SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “The Boys” Season 4, Episode 5, currently available on Amazon Prime Video.
While Homelander (Antony Starr) and the supers were absent from Vought’s V52 fan event (not to be in any aspect confused with Disney’s 23) in this week’s episode of “The Boys,” Butcher (Karl City), Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and company played a bunch of crazy and cruel cattle on a journey to discover a super-killer virus.
Between these two wild plot points was a more serious plot: Hughie (Jack Quaid) and his recently returned mother Daphne (Rosemarie Dewitt), saying goodbye to Hugh Sr. (Simon Pegg), when Hughie agrees to give his father a painless death. to get him out of his new anguish. Throughout the episode, Hugh Sr. struggled to manage the tremendous harmful energy he acquired after Daphne gave him Compound V so she could bring him out of his coma. Hugh Sr. ended up accidentally killing several people in the hospital while in a daze.
Here, “The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke breaks down “The Boys” Season 4, Episode 5, titled “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son” — along with these “Generation V” cameos.
Let’s start with the bloody, flying cattle scenes from Compound V, as the boys are in search of the super virus lab on Stan Edgar’s (Giancarlo Esposito) estate. How much of this was sensible, if any, and how much of it led to visible results?
Much, little or none was sensible. The bull was real, although Stephan Fleet and his visual effects division made him look angrier — he was really a very, very sweet animal. The chickens were mostly real, except when they were exploding out of people’s chests. And the sheep, outside of that scene where the barn door opens and the two sheep come in — I think that’s the only time there were actual sheep in that sequence. Huge amounts of credit to our good visual effects team, because it’s not easy to create a respectable-looking animal from scratch and have it be a completely new monster. It was Stephan’s idea to give him baboon teeth — he has the jaws of a baboon, and that’s what gives him his fangs and his menacing look.
Butcher has a special connection to the rabbit, because he was being experimented on with Temp V – the thing that led to Butcher’s deadly prognosis – and frees him.. So he steps on it to kill it later when he sees tentacles sprouting from the rabbit’s stomach. We all know he was taking the same factor as Butcher, so what can you tease about what this means for Butcher, and why Butcher had such a visceral response to it?
It doesn’t imply anything good. I don’t need to give too much away, but I feel like Butcher is really starting to wonder what’s going on with him, and wonder how he was able to kill Ezekiel. And it’s a little rabbit hole of foreshadowing.
Antony Starr (Homeland), Cameron Crovetti (Ryan)
Jasper Savage/Prime Video
Shortly after this, Butcher cuts off the leg of Vought scientist Sameer — nice to meet Victoria Neuman’s lover, and Zoe’s father, by the way — and kidnaps him with Kessler. Much of that drastic choice made by Butcher, to keep Sameer occupied with more supe viruses, was based primarily on the rabbit’s fate — and happened to be juxtaposed with Ryan (Cameron Crovetti). moving even further to the dark side with Homelander in this episode?
This is an extremely insightful level. The story for him in this episode is trying to stay straight and lean, trying to be loyal to his group. But then the rabbit and what’s happening to him – and possibly what’s happening to him he – really, really shakes him up and makes him feel even more determined. So he brings Kessler into the equation and cuts off a man’s leg just to cover his tracks, which is not incredibly rational behavior. I feel like he’s really shaken up and scared about what might be happening to him.
Hughie’s father’s tremendous power – there’s always a meaning to how you all decide what a character’s power will be. What was the choice here for what Hugh Sr. would receive when he was given a dose of V in the hospital?
We really like when powers can mirror your psychological state, or some of your deeper unconscious. I feel like that was kind of a lesson we learned in “Generation V” that really served us well. So we really got this idea of him, based on his relationship with his ex-wife, that he felt very light. He has that line, “You would look right through me, like I was invisible to you.” So giving him an impact that made that metaphor concrete was something we were really excited about.
It’s super refined, but it says something about the Campbell DNA that Hughie’s power is a teleportation power and Pop’s power is like a phasing power – but they’re both cousins in a way. He was in the same stadium. In our minds, the ability you get is a combination of V and your DNA. And so, if he has similar DNA to his father, it stands to reason that maybe his father has a similar power.
Jasper Savage/Prime Video
Moving on to some very disturbing stuff with Hughie and his dad: I’ll call it the euthanasia scene. How did you get selected for Hughie to try this?, and working with Jack Quaid and Simon Pegg on the importance of that scene?
From the beginning, we needed to model that scene. Of course, Hughie is growing up this year, and really learning to take ownership or manage the family is something that a lot of kids go through – like that moment when their parents are taking good care of them and then, inevitably, they’re taking good care of their mom and dad. Everyone goes through that, and it’s an incredibly common and painful experience. And it’s the moment that so many people say, “Oh, yeah, that was when I really grew up, when I became my dad or my mom’s dad or mom.” I assumed that was an extremely common thing for Hughie to go through, and a problematic one.
The thing about Hughie, as we’ve talked about this season, is that we’re dealing with everyone’s core trauma, and his biggest weakness is his inability to let go of anyone. And he’s really learning this season by forgiving A-Prepare and forgiving his mother and really letting go of his father, he’s really learning how to mature. They start the episode with his father saying, “You’re still that same kid who couldn’t let go of the cat.” And we end the episode with Hughie standing up and making the hard choices that the other older relatives are unable to make. So it just shows him growing into true maturity.
You deliver “Generation V” characters Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips) and Sam Riordan (Asa Germann) for guest appearances in this episode. Why did you decide now, during the fourth season of “The Boys”, to do the crossover? And What should their appearances tell us about what’s happening in the current timeline at Godolkin College — and where the other “Generation V” characters are likely now?
Now it made sense because of the V52 storyline, and that Homelander would use the V52 as a cover to bring different superheroes closer to him as he was starting to build this army. And it made sense that Cate, who might be an ultimate supremacist, would need to sign up to that. I think Sam is a little bit more reluctant, but he also doesn’t voice his own opinions — he kind of needs to evolve into that as a personality as well.
But what that means is, as is typical in the Vought universe, the characters who were really the villains of that era, Cate and Sam, are packaged by Vought to be the heroes, and given a movie and new levels of fame, while the real heroes of that era are locked away in some undisclosed location that will be revealed in the second season of “Generation V.” Just our comparable message that being a hero is often an unsung and thankless thing, and once you’re presented in front of everyone as a hero, but oftentimes you’re something.
Associated with the V52 – which is clearly totally unrelated to any real-life occasion an organization makes — have you heard from anyone at Marvel, whether complimentary or not, at this point about jokes within the show?
I’ve heard very casually and in passing that Marvel execs watch it and just enjoy it. However, I wasn’t given a name or anyone – simply someone told me about it in passing. I think it concluded with good fun. Like I said, I watch all the Marvel movies. I like them. It’s just the sheer amount of content that makes it worth having some fun.
Throughout V52, they laid out the initiatives in Phases 7-19 of the Vought Cinematic Universe. How many of these titles will be exclusive to Vought+ and how many will go to theaters?
Well, let’s be honest, at least half of them will be canceled to low, and then many will go to Vought+, and then only a few will make it to theater. It just seems to be how the company is today.
This interview has been edited and condensed.