The Boys Season 5 is truly living up to the task of providing a thrilling final season to one of TV’s biggest hit shows. Although “living” might be the wrong word to use in this case. Fan expectations were met when The Boys packed at least one major character death into the Season 5 Premiere, even though it may not have been the death many predicted. Even fans of the original The Boys comic series were thrown off by the fact that this particular death was such a big departure from the source material.
That said, Eric Kripke and the cast and crew of The Boys did make this character’s end fittingly epic, and arguably created a much better arc than the comic ever did. Let’s look at both versions and break down the outcomes; obviously, that will require MAJOR SPOILERS for The Boys TV show and comic series!
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In the Season 5 Premiere, “Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite”, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) reunites with Starlight (Erin Moriarity), Kimiko (Karen Kukuhara) and other allies to free Hughie (Jack Quaid), M.M. (Laz Alonso), and Frenchie (Tomer Capone) from a Vought internment camp, before Homelander (Antony Starr) has them killed. Homelander knows about the jailbreak and sets his own trap, waiting at the camp and ambushing Butcher and his team.
Hughie is nearly killed by Homelander, but is saved at the last second by A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), who speeds onto the battlefield after initially refusing to join the fight. A-Train gives The Boys time to escape by having Homelander chase him; the speedster might’ve gotten away, but an innocent woman crosses the road in his path, and A-Train chooses to wipe out and go crashing into the woods, rather than hurt her. Homelander catches him and sadistically tries to torture him, but A-Train laughs in his face, so Homelander just snaps his neck. A-Train’s death and funeral are used as a Vought propaganda tool in Episode 2, as Homelander publicly blames Starlight and her movement for the supposed assassination.
Some of the character beats of A-Train remain the same between comic and TV show (super-speed, arrogance, drug dependency); however, the comic version of the character (like so many others) was a much more revolting and one-dimensional evil jerk. He killed Hughie’s girlfriend at the start of the series (like in the TV show), but was also depicted as the most aggressive and perverse member of The Seven, who helped humiliate and assault Starlighter when she joined the team, and repeatedly tried to violate and harass her again, over the course of the series.
All of that is important to note, contextually, as it helps explain why, when Billy Butcher eventually kidnaps A-Train, Hughie is the one who ultimately kills him. After Butcher has A-Train subdubbed on a rooftop, Hughie (who has superpowers from a Compound V injection) ends up literally kicking A-Train’s head off in a rage. This is only after Butcher manipulates him, playing a recording of The Seven laughing off A-Train killing Hughie’s old girlfriend, Robin, then a second recording of A-Train, Homelander, and others, picking Starlight as their recruit explicitly for the purpose of using and abusing her in degrading ways.
The Boys TV series may be raucous and raunchy, but it has certainly added more dramatic layers to its major characters than the Garth Ennis (Preacher) and Darick Robertson comic series ever did. In fact, DC couldn’t stomach the series for more than six issues, leaving indie publisher Dynamite to invest in the creators’ vision and see it through. A-Train is just one example of a character that didn’t do much on the page besides horrify fans about what someone like Barry Allen/The Flash would be like as a total ego-maniacal jerk.
Jessie T. Usher started out on The Boys playing up the narcissism and broken moral compass inside of A-Train, but Season 1 took a sharp diverging path from the comics when Hughie (Jack Quaid) saved A-Train from a heart attack caused by speedster powers. That act upset the cliche revenge storyline that drove The Boys comic and TV show (up to that point); in subsequent seasons, A-Train had to confront his own loss of power, ego, and popularity privilege as a member of The Seven, while also facing his own hard past, and the strained bonds with the family he disappointed by selling out. Even when The Boys was dragging in later seasons, A-Train’s slow defection and eventual escape from Vought remained one of the more thrilling subplots of the show.
A-Train’s death was also more profound than one would expect from a show like The Boys. He died saving Hughie and sacrificing himself to avoid killing an innocent woman in his path: character arcs don’t get more poetically circular than that. Getting to laugh in Homelander’s face was just a cherry on top.
We’ll miss the TV version of A-Train; I haven’t missed the comic version for a single day. The Boys Final Season is streaming on Prime Video. Discuss it with us on the ComicBook Forum!
