This post contains major spoilers for The Boys season five, episode three. If you want to avoid them until you watch, check out our previous final season coverage instead. If not, then join us in our latest interview with Eric Kripke about The Boys season three.
In episode three of The Boys final season Homelander imagined a holy message from a woman he killed, bathed in breast milk, got naked in front of his dad, and nearly beat his own son to death. Even for him it was a lot. What was it like imagining what the world’s most powerful Supe’s descent into madness would do entail? When we got a chance to talk to him again we asked showrunner Eric Kripke about that. We also talked about the cast, The Deep’s car of choice, and more about season five’s third episode.
Nerdist: Before we get to this week’s episode, I have one quick question about episode two. When you were developing Rock Hard’s story, did you ever think to yourself, “Is there something wrong with us?”
Kripke: (big laugh) I mean, I’ve both always asked that question but also never have asked that question. Oh man, it’s all fair play. I mean, look, it’s logical. The guy’s got to spurt lava. How else do you grow as a mountain? Like, use some logic, Mikey. (laughs)
Sorry.
Kripke: He’s got to grow. We knew that he had to become huge. There’s only one way mountains become huge.
Okay. Yeah, fair. Fair. When you’re right, you’re right.
He’s never exactly been stable, but we’re now watching Homelander completely lose it.
Kripke: Yeah.
What was the conversation like in The Boys writers’ room when you tried to figure out what it would look like when the most powerful person in the world really loses their mind?
Kripke: An idea that came up reasonably early and that we always loved, just absolutely fell in love with, was this notion that an angel in the form of Madelyn Stillwell comes down and sort of gives him his holy mission. Which, of course, is his completely cracking psyche, but he actually believes he was visited by angel Madelyn Stillwell. And we held onto that as things break and things change and move around and, “Where does it go?”
All that stuff is very intangible; it’s always floating around. But that was a coin we always had on the board of, “Stillwell gives him his holy mission.” We thought that was the best way to do it. After spinning out after A-Train, and then Soldier Boy, and then Soldier Boy hates him, and then all the previous seasons, [Homelander] was just due. This felt like the right episode to be due for a psychological break.
It’s also the episode that would be the end of act one in a movie, where all the missions are now thrown out there and clear. Which is that he wants V-One so he can become a god. The Boys want V-One, so Homelander one doesn’t get it, but also so that they can save Kimiko and Annie. So it all kind of lined up at the right place because this is after the first two episodes of setup. This is when we sort of take off into what the rest of the season is about.
Even after all this time, I’m still blown away by Antony Starr’s performance, which I already thought was an all-time, singular performance before season five. Sustained greatness can be easy to take for granted. So as a showrunner, what do you think specifically stands out about his work in these early episodes?
Kripke: It’s this combustible mix of truly terrifying brutality with the weakest, smallest neediness. And he’s always been great at that, but there’s something about this season where he’s such an open wound. He’s such a little child in how much he wants his father’s approval, how much he needs the world to love him. You just see it, the longing. And then he can switch so quickly and be just genuinely terrifying.
I think Ant has created one of the great television villains of all time, and it’s like, “What else does he have to fucking do? Give this guy an Emmy already for fuck’s sake.”
Totally agree on that. I also love what Karen Fukuhara’s doing this season in what is a very different role for a very obvious reason. Considering her performance this year, do you wish you had had Kimiko talking sooner?
Kripke: …No. This was the right time to do it, for this last season. What that character had to go through in terms of her evolution, from when you think about where she started to where she is now, she had to find her voice from a character and thematic standpoint before she could find her voice physically. And that took a minute. So I don’t know if I would’ve done it any earlier. But she’s crushing it. It’s such a hard challenge to spend four seasons without a line of dialogue and then suddenly be speaking and have it be equally charming and scary. And she’s crushing it.
Imagine going back and saying Kimiko’s going to be the funniest character on the show.
Kripke: (laughs) Right?
If you can’t tell, I’m really kind of blown away by the performances of season five. As I told Jessie T. Usher, I’m trying not to succumb to recency bias, but I feel like everybody’s doing their best work yet. And that includes Erin Moriarty, who is once again phenomenal in this third episode. What did you talk about with her, and where Starlight is emotionally, before you started shooting this season?
Kripke: I told her it’s been a really hard year with lots of loss, and you’ve really come over to Butcher’s way of thinking, which is that ends justify the means. That you’ve needed to put up a shell to defend yourself, because your heart is just being broken so many times, and it callouses, ultimately.
The simplest way to put it, that I think really resonated with her, is I said, “Well, you turned into Maeve. You did the one thing you swore you’d never do. You gave away so much of yourself, and your heart got broken so many times that you’re Maeve.” And so the question is, “Can Hughie pull you back to who you were?” There’s something sort of full circle and poetic about who she was in season one, and how she just so desperately didn’t want to become this type of personality. But lo and behold, she is.
In episode three, Hughie gives her just a minute of hope. You see it where his goodness is just making her think for the first time in a long time, maybe everything’s going to be okay. But then she thinks he almost dies. She thinks he’s dead, and she just realizes that, at least at this moment, that all of that is dangerous. It’s dangerous and painful to hope. And that sort of sends her off at the end of the episode into the next one.
Another episode of The Boys where Hughie gets covered in goo. Last week, The Deep did a commercial for a very highly specific tanning machine.
Kripke: (smiles) Sure.
After all this time, who do you prefer to torture more: Jack Quaid or Chase Crawford?
Kripke: Um….I would say…(smiling) neither are tortured. I would say both are doing good, hard work for their characters. Jack has an amazing Buster Keaton dry reaction to being covered in blood, which is delightful. Chase is just so endlessly funny. I don’t think Chase is tortured. I think Chase loves doing all that stuff.
Those clips are going to live forever.
Kripke: But he loves it. One thing I will say, too is that the very first idea we had about The Deep this season, I mean, the first one is that he drives a Cybertruck.
Perfect. It was perfect.
Kripke: It was so obvious, right?
Perfect. Made the most sense in the world.
Kripke: Yeah. This was the episode that we got to do it, but that was before any other idea. That was the first one.
As soon as he was driving, it was like, “Of course.“
Kripke: What other car would he be driving?
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. He’d take the goo over what Chace Crawford has to do on The Boys. You can follow him on Bluesky at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
The post THE BOYS’ Eric Kripke on Homelander’s Total Meltdown and The Deep’s Cybertruck appeared first on Nerdist.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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