Who Died (and Who Lived) in The Boys Finale

Once The Boys breach The White House, Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) lure the preacher Oh Father away from Butcher with a pretty good Butcher impersonation. And while he gets a few good licks in thanks to his sonic scream, Chekhov’s Ball Gag comes into play.

Earlier in the episode, over wine and dinner, President Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) gifted her husband, Oh Father, a ball gag so strong he won’t be able to break it with his scream. So while Oh Father approaches Hughie and is about to blast him to smithereens, MM jumps behind the Supe and puts the ball gag on. The sonic scream blows back into Oh Father, making his head explode. Whoops, maybe not such a great present after all, Ashley!

The Deep (Chace Crawford)

Status: Dead

While MM and Hughie are fighting Oh Father, and Butcher and Kimiko take on Homelander in the Oval Office, Annie is fighting The Deep on the beach. She even tries to reason with the aquatic Supe, telling him to “take some responsibility for yourself,” to which The Deep yells a very Luke to Darth Vader “Nooooo!”

Instead, they fight, and Annie knocks The Deep into the ocean. Which normally would be a miscalculation on her part, except in last week’s episode, Xander (Samuel L. Jackson) told The Deep that if he put one tiny toe in the water, he would die for his role in the oil pipeline fish holocaust that led to the death of 1.4 billion fish. And sure enough, they come for him, and take him out not just for March 15 (the day of the fish holocaust), but specifically for Ambrosius (Tilda Swinton).

If you don’t recall, though the “previously on” helps here, Ambrosius was The Deep’s octopus lover, whom he jilted, betrayed, and ultimately killed. “Say her name,” shout the fish as they surround him, with an enormous octopus tentacle piercing the back of The Deep’s head, ripping his jaw off and killing him.

“Huh,” says Annie, confused as she watches him die.

Frenchie (Tomer Capone)

Status: Still Dead

Though he died distracting Homelander in last week’s episode, everyone’s favorite fighting Frenchman returns for one last scare this week. While Homelander’s son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) returns to help hold back Homelander, and Butcher holds the baddie from the other side, Kimiko finds herself unable to generate the rage she needs to make the Compound V frying blast.

That’s when Frenchie returns in a vision Kimiko has. She explains she’s not angry, just sad. To which Ghost Frenchie answers, “Rage is not what makes you strong. It has never been mon coeur… It has always been yours.”

In case you don’t speak Frenchie, first of all, he’s dead and this is all in Kimiko’s head; there are no ghosts, and no Supe manipulation going on here. Just a good ol’ pep talk from the imaginary Frenchie who lives in Kimiko’s mind. And second, he’s telling her that he’s not the one with the heart, she is… Specifically working against what Sage told her earlier in the episode.

In any case, before we get too far afield: Frenchie’s dead and loving it.

Homelander (Antony Starr)

Status: So Very Dead, Like, 100% Dead

In one of the most satisfying death scenes ever filmed, Kimiko does blast Homelander, Butcher and Ryan (more on the latter two in a second), taking away their powers. Homelander tries to use his heat vision, but can’t. Then he tries to fly but instead does little bunny hops.

Smiling, Butcher proceeds to beat the crap out of the now completely human Homelander, until he’s bleeding and crying on the floor of the Oval Office while the entire world watches on a TV feed. He begs Butcher to spare his life. But, of course, Butcher only wants justice for his wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), who was raped by Homelander and impregnated with Ryan, essentially motivating the events of the entire series.

So Butcher does what any man in his right mind would do: shoves a crowbar through Homelander’s head, and then pries the top of his head off, spilling his brains all over the President’s office. And yeah, there’s no coming back from this. It’s the ultimate humiliation for a Supe who previously obliterated the scant self-esteem of The Deep earlier in the hour for being, in his eyes, less than nothing. Now, Homelander is nothing, as well, a human who has completely debased himself in the eyes of the world. Not a god, not a man; just a worm (no offense to the talented comedy writer and director Worm played by Ely Henry, who does not appear in this episode).

Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie)

Status: Alive

After stepping up and saving The Boys from a trap in the White House, Ashley has reunited with the psychic Back Ashley (aka the mutant growth on the back of her head). She stops short of helping them get to where Homelander is, and instead gives vague directions while getting herself to safety. When Homelander is dead, Ashley does her media thing, lying during a press briefing that Homelander went rogue and a group of individuals working at her directive took him down. In addition, she definitively states she is not quitting her job as President…

…Which we then smash cut to a news report that Ashley was unanimously impeached and immediately removed from office. “So ends the scandal-plagued tenure of America’s first female President,” intones the reporter, adding insult to injury.

While we don’t find out what’s next for Ashley, there are some options for her if she wants to return to her old job at Vought, which we’ll get to in a second.

Terror

Status: Dead

So sorry, did you order the punch in the gut? You may notice that after Homelander is killed there are still 20 minutes left in the episode, never a good sign. And the bad times begin with Butcher getting told off by Ryan, who rejects his offer to run away together because Butcher still isn’t a good man.

Saddened, Butcher heads to his room to talk to his beloved bulldog Terror… But Terror is dead. Now, in the comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, a character called Jack From Jupiter kills Terror, ending a tentative truce between The Boys and The Seven and beginning the comic book series’ endgame. In the show, Terror almost died eating chocolate a few episodes back, but there was no chocolate eating going on in this episode.

Instead, Terror just died, likely of natural causes or old age. It’s enough to drive Butcher to go scorched earth for real by using the Supe virus. But as for Terror, it seems like he was just an old dog whose time had come.

Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito)

Status: Alive

While The Boys continue to chill out after their victory over Homelander, one hiccup arrives in the form of Stan Edgar, who has returned to his old office as interim CEO of Vought. Stan’s speech on TV is the usual mix of pretending to be disturbed about recent events and promising the company will have a renewed focus going forward. But also, this is exactly what Stan told Mother’s Milk earlier this season, that even if they beat Homelander, or release the Supe virus… Well, the machine must still be fed, and companies must still grow.

The spice must flow, and Stan Edgar is back in charge of Vought to figure out what the next iteration of Homelander, Supes, maybe even his own Supe virus looks like. Basically: the neverending fight continues.

And to loop back to what we said earlier, depending on how things continue in the VCU, perhaps there’s a place for Ashley Barrett, by Stan’s side?

Billy Butcher (Karl Urban)

Status: Dead

In a surprising twist, Billy Butcher does not slowly and painfully die of the cancer that was previously wracking his body… Perhaps the Compound V that gave him super-cancer, followed by Kimiko’s irradiation, cured him? Instead, Hughie kills him.

Or to explain this a little better, Butcher takes the Supe virus to Vought Tower, and puts it into the sprinkler system – a plan he hatched with Frenchie. Once the office opens for the day, he’ll press a trigger and release the virus, spreading it through the building and then the world in a matter of days. That’s game over for all Supes, everywhere.

After Hughie unsuccessfully tries to convince Butcher not to do it, they fight. Butcher, of course, overpowers Hughie, and is about to release the virus when he once again, as he has previously in the series, sees Hughie as his brother. His hand eases off the trigger… And Hughie shoots him.

To be fair to Hughie, he likely didn’t see Butcher having second thoughts, and instead thought Butcher, like Homelander, would never stop unless he stopped him. Hughie holds Butcher’s hand as he dies, sunlight slowly pouring through the window of The Seven conference room as a new day dawns.

The final bit of Butcher in the episode? The Boys hold a funeral for him, with his epitaph reading, “Oi, fuck off you cunts.” Not quite “She saved the world. A lot,” a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but it’ll do.

Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) and Ryan (Cameron Crovetti)

Status: Alive

Weird duo to put together, right? But as Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” the number one song on anyone’s Billy Joel Top Five, plays on the soundtrack, we get a montage of where we’re leaving The Boys. The quickest bit? Ryan has found a good man in Mother’s Milk, two characters that maybe never talked over the course of the entire series? Weird.

Anyway, MM is reunited and gets remarried to Monique (Frances Turner) while his daughter Janine (Liyou Abere) and Ryan happily look on. The implication is that the now powerless Ryan will live a normal life as Ryan Milk. And MM can safely live with his family again, now that everything is wrapped up nicely, except of course Soldier Boy, who killed MM’s grandfather and is still alive and MM swore vengeance on him but don’t worry about that! Not even one bit! Yay! Mother’s Milk and Ryan Milk! Hooray forever!

Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara)

Status: Alive

While Frenchie may be dead, Kimiko is living out all their dreams together, including going to Marseille, trying a madeleine, and getting a dog. Marseille is the birthplace of Frenchie, and they’ve discussed going to the city together someday. The potential implication here, after the multiple pet conversations throughout the episode about who is whose pet, is that the spirit of Frenchie lives on through Kimiko’s new dog. Maybe don’t think about that too much, but she’s happy, so we’re happy.

Hughie (Jack Quaid) and Annie (Erin Moriarty)

Status: Alive

The final duo we check in with is Annie and Hughie, who are happily unmarried with a baby named Robin on the way. No, not named after the Batman sidekick; after Hughie’s girlfriend, who was killed in the opening of the series by A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). They’re working at Campbell Audio/Visual, bringing things full circle as Hughie started the series trying to get a raise from his manager at Bryman Audio… Now he runs his own place with Annie.

He also rejects – once again – President Bobby Singer’s (Jim Beaver) offer to be the new head of the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs to keep checks on Vought… Instead, he and Annie have a police scanner, and even though she’s very pregnant and wearing comfy Crocs, flies off to help save the day while Hughie happily looks up at the sky.

After all this, Annie has become a superhero for real, and given Hughie something to believe in, turning the dark, pessimistic world of The Boys into something that has the potential to become as hopeful and bright as the classic superhero comics we all know and love.