The Boys Boss Talks ‘Wrenching’ Hughie Story, Ryan’s Dark Turn and Why Gen V Supes Aren’t in The Seven
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 5. Proceed at your own risk!
The Boys, this week, presented viewers with two very different father-son storylines.
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After being injected with V, Hugh Campbell Sr. emerged from his coma a new man — in ways both good and then very, very bad. At first, Hugh seemed to have made a miraculous recovery, but he soon found himself confused and forgetful, phasing through hospital walls and tearing through patients. In the midst of the bloodshed, Hugh became angry at his ex-wife for abandoning their family and started to come after her. Hughie stepped in to protect his mother by appealing to his father, recounting a childhood memory to try to bring Hugh back to himself. After Hughie told his dad that he’s his hero, the two broke down.
Faced with the prospect of Hugh being locked up and confused forever or killing even more innocent people, Hughie injected his dad with a drug. Then Hughie, his mother and his father daydreamed about a family trip to Paris as Hugh passed.
On the other end of the father-son spectrum, Ryan confessed that he wants to help people, for real, so Homelander encouraged him to help Bonnie the PA, who was being sexually harassed by Adam the director. But in twisted Homelander fashion, his idea of help involved Ryan ordering Adam to get on his knees while Bonnie repeatedly slapped him. In a disturbing turn of events, Ryan’s little smile as he watched suggested that maybe he’s more like his father than he thinks.
Below, showrunner Eric Kripke breaks down those father-son moments and this week’s visit from Gen V’s Cate (Maddie Phillips) and Sam (Asa Germann), who appeared at the V52 Expo to introduce their body-swap movie, before accepting Homelander’s rallying cry for supes to become “wrathful gods.”
TVLINE | The storyline with Hughie and his dad this week is so heartbreaking and not just because of what Hughie has to do, but also because in this world of extreme circumstances and powers, it really evoked people who struggle with dementia for me. Can you talk about crafting this storyline and why you decided to do this to poor Hughie Sr. and Jr.?
It’s a heartbreaker, but it’s also something that a lot of people have to face, and there’s a moment [when] our parents take care of us [transitions] to we start taking care of our parents. That’s very, very universal. Most people are going to have to face it one way or another. For Hughie, his story this season, in so many ways, is about him really growing up. He’s always sort of been like the young kid on the team, and I’d say his story this season makes him mature the most out of any character. So I think dealing with an ill parent, dealing with a parent that has, in effect, a version of superpowered dementia was both honest and wrenching and what we needed for him to really go from being a boy to being a full adult man.
TVLINE | When you saw the dailies, though, and those emotional performances, did you have any regrets about killing off Hugh Sr.?
I mean, I knew Simon Pegg was a really good actor. It’s not like he’s surprised me with how brilliant he was in that scene. But no, it was time. I’ll miss Simon’s character on the show, and Simon is just such a delight every time, and we’ve become friends through this experience, and so I just love the guy. But I think that’s what Hughie needed as a character, and I think it was time to say goodbye to Hugh Sr.
TVLINE | We got a bit of a Gen V/Boys crossover in this episode. Why did you decide to bring in Sam and Cate, specifically? And what can we infer from what we see of them in this world about what’s happening in their world?
Like everything in the world of the show, Vought tends to reward you when you do horrible, villainous things, and so, Sam and Cate, coming off the events of the Gen V finale, are regarded as the heroes, and they’re given this dumb teen comedy, and they’re given a new level of fame, whereas the real heroes of that finale are languishing in some God-knows-where prison. It’s how real heroes are usually unknown, and it’s a thankless job being a hero, whereas anyone who is put up as a hero is usually rarely one. That’s kind of in the zone of the universe.
And as established in Gen V, Cate really doesn’t like humans, for legitimate reasons that were explored in that show. So when Homelander is pitching supe supremacy, she is right at the front of the line, ready to drink the Kool-Aid. So it seemed like the episode where Homelander was starting to draw like-minded superheroes closer to him, it made sense that Cate and Sam would be two of them. I think Sam has a conscience, and he’s a lot more torn about it. But again, as established in Gen V, I think Cate has a habit of touching and sort of pushing him to feel nothing.
TVLINE | There was some speculation after the Gen V finale that maybe somebody from that show would join The Seven. Obviously, that didn’t happen. You have Firecracker and Sister Sage, but there is one empty spot. Was that something you ever considered doing, having somebody from Gen V come in to fill that spot?
Not really. To me, that starts to become like such a crossover and so major to the story that it sort of states that people need to watch Gen V to understand who that character was. I want to try to avoid that, if I can, of making the watching of both shows start to feel like homework. If you want to watch Gen V, great! If you don’t want to watch it, great. To me, making a main character of that show become a main character on this show feels like maybe a step too far.
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TVLINE | Ryan really seemed to enjoy doling out Homelander’s version of help/punishment with Bonnie and Adam. Is he now truly his father’s son?
I think the light and dark in Ryan is always at war with each other. I think what Homelander did this episode that was pretty deviously brilliant is he used altruism to start to walk Ryan down a darker path. Bonnie, that poor PA, really did need rescuing, just not in the way that Homelander encouraged Ryan to do it. He’s, I think, seducing Ryan by letting Ryan do actually helpful things, but at the same time treating humans as objects. I think Ryan, in this episode, has taken a step towards the dark side, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t take a step back towards the light side.
The Boys fans, how destroyed were you by the Hugh/Hughie storyline? Grade the episode, then hit the comments!
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