for the character. I loved every second of it.”
The first two episodes of The Boys are available to stream now on Prime Video.
For more on The Boys Season 5, check out our spoiler-free review of the first seven episodes and our full recap of the first four seasons.
Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.
First Appeared on
Source link
