The Boys showrunner breaks down season 5’s first major death

In the premiere of the fifth and final season of The Boys, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) recruits the Worm (Ely Henry), a supe with earthworm-like tunneling powers, to help orchestrate a prison break. But beyond eating dirt and then explosively shooting it out of his butt, the Worm is also a former Vought Studios TV writer (he was replaced with AI) who opines about the challenge of writing a series finale that will make everyone happy.

“The Worm is basically the mouthpiece for the writers,” showrunner Eric Kripke tells Polygon. “He just completely expresses our fear and neurosis. I think it’s kind of useful in just a small little meta wink to the audience to let them know we’re nervous too. If nothing else, it was therapeutic.”

That fear is very real, according to Kripke, who worries that he’ll let down The Boys fans with season 5 and tarnish the entire show in the process.

“I will stay terrified until the final episode drops, and we see what people’s reaction is,” he says. “So many shows are retroactively judged on their finales. While it was really exciting and invigorating to do a final season – nobody is safe, and you can have not just big deaths, you can also have huge emotional swings that you just couldn’t do any other season – it’s also really terrifying because landing the plane is hard. You can really count on two hands the great series finales.”

[Ed. note: The rest of this article contains major spoilers for The Boys’ season 5 premiere]

The writers demonstrate how high those stakes are in the season 5 premiere when Homelander (Antony Starr) kills his former teammate A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) after the speedster helps break The Boys out of an internment camp. Kripke says he knew that A-Train was going to be the first major death of the season, but initially wanted to wait until episode 2.

“My writers convinced me by saying, ‘Look, you need to show is the final season dangerous or not? And if it’s really going to be dangerous, you have to do it right up top so then you realize that anyone is vulnerable,’ which I thought was a very strong argument.”

A-Train’s death also brings the show back to the beginning. The series opens with him running into a woman and killing her, demonstrating how evil and irresponsible the so-called hero is, and inspiring Hughie (Jack Quaid) to join The Boys in their quest to kill supes. This time he swerves to avoid hitting a woman and pays the price himself.

“We believed [A-Train is] faster than Homelander, so he can outrun Homelander. That means he had to mess up somehow so Homelander could catch him. It felt really wrong for him to trip or make a mistake,” Kripke said. “Someone in the writer’s room said, ‘Well, the first time we met him, he carelessly ran through a woman. So the last time we meet him, he should carefully avoid one and really show the bookends of how he’s changed as a character.’ It really just really underlines the human he’s grown into. And even though it cost him his life, he really went out as a hero.”

The Boys season 5 premieres April 8 on Prime Video.