Major spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet streamed The Boys’ latest episode via Amazon Prime subscription, so be warned!
The past few weeks of The Boys have been pretty mirthful, all things considered, based largely on the extremely bloody Supernatural reunion, followed by that hilarious blooper reel. It’s hard not to celebrate all the filthiest things Soldier Boy has said, know what I mean? But the satirical series’ penultimate episode, “The Frenchman, The Female, and The Mother’s Milk,” was no laughing matter. (Some of it was.) The installment finally took out one of the core protagonists we’ve been following since the beginning, with Tomer Capone’s Frenchie getting a hero’s death.
I fully understand the necessity of killing off at least one of the titular Boys before the endgame, so that the finale’s stakes can feel that much bigger and more dangerous, which creator Eric Kripke spoke to by way of a Lord of the Rings comparison. But while I’m fine with the death itself, I’m legitimately confused and bothered by the way it was handled in the episode.
Erik Kripke's LOTR-Infused Explanation For Frenchie's Death
As viewers witnessed, Frenchie put himself in Homelander’s deadly path as a way of distracting the would-be God from locating Sister Sage and Kimiko cramped together inside a vent shaft within Fort Harmony. Could Frenchie have found a hiding place if he was moving faster? Probably. But he instead stayed mobile within the uranium testing chamber, and drew Homelander’s attention and ire at just the right moment, even going so far as to open the radiation floodgates as a final Supe-shaming offense.
Alas, that earned him not only some gnarly scars and burning, but also a fatal blow to the midsection from the V1-infused maniac. The episode then delivered a highly dramatic final conversation and smooch between Frenchie and Kimiko before he passed on, which was almost emotional enough to make one forget that they're only barely an actual couple. Speaking to TV Line, Eric Kripke explained the need for a big death, saying:
There's no victory without terrible sacrifice and terrible loss, and I think people know that in their bones. . . . When a win comes too easily, it ultimately just doesn't feel truthful to me. 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.
Eric Kripke
In a vacuum, everything Kripke says there is true. To the point where TV viewers are savvy enough to know that second-to-last episodes are where a lot of series deliver the most damaging blows, so that final episodes can wrap stories up to pay off whatever twists and deaths came before. So I'm perfectly fine with the general idea that Frenchie had to die. But I actually wanted to believe it.
Why Frenchie's Death Still Felt Off To Me
In the first place, I don't even understand the ends to the means of Frenchie distracting Homelander. If Kimiko and Sage were on the run, and the point was to keep the Supe's attention for as long as possible to put more distance between him and the women, that would track. But they're not going anywhere, so was Frenchie's plan just to lie and prolong the situation hoping that Homelander would forget what he's doing there?
I mean, it all works, but why in the world would Homelander believe Frenchie's claims about Kimiko already gaining Soldier Boy's power? Why would the dude even still be at the Fort if they were successful? There's also no reason why Homelander would immediately fly off after wounding Frenchie instead of double-checking the vent that he was so intrigued by just minutes prior. I guess it's because his ego was dinged, but still.
Frenchie's death sequence also plays directly into Homelander's super-heightened senses, as he used his X-ray vision and enhanced hearing while within Fort Harmony. But here's the thing: Frenchie got the Supe's immediately attention by barely tapping the wall (or door?) in front of him. But why wouldn't Homelander have heard Frenchie breathing, or even his heartbeat? As well, wouldn't he have heard the same involuntary sounds from Sage and Kimiko? That vent was hardly soundproof.
Even beyond all that, I am astounded that Homelander chose to kill Frenchie in a way where it wasn't even obvious what happened to him. Which is total bullsh-t, since Homelander doesn't merely leave victims on the verge of death. He smashes skulls to goop with his boots, lasers opposers' bodies into pieces, and impales skulls with sculptures. He gives the practical effects team a lot of great material to work with, so to speak, so there's no way he would have just given Frenchie a pretty bad belly cut without punching a fist through the protagonist's torso.
I'm sure all of my concerns can be explained away quickly enough by Eric Kripke or someone else from the creative team, and I'd probably be willing to buy it, since I fully want to go into the series finale with optimism and enthusiasm. But it reminded me too much of the seemingly avoidable way A-Train died in the Season 5 premiere, so I can only hope that the final episode takes more justifiable strides in offing its established leads.
The Boys' final episode is set to hit Prime Video on Wednesday, May 20.
