{"id":388974,"date":"2026-04-09T00:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T00:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388974\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T00:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T00:58:10","slug":"a-train-death-kimiko-talking-in-season-5-premiere-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/388974\/","title":{"rendered":"A-Train Death, Kimiko Talking in Season 5 Premiere Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the two-episode premiere of \u201cThe Boys<\/a>\u201d Season 5, now streaming on Prime Video.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe final season of \u201cThe Boys\u201d is kicking things off with a bang \u2014 and by killing off one of its original supes.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter flipping sides and defecting from Vought to help the Boys last season, A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) is murdered by Homelander (Antony Starr) in the closing moments of the Season 5 premiere. A-Train selflessly saves Hughie (Jack Quaid) during his battle with Homelander at Vought\u2019s \u201cFreedom Camp,\u201d then super-speeds away. However, he narrowly dodges a bystander during his dash and crashes in a forest. Homelander then catches up to the speedster and snaps his neck. It was a surprisingly heroic and full-circle ending for A-Train, who was introduced in the series premiere by killing Hughie\u2019s girlfriend Robin during a drunken, high-speed run \u2014 which turned out to be the catalyst for Hughie\u2019s revenge quest against Vought\u2019s supes.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeason 5 begins with Hughie, Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Mother\u2019s Milk (Laz Alonso) imprisoned in one of Vought\u2019s internment camps, with Homelander set to execute them. Annie (Erin Moriarty), Butcher (Karl Urban) and a now-talking Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) reunite to break into the camp and free them. However, Homelander is waiting at the camp, and a battle ensues. He\u2019s been rounding up anyone who\u2019s spoken out against him now that he essentially rules the country under martial law.<\/p>\n

\n\tHomelander\u2019s propaganda-spewing mouthpiece Ashley (Colby Minifie) has also graduated from Vought CEO to Vice President of the United States. They\u2019ve gutted most of the country\u2019s government organizations and rule with fear over fellow Vought supes The Deep (Chace Crawford) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell). Homelander is also aided by super-smart Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) as his lead strategist and Firecracker (Valorie Curry) with her pro-Vought talk show.<\/p>\n

\n\tEpisode 2 ramps things up further by bringing back the supe-killing virus introduced in the spinoff \u201cGen V.\u201d The virus could be the key to finally defeating Homelander, but it would also mean murdering every supe in the world. The Boys give it a test run by killing a new supe named Rockhard, a spoof of Marvel\u2019s The Thing, and wounding Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), whom Homelander awoke from cryostasis. The two-episode premiere ends with The Boys facing a tough moral decision about whether to weaponize the virus \u2014 and Homelander is down an ally (and father figure) with Soldier Boy hospitalized.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking with Variety, \u201cThe Boys\u201d showrunner Eric Kripke talks killing A-Train in the premiere, Fukuhara finally having speaking lines after playing mute Kimiko for four seasons and more.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasper Savage\/Prime Video<\/p>\n

\t\tWe say goodbye to A-Train at the end of Episode 1. Was his death always meant to be a full-circle moment that calls back to the series premiere?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe talked for a really long time about having A-Train hang around at least until the third episode. But the writers had a good point and said, \u201cEric, you keep saying nobody\u2019s safe: Put your money where your mouth is. We have to drop someone really important in the first episode, so people will go the rest of the season truly feeling like nobody is safe.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAnd they were right. A-Train had a really great redemption arc, and a lot of that is due to the job Jessie did. He made the character so nuanced, human and soulful. He\u2019s the villain who starts the entire story in motion and then ends his run by saving Hughie. The moment that I love the most is when he dodges out of the way of this woman, whereas he ran through Robin without thinking twice about it the very first time we saw him. Now in the last time we saw him, he saves this woman\u2019s life, because he has so much more concern for other people and their lives. It\u2019s just a really lovely signpost of what a hero he\u2019s become.<\/p>\n

\t\tAnother big surprise was hearing Karen Fukuhara finally speak as Kimiko. How did she feel after not having dialogue for the whole series?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tShe was excited. After having no dialogue for four whole seasons, to finally be able to actually speak was great. For the first time, we had to start wiring her with a microphone. That was exciting, but it also was a process, like, \u201cSo how does she sound exactly?\u201d It\u2019s unexpectedly challenging when you\u2019ve gotten a character so well-known and ingrained with the audience over four seasons, and now suddenly they\u2019re communicating in a completely different way. How do you feel that that\u2019s consistently Kimiko? It took a minute, honestly. Through trial and error, we had to figure out how she sounded. What was her vocabulary? What words would she use? We got to this place that, in hindsight was obvious, but it was finally asking, \u201cWhat does the audience think Kimiko\u2019s personality is?\u201d Well, sweet, deadly and doesn\u2019t take any shit.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think it was nerve-racking for her and me for this late in the game to try something so wildly new. But I think she did a fantastic job. My favorite thing about her is she has no filter because she would never need one. It makes you think about all the times she talked to Frenchie, what was she really saying? Because he\u2019s always translating her in a very polite way. She\u2019s probably saying the filthiest shit to him, and he\u2019s just \u201cUh-huh, uh-huh,\u201d and not translating it one-to-one. Now to finally hear from her unfiltered was really fun.<\/p>\n

\t\tI loved the Deep becoming a full-on manosphere podcast host. Were there any real-life podcasters that you based him on?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo one specifically, just overall the whole phenomenon of it. We always only half-jokingly say that the Deep is the Forrest Gump of bullshit entertainment trends. He manages to float from one bullshit, horrible corner of the entertainment business to another. He\u2019ll go from being a #MeToo asshole to being in this skeevy church to writing an autobiography about the skeevy church to capitalize on it to the manosphere. He\u2019s just a horrible person, but it\u2019s fun dialogue to write. Some of this shit they say, man, it blows me away: Basically, in effect, if you boil it all down, hanging out with women and having sex with them isn\u2019t manly. You just go through the looking glass, and it\u2019s just so crazy. I encourage all viewers to, when you\u2019re alone, do a Google search on perineum sunning and see how much the manosphere actually supports that. My favorite part of that commercial is if you look in very small text along the bottom, it says \u201cWarning: prolonged exposure may cause anal cancer.\u201d Our editor wrote that in, and it\u2019s so funny.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJasper Savage\/Prime<\/p>\n

\t\tThe reveal that Ashley now has a psychic, talking tumor on the back of her head immediately reminded me of Voldemort and Professor Quirrell in \u201cHarry Potter and the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone.\u201d Was that an inspiration at all for her weird new superpower?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo. I mean, when I was speaking with Stephan Fleet, our visual effects supervisor, we were trying to figure out how the hell do we do this? We started looking at some of the \u201cHarry Potter\u201d stuff, but it was not inspiration in the writers\u2019 room. It was more like, how do we give her the grossest possible power? The best powers are a metaphor for what that character is actually going through. She has this conscience deep down, and she keeps shoving it down, but it\u2019s there. It keeps bubbling up. We knew that was going to be her big conflict this season. Is she able to extinguish this little spark of morality inside of her in order to serve in this position? Well, let\u2019s literally give that conscience a face. Let\u2019s talk about her being very literally two-faced. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe inspiration more than anything, now that I think about it, was the mayor in \u201cThe Nightmare Before Christmas.\u201d We talked a lot about that character. It\u2019s a politician, and she\u2019s literally two-faced, but one face is actually really good, and then one face is her. It becomes this sort of buddy story. Can these two people come together? That was just a blast, and Colbie\u2019s ability to pull off physical comedy keeps getting crazier and crazier.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhere did the idea for the new supe Rockhard come from?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the things that the show does well is try to satirize superhero tropes. One trope that we hadn\u2019t done yet was the Thing, the giant, bulking, character made of stone. The reason we never touched it is because we can\u2019t afford to do it. They\u2019re these massive CG characters. We were trying to figure out a funny character that we could from the superhero world that we could do our irreverent spin on. One morning, I came in and I\u2019m like, \u201cLet\u2019s have him gain so much weight and be so huge that he\u2019s lost the ability to move. So all we really need are two eyes, like in a \u2018Scooby-Doo\u2019 painting moving around, that we could plug into this sculpture that we build and could pull off.\u201d Jessica Chou, who wrote the episode, came up with having that Stephen Hawking automated voice where that\u2019s the only way he can talk and he\u2019s so filthy and gross. It was just really such a strange character.<\/p>\n

\t\tWill this season set up next year\u2019s prequel \u201cVought Rising\u201d at all? Will fans need to have watched Season 5 to understand the new show?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are for sure references to \u201cVought Rising;\u201d a character from \u201cVought Rising\u201d shows up later in the season. But the goal was to have just enough to get people excited for \u201cVought Rising,\u201d but not mandatory viewing. You don\u2019t at all need to have seen \u201cThe Boys\u201d to appreciate \u201cVought Rising.\u201d It\u2019s its own story. We\u2019re trying really hard to strike a balance of each series being its own animal, and you don\u2019t have to do homework to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

\t\tWill this season plant any seeds for the Mexico-set spinoff that\u2019s also in the works?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re developing the script right now. Amazon read it, and we had a glowing notes call, which is really good news. There\u2019s still work to be done, but they seem up on it, which is great. Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer wrote a really funny, smart script. It takes place in Mexico City, so its focus is so different and unique than to the other shows in the VCU. It\u2019s a perspective that I don\u2019t have. It\u2019s this very specific Latin American perspective on superheroes and international politics, and their own national politics. It\u2019s such an interesting thing that none of the white dudes who write on this show could do, but Gareth has such an interesting and authentic spin on it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the two-episode premiere of \u201cThe Boys\u201d Season 5, now streaming on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,21945,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-388974","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-the-boys","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}