The final season of The Boys started off with a bang, with the first two episodes of the show being widely praised by fans as a great start to season five.
The Boys creator Eric Kripke and the writers have already shown with the new episodes that they are unafraid of controversy, made most evident by the fairly blatant nod to Charlie Kirk in the first ten seconds of the episode.
Beyond this though the first episode sees some massive plot points paid off that The Boys have been building up to since the very beginning.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of The Boys season five
Episode one of the show sees three major plot points that have been built to finally pay off: Kimiko relearning how to speak, the footage of flight-37 being released, and A-Train meeting his demise at the hands of Homelander.
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Whilst the first two are frustratingly not treated with the seriousness that they maybe should have been, A-Train’s death closes out the first episode of season five and is a massive moment.
A-Train, played by Jessie T. Usher, started out the series as a villainous character who killed Hughie’s girlfriend, running straight through her whilst high.
Over the course of the series he learns how to be a proper hero and ultimately is caught by Homelander after swerving to avoid a civilian in a sad mirror of the first ever episode.
Though A-Train’s death is a sad one, Kripke has revealed in a new interview why it had to happen how it did.
Speaking to IGN, Kripke said: “When I say we, I mean the writers, we had decided a while ago that A-Train should probably be the first to go.
“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."
The writer acknowledged how the death was a full circle moment for A-Train, saying: “I think it was really important to us that A-Train go out a hero.
“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.”
The speedster ends up laughing in Homelander’s face just before he breaks his neck, something that Usher stated was an improvisation on set off of something him and Antony Starr discussed.
Speaking to Cinemablend, the A-Train actor said that Starr had asked him if his character was ‘happy’ he was about to die, with Usher responding: “At the very end of the road I think the last thing he realises is how ridiculous all of this has been.”
One fan account posted a clip of his death, saying: “A-Train’s last word being loser and laughing infront of Homelander to his face, couldn’t have been a more badass ending for him.”
The Boys season five episodes one and two are available to stream now on Prime Video.
Topics: The Boys, TV and Film, TV
Michael Slavin