There’s also some stuff with Starlight once again wondering what the point of saving everyone is. Mother’s Milk gives her some personal backstory that encourages her to keep going. Elsewhere, Homelander kills the president and cuts The Deep loose with a casual “wishing you all the best.” As the ocean now considers him persona non grata, he has nothing left and nowhere to go. Chace Crawford deftly plays out the character’s pathetic situation. It says something that, more than any other character in the show, I’m only really intrigued to find out how this all ends for the little weasel. I do hope it’s as funny and tragic as he deserves.
There are some other quality moments dotted around the episode. Daveed Diggs’s Oh-Father gets a catchy musical number. It would have been a crime to let him get to the finale without one. Homelander’s war on nut milk is also particularly amusing, while the Vought workprint of Homelander meeting Jesus and becoming god is hilarious, as is the Western Supe show that The Worm is trying to wrap up with Taylor Sheridan AI. But this episode is really about Frenchie and Kimiko putting their lives on the line in one final Hail Mary.
However you feel about the actor who plays Frenchie on The Boys, Tomer Capone, his character has been on the show since the beginning, and in this penultimate episode, he dies. I should feel at least a little sad about that, but I don’t. I’ve thought long and hard about why. From a narrative standpoint, I think my lack of Frenchie death upset is down to the show not having much interest in him outside of his romance with Kimiko recently, aside from a dalliance with Colin in season 4, and the fact that the character himself has been crystal clear about who he is and why he’s there.
Since the start, Frenchie has largely been around to facilitate Butcher’s plans and to love Kimiko, which is a shame because his character was once unpicked to reveal a horrifying history of abuse and a will to survive that drew him into these, and somehow much worse, circles. Frenchie was complex, but his death wasn’t. He sacrificed himself to shield a recovering Kimiko, eventually dying in her arms. He seemed happy to go out like that after everything that’s gone down, and it’s as fitting an end for him as any.
But with just one episode to go, the show also seems happy to spin its wheels around Frenchie’s death by making sure we know who these characters are deep down inside. The problem with that is that we already know. They wrestle with their decisions and their rebellion. They question their fragile allegiance with Butcher or Homelander. They do what a penultimate episode requires of them. They begin to fall in line, ready for the final showdown, spurred on by pep talks, abandonment, sheer delusion, and hopes that this will all end soon.
One senses that the show is just as keen for this to all be over as we are. The countdown begins with this au revoir, a first death in the core group to prove the situation is serious. There will surely be more to come next week.
