The Boys Season 5 Kills Off a Fan-Favorite Lead as the Series Finale Looms

Heads up: if you haven’t watched episode 7 of The Boys season 5 yet, stop reading unless you’re fine with spoilers. Seriously, big stuff goes down and there’s no way to talk about it without giving things away.

Well, The Boys finally stepped up and followed through on all those 'nobody is safe' warnings. In what’s probably the gut-punch moment of the season (so far), the show kills off one of its core characters. That hasn’t happened at this level before — and honestly, the way it plays out is rough, not just for the characters but for anyone invested in this bananas anti-superhero saga.

Here’s the Setup

This episode — 'The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother's Milk' (yes, the titles keep getting more ridiculous) — is basically the penultimate big swing before the series finale hits next week. The Boys are at the end of their rope. Their new plan? Try to give Kimiko (played by Karen Fukuhara, who frankly deserves some kind of award for this season) the full Soldier Boy treatment — as in, the exact superpowers Jensen Ackles’s barely-contained walking ego has.

The reason: Homelander (Antony Starr), already terrifying, is now hopped up on the pure, old-school, even stronger version of the V-Serum. So, there’s no way Kimiko’s basic powers are enough anymore. If they want a fighting chance, they need to level the playing field, and fast.

What Actually Happens?

If you thought this was going to be a smooth, clever caper… it’s The Boys. You know chaos is on the cards. Homelander catches wind of their plot almost immediately, and things go sideways.

• Frenchie (Tomer Capone) — who has always been the heart of the gang, and pretty much everyone’s favorite character to root for — decides to do the only thing he can: sacrifice himself so Kimiko and Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) can actually get out alive.
• After a brutal showdown with Homelander, Frenchie is left fatally wounded. Kimiko is the one holding him as he succumbs — cue at least one actual tear for anyone who’s been watching since season one.

If you wanted to know if The Boys had the guts to go full tragedy, well, here you have your answer. Frenchie’s death is equal parts touching and infuriating, and it amps up the desperation for this final confrontation with Homelander. And if you’re worried about Billy Butcher’s (Karl Urban) spiral into full-on monster mode, this is exactly the kind of thing that’ll push him right over the edge.

Ditching the Comic, For Better Or Worse?

Let’s be real: if you read the original Boys comics, you’ll know the source material closed out in a pretty bleak (and, honestly, controversial) way. Most of the squad died, with Butcher becoming the main villain by the end. The showrunner Eric Kripke hasn’t stuck to that blueprint, for better or worse. So, if you’re hoping for a direct adaptation in this last stretch… don’t. That said, now that the show is this close to turning the entire cast into cannon fodder, nothing is really off the table for the series finale.

'The Boys never wanted to play it safe. Now, with Frenchie gone, the big finale feels even more unpredictable.'

We’ll see next week if the showrunners pull a few more wild cards — or if they keep twisting the knife. With this cast, no one is probably sleeping easy right now.