{"id":572260,"date":"2026-04-08T18:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T18:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572260\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T18:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T18:14:08","slug":"why-a-train-was-killed-off-in-season-5-premiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/572260\/","title":{"rendered":"Why A-Train Was Killed Off in Season 5 Premiere"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t[This story contains a MAJOR spoiler from Prime Video\u2019s The Boys<\/a> season five premiere, \u201cFifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite.\u201d]<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Boys kicked off its final season with a major character death, as one of The Seven was mercilessly murdered by Homelander.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the first episode of season five, A-Train a.k.a. Reggie Franklin (Jessie T. Usher) was killed off in the episode\u2019s final minutes. Homelander chased down the Fastest Man Alive after A-Train, having newly grown a conscience, swerved to avoid killing an innocent bystander \u2014 a callback to when the character accidentally killed Hughie\u2019s (Jack Quaid) girlfriend in the series premiere. Furious with A-Train\u2019s repeated betrayals, Homelander executed his formerly close colleague.<\/p>\n

\n\tSeries creator Eric Kripke<\/a> has previously said that the final season would have a real death count, and we asked why A-Train had to be the first to go. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was initially resistant to killing him off that early,\u201d Kripke tells The Hollywood Reporter. \u201cIt was a little scary to kill him off so soon. We had actually broken out [an alternate storyline] that was like: Where is he now, what is he doing, and how can he help The Boys? \u2014 all that stuff was in process, so it\u2019s not like we didn\u2019t have it. We knew that he was going to be the first big death. At the time, I think we were thinking maybe episode three.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd it was the writers who really campaigned for it \u2014 it\u2019s their fault,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey campaigned. They were like, \u2018You keep saying that nobody\u2019s safe, and that it\u2019s going to be a season where anything can happen at any time. So with all due respect, put your fucking money where your mouth and show that you\u2019re willing to drop a major character in the first episode. Because if you do that, then for the rest of the season, no one is going to feel safe.\u2019 And I thought it was a winning argument.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo some of the storylines we were talking about \u2014 like reuniting with his brother and really choosing to be a hero after starting out as kind of Han Solo character \u2014 were this three-episode arc, and we did the greatest hits version to get it down to an appropriate sendoff in the premiere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPreviously, Kripke spoke to THR about the new season\u2019s<\/a> unsettling political similarities with our current moment, and his anxiety about landing the show\u2019s final episode.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[This story contains a MAJOR spoiler from Prime Video\u2019s The Boys season five premiere, \u201cFifteen Inches of Sheer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,94196,30632],"class_list":{"0":"post-572260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-eric-kripke","10":"tag-the-boys"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}