What To Know
- The Boys star Jessie T. Usher breaks down A-Train’s shocking fate from the Season 5 finale.
- Plus, he teases how his onscreen ending sets the tone for the season moving forward.
The Boys‘ final season has kicked off with a bang, as the beginning of the end for Prime Video‘s superhero drama unfolds, bidding one of its longtime regulars adieu in the premiere. Fair warning: There are spoilers for The Boys Season 5 premiere ahead!
The episode, “Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite,” saw Homelander (Antony Starr) in total power, manipulating the highest ranks of government, which has begun rounding up Starlight sympathizers into “Freedom Camps,” among which Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) are being held.
While Starlight (Erin Moriarty), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Butcher (Karl Urban) work to devise a plan to get them free of the camps, A-Train, a.k.a. Reggie (Jessie T. Usher), finds himself collaborating with the vigilantes, fully turning his back on the greedy supes he once ran with. The problem? His absence is a loose thread Homelander can’t help but want to pick.
Prime Video
When A-Train steps in to save Hughie from Homelander’s laser vision, he shifts the target to himself, attempting to outrun the flying supe. Despite his inability to get away, A-Train lives up to his evolved status as he avoids running through an innocent civilian, tripping himself up for the safety of another, only to meet a fatal end when Homelander finally does catch him.
“I knew about it about a year before I got the pages,” Usher tells TV Insider about learning of A-Train’s death before he received the premiere script. When he finally did read the script, Usher recalls, “Turning the pages is like waiting on bated breath, you know what I mean? You’re just like, I know what’s coming, I know it’s coming. I just got to see how it’s gonna happen. I think the thing that sort of drew me in the most was like the conversations that A-Train was getting to have leading up to that moment.” As the actor puts it, “We were like finally peeling back all of these layers.”
Despite so many seasons of running scared from Homelander, both figuratively and literally, A-Train faced his fate with humor as he looked Homelander in the eyes. “He’s tired, he’s beat up, he’s hurt, he knows he’s gonna die, but he’s not afraid anymore,” Usher notes. “And that makes him so happy that even when he’s about to die, he just laughs, like a genuine laugh.”
And that laugh is the exact thing to trigger a narcissist like Homelander, as A-Train only serves to illustrate how pathetic he really is. As for how that sets the tone moving forward, Usher says, “Me and Antony talked about that moment a lot, about what that’s going to mean for Homelander and how that’s going to sort of sit in his mind… I hope that it keeps him up at night.”
After losing one major character in the first episode, the stakes have never been higher for The Boys. See what else Usher had to share in the full interview above, and let us know your thoughts on his surprising death in the comments section below.
The Boys, Season 5, Wednesdays, Prime Video