Warning: This interview spoils a key event from “The Boys” Season 5, Episode 7, now streaming on Prime Video.
“The Boys” said “au revoir!” to another major character in its penultimate episode, setting the stage for next week’s highly anticipated series finale.
The show’s latest loss came in the form of a heroic sacrifice. Determined to keep Homelander from finding Sage, Frenchie provided the perfect distraction, trapping himself and Homelander in the uranium chamber. It also gave Frenchie one last chance to taunt his Nazi nemesis — even if it did result in his bloody demise at Homelander’s hands.
Homelander took off after dealing with Frenchie, leaving Kimiko to discover her lover bleeding out on the floor of the lab. “Thank you for saving us — thank you for saving me,” she told Frenchie in his final moments, though he was quick to correct her: “No, you saved me.” We were then left with the devastating image of Kimiko holding a dying Frenchie in her arms as she pleaded, “Please don’t leave me.”
So, what was the reason behind a day-one character like Frenchie getting taken out of the race right before reaching the finish line? As showrunner Eric Kripke explains to TVLine, “I really felt strongly that the Boys as a unit can’t make it to the end without a major sacrifice. It’s just not how reality works. There’s no victory without terrible sacrifice and terrible loss, and I think people know that in their bones.”
Frenchie’s death ‘propels Kimiko to where she needs to be’ in The Boys series finale
And if you’d like someone to blame other than “The Boys” showrunner, feel free to direct your anger towards… JRR Tolkein, apparently.
“When a win comes too easily, it ultimately just doesn’t feel truthful to me,” Eric Kripke tells TVLine, adding that “‘The Lord of the Rings’ movies, and the books obviously too, are a master class in that. I like feeling those hard-won victories. That always made such an impression on me, so I wanted any win the guys may have in [the series finale] to feel really hard-won.”
Beyond making the Boys’ battle feel more hard-won, Frenchie’s death serves multiple purposes as we head into the finale, Kripke says.
“Frenchie and Kimiko’s relationship, in so many ways, is the sentimental heart of the Boys and of the season,” Kripke tells TVLine. “I knew that it would really be a heartbreaker, but it also propels Kimiko to where she needs to be in the next episode. For a lot of story reasons, and a lot of thematic reasons, I think it had to happen.”
Were you sad to see Frenchie go? Did you see his death coming? And what are your predictions for next week’s series finale? Drop a comment with your thoughts below.
