That Shocking Death On The Boys Season 5 Premiere Has Me Worried About What’s Next

When Eric Kripke said, “Nobody is safe,” for The Boys Season 5, I had a bad feeling.

Look, I know the whole deal with this franchise is the excessive gore and horrifying deaths.

However, the fact that this is the last season of The Boys changes the context.

After A-Train’s brutal death, my worst fears may come true: we may lose some of our favorite characters simply for shock value.

Even for a show as brutal as The Boys, killing off beloved characters for the sake of killing off characters is a bad move.

Character Development Down The Drain

Call me sentimental, but I don’t want to see characters I’m invested in die.

I get that the violent nature of The Boys is that not all characters will survive.

But that A-Train death really upset me because we’ve spent five seasons watching him grow as a character just to watch him be the inaugural kill of the season.

We’ve seen quite a few major characters die along the way, such as Victoria Neuman.

But none of them has been one of the heroes whose journey we’ve been following.

A-Train has had one of the best character arcs, growing from an asshole in the series premiere to a true hero by the end of his life.

However, we barely even get to sit with his death and reflect on his arc.

His noble death, saving his friends from the internment camp, felt more like a play for shock value than for character development.

If this pattern continues for other characters, I’m extremely worried.

We’ve invested hours and hours of our lives in these major characters; I think we deserve to see their deaths mean a little more than just a gasp.

Insignificant Deaths

When a character as major as A-Train dies, you’d think that would make a large impact on the story.

Yet after his death, the rest of the characters don’t really even get to grieve or sit with his death.

Arguably, they’re working against the clock to develop the virus to kill Homelander.

After everything that A-Train has done for The Boys, I honestly thought that they’d mourn him a little more.

I guess since the show really needs to move the story along, it doesn’t linger much on the deaths.

But if this pattern keeps repeating with the countless number of deaths that Kripke promised us, then every death might as well be insignificant.

Again, this goes against all of the time and energy we’ve invested in the show.

Treating major character deaths just as shock-value for the sake of making an explosive last season also just feels like a low-effort way of making the story memorable.

This sentiment is definitely shaping up to be true, as I feel like most of the plot points aren’t moving the story along but rather pointing to who’s going to die next.

For such a widely-popular show, I really thought that The Boys would have put a little more thought into carelessly slaughtering beloved characters.

The whole point of The Boys is that these characters are fighting against all odds, even though it’s stupid to have hope.

Now, Kripke is trying to tell viewers not to hold on to the hope that made these characters worth rooting for in the first place.

What do you think about shock-value deaths in the upcoming The Boys season? Are you still invested in the show?

Make sure to check out our weekly reviews of The Boys Season 5!

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