The Only Members Of The Boys Who Have Never Killed A Supe
I recently rewatched all four seasons of The Boys and Season 1 of Gen V and it occurred to me—considering how powerful and near-indestructible the supes are initially portrayed in the series—just how many supes die in the show. So, I started keeping track of certain things like how many supes died, how they died, and who killed them. Along the way, among other things, it surprised me to learn there are only two members of The Boys we have yet to see take out a supe: Frenchie (Tomer Capone) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso).
A Few Caveats
To be clear, before the nitpickers start nitpicking, there are a few caveats to add here.
Caveat #1: When I say neither Frenchie nor Mother’s Milk have killed a supe, I mean during the events of The Boys. Actually, considering Frenchie is recruited specifically because of his expertise in chemically countering supe abilities, it’s almost guaranteed he buried a supe or two before The Boys.
Caveat #2: I’m not counting anything in the animated spinoff The Boys Presents: Diabolical, since those stories aren’t canonical to the main series.
Caveat #3: I’m only counting the characters who pulled the proverbial trigger, i.e. some may take issue with the fact that, for example, I am only counting Hughie (Jack Quaid) as the killer of Translucent (Alex Hassell) in Season 1’s “Cherry” even though Frenchie develops the method to take him out. Hughie was the one who activated the bomb, so I’m counting him as the lone killer of Translucent. Sue me.
Caveat #4: Some may also take issue with the fact that I’m not counting the death of Rob Benedict’s Splinter toward anyone in The Boys but Butcher (Karl Urban) in Season 4’s “Life Among the Septics.
Like Marvel’s Madrox the Multiple Man, Splinter has the ability to create copies of himself, and while Frenchie and Mother’s Milk take out some of those copies, it’s Butcher who kills Splinter Prime. Once again, if you have a problem with me only counting Butcher for this, please consult a lawyer.
Butcher
Beyond Frenchie and M.M., everyone else in The Boys has snuffed at least one supe. If you’re curious about everyone else’s scores, I’m only too happy to provide since I bothered doing the somewhat twisted task of keeping a record.
Surprising no one, Billy Butcher has killed 6 supes on screen, which is more supes killed than by anyone else in The Boys (the team, though not the show—the character who’s killed more supes than anyone else in the show is… for another article).
He starts off rather slow in The Boys Season 1—the season with the smallest supe body count overall—by beating Mesmer (Haley Joel Osment) to death in an airport bathroom.
Season 2 boasts a much higher body count and “The Bloody Doors Off” is, fittingly, a particularly bloody episode for supes. The Boys infiltrate the Sage Grove Center filled with unstable supes being experimented upon. After one unnamed patient attacks Butcher, Hughie, and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) with a telekinetic blast, Butcher puts him down with a few bullets to the chest.
Butcher gets the help of some very Homelander-like super powers in The Boys Season 3, and with them, in “The Only Man in the Sky,” he murders Soldier Boy’s old sidekick Gunpowder (Joel Gagne).
But Butcher’s most homicidal era is without a doubt the most recent one, Season 4 of The Boys, when he makes half his kills in the series so far.
There’s his aforementioned crowbar killing of Splinter in “Life Among the Septics,” the tentacle powers he doesn’t know about yet save him by ripping Ezekiel (Shaun Benson) to pieces in “Wisdom of the Ages,” and he uses those same tentacles to murder the head-popping Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) in “Assassination Run,” the Season 4 finale.
Hughie
Believe it or not, when it comes to supe kills, Hughie takes the #2 spot in the eponymous team of The Boys with 2 kills. But it’s the second kill that really hurts.
Hughie has the honor of making the very first supe kill in The Boys when he detonates the bomb inside Translucent in “Cherry.”
His second kill is one I think we can all agree he didn’t want to make. In Season 4’s “Beware of the Jabberwock, My Son,” Hughie is forced to euthanize his own father (Simon Pegg).
When the older Hugh is dying after a severe stroke, Hughie initially plans to save him by injecting Compound V into his system. Knowing something will go wrong, Hughie changes his mind, but his mother Daphne (Rosemarie DeWitt) uses the V on her ex-husband when Hughie is elsewhere.
Hughie’s dad is okay for a while, but eventually some emerging dementia combined with his new powers lead to unintended deaths in the hospital. Once Hughie and Daphne manage to calm him down, all three agree euthanasia is the only solution.
Kimiko
Surprisingly, in spite of all the people we’ve seen Karen Fukuhara’s Kimiko rip apart in The Boys, only one of them is a supe.
In Season 2’s “The Bloody Doors Off,” an unnamed escaped supe patient with the ability to vomit corrosive acid—like Bill Skarsgård’s Zeitgeist in Deadpool 2—tackles Frenchie. Kimiko knocks the supe off her friend and stomps on the patient’s stomach.
It’s the stomp that does it. The foot to the stomach causes the unnamed supe to vomit acid all over his own face, neck, and torso, which apparently are not impervious to his abilities. Good night, Zeitgeist-a-la-The-Boys.
Starlight
Starlight hasn’t killed as many normies as Kimiko in The Boys, but her supe kill count is the same. In the Season 4 finale, “Assassination Run,” she takes out the supe shapeshifter who stole her likeness in hopes of assassinating the newly minted President Robert Singer (Jim Beaver). The shifter’s plans are foiled, and Starlight strangles her until she stops breathing.
