SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 5 of “The Boys,” currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
While Homelander (Antony Starr) and the supers were absent from the Vought 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, vicious cattle on a quest to discover a super-killer virus.
Amid these two wild plot factors was a more serious plot: Hughie (Jack Quaid) and his newly returned mother Daphne (Rosemarie Dewitt) saying goodbye to Hugh Sr. (Simon Pegg), when Hughie agrees to give his father a painless death to take him out of his new anguish. Throughout the episode, Hugh Sr. struggled to manage the tremendous damaging phase 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 dazed state.
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 search for the super virus lab on Stan Edgar’s (Giancarlo Esposito) property. How much of that was sensible, if any, and how much of it produced visible results?
Much, little or none was sensible. The bull was real, although Stephan Fleet and their visual effects division made it look angrier — it was actually a very, very sweet animal. The chickens were mostly real, except when they were bursting 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 real 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 make it a completely new monster. It was Stephan’s idea to give it baboon teeth — it has the jaws of a baboon, and that’s what gives it its fangs and its menacing look.
Butcher has a particular connection to the rabbit, as it was being used in experiments with Temp V — the factor that led to Butcher’s fatal prognosis — and frees it.. 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?
This doesn’t mean anything good. I don’t want to give too much away, but I think Butcher is starting to wonder what’s going on with him and how he was able to kill Ezekiel. And it’s a little bit of a rabbit hole foreshadowing.
Antony Starr (Homeland), Cameron Crovetti (Ryan)
Jasper Savage/Main Video
Shortly after, Butcher cuts off the leg of Vought scientist Sameer – great to meet Victoria Neuman’s lover, and Zoe’s father, by the way – and kidnaps him with Kessler. Because much of that drastic decision made by Butcher, to keep Sameer involved in more supe viruses, was based on the rabbit’s fate – and was juxtaposed with Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) shifting more 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 on the straight and narrow, trying to be loyal to his group. However, then the rabbit and what is happening to it — and possibly what is happening to he —it just, actually, really shakes him up, and makes him feel a lot more determined. So he brings Kessler into the equation, and cuts off a man’s leg just to cover his tracks, which is not an incredibly rational habit. I feel like he’s really shaken up, and scared about what might very well be happening to him.
Hughie’s father’s tremendous energy—there’s always a significance in how you decide what the energy of a personality will be. What was the selection here for what Hugh Sr. would receive when dosed with V in the hospital?
We really like it when powers can form a mirror of your psychological state, or some of your deep-seated unconscious. I feel like it was like a lesson we learned in “Gen V” that really served us well. So we really got this concept from him, based mainly on his relationship with his estranged wife, that he felt really light. He has that line, “You’d look right through me, as if I were invisible to you.” So giving him an influence that made that metaphor concrete was something we were really excited about.
It’s tremendously refined, but it says something about Campbell’s DNA that Hughie’s energy is a teleportation energy and Pop’s energy is a kind of phase energy — yet they’re both cousins in a way. It was in the same ballpark. In our minds, the ability that you get is a combination of V and his DNA. And so if he has DNA comparable to his father, it stands to reason that possibly his father would have an analogous energy.
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 given the history of V52, and that Homelander would use V52 as a canopy to deliver totally different superheroes near him as he’s starting to build this army. And it made sense that Cate, who may be a supremacist, would need to enlist in this. I feel like Sam is a little more reluctant, but he also doesn’t communicate his personal opinions — he kind of needs to evolve into that as a personality as well.
However, in terms of what this means, as is typical in the Vought universe, the characters who were actually the villains of the day, 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 day are locked away in some undisclosed location that will be revealed in Season 2 of “Gen V.” Simply our comparable message that being a hero is often an unsung and thankless thing, and when you’re presented to everyone as a hero, you’re usually anything but.
Associated with V52 — which is clearly totally not related to any real-life event a company does – have you ever heard from anyone at Marvel, whether complimentary or otherwise, at this point, about jokes on the show?
I’ve heard very casually and in passing that Marvel execs watch it and just enjoy it. However, they didn’t give me a name or anyone—someone just mentioned it to me in passing. I feel like it concludes with good fun. Like I said, I watch all the Marvel movies. I like them. It’s simply the sheer amount of content that makes it worth having some fun.
Throughout V52, they showcased the initiatives in Phases 7 through 19 of the Vought Cinematic Universe. How many of these titles will be exclusive to Vought+ and how many will go to theaters?
Indeed, let’s be honest, at least half of them could be written off for write-down, and after that a bunch will go to Vought+, after that only a few will make it to the big screen. It just seems to be the way the company is today.
This interview has been edited and condensed.