Frenchie's death in The Boys: why Kripke says it had to happen — and even Tomer Capone agreed
The Boys is one episode from the end — and its penultimate hour claimed the casualty fans had dreaded most. Major spoilers ahead for season 5, episode 7.
What happens to Frenchie
The episode — "The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man They Call Mother's Milk", released on 13 May 2026 — ends with Homelander (Antony Starr) storming the Boys' hideout. Frenchie (Tomer Capone) buys Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) her chance by luring Homelander into the team's homemade uranium cell and flipping the switch himself, taking a lethal dose of radiation in the process — and using his final face-off to needle Homelander for never once dancing.
In his last moments, Frenchie tells Kimiko she saved him. They kiss. He dies surrounded by his friends, and the screen cuts to black on her sobbing.
Why Kripke says it had to happen
Showrunner Eric Kripke has been blunt about the logic.
"We knew we had to kill off one of The Boys," he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2026.
His reasoning: a finale victory means nothing unless it costs the heroes something genuinely hard — he pointed to The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones as models.
The writers went through each character asking whose death would be the most heart-wrenching, and landed on Frenchie early, because he and Kimiko are the emotional heart of the show. Without his sacrifice, Kripke argued, the Boys simply wouldn't have a chance of winning.
He also told SYFY Wire the team had worked backwards from the finale's ending, and that the penultimate episode is traditionally where a team suffers its biggest loss.
Even Capone agreed
The actor didn't fight it. Capone has said he sensed the death coming and felt it was inevitable — and that when Kripke broke the news, he had something of an epiphany that it needed to happen, because the whole Frenchie–Kimiko arc was about finding the one person who could redeem you without judgment. Watching it back is another matter:
Speaking to Variety in May 2026, he admitted he still hadn't seen the episode: "It's too close, man. I'm too attached."
Frenchie, he noted, is the longest-running character of his career — five seasons, since 2019.