Eric Kripke, the showrunner of "The Boys," is renowned for crafting scenes that are seemingly unimaginable. Take the prosthetic whale in season 2, for instance. However, he admits to having reservations about killing off the speedster A-Train, portrayed by Jessie T. Usher, in season 5. This shocking twist occurred at the beginning of the final season, at the hands of Homelander himself, who had been searching for him for betraying him.
"I was initially hesitant to kill him off so early," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was a bit scary to end his character so soon." Kripke explained that his hesitation stemmed from a separate storyline he was developing for A-Train. "We had actually broken out an alternate storyline that was like, 'Where is he now? What is he doing? And how can he help The Boys?' – all that stuff was in process. We knew that he was going to be the first major death, but at the time, we were thinking maybe episode three."
However, the writers of "The Boys" were not satisfied with this plan and pushed Kripke to stick to what has been his powerful tool on the show: shock value. "And it was the writers who really campaigned for it – it's their fault. They campaigned. They were like, ‘You keep saying that nobody’s safe and that it’s going to be a season where anything can happen at any time.’ He continued, "So with all due respect, put your fucking money where your mouth is and show that you’re willing to drop a major character in the first episode. Because if you do that, then for the rest of the season, no one is going to feel safe.' And I thought it was a winning argument."
The upcoming final season episode 3 of "The Boys" will drop on April 15.
