The Boys: How Every Main Character Dies In The Series

Across its five-season run, "The Boys" stayed remarkably consistent in one respect: the violent nature of its deaths. Like the comics on which the Prime Video series is based, the show pairs a gruesome sense of humor with an appetite for imaginatively disgusting super-powered fatalities.

The writers also knew when to pull a punch or two, letting a death be remembered for its emotional impact rather than its bloody spectacle. The show's main-character deaths exist at various points on the spectrum from quiet to outrageous. Some are respectfully axed offscreen, while others are gleefully tormented even in their final moments.

Season 1, Episode 2, "Cherry"

The Supe-splatter that started them all. "The Boys" fans first meet Alex Hassell's invisible pervert Translucent in the pilot episode, where his habit of hiding naked in the bathrooms at Vought Tower allows him to find Hughie (Jack Quaid) and the listening device the wee fella planted. When Translucent attacks Hughie at his day job, Hughie manages to incapacitate him with an electric shock.

Unfortunately for the Boys, the Supe's powers come courtesy of his uniquely dense skin. This makes him nigh-indestructible from the outside, but pretty bloody destructible otherwise — say, from a remote-detonated bomb stored in his nethers. In captivity, Translucent waits for everyone but Hughie to be distracted, then stages an escape believing that Hughie doesn't have it in him to actually pull the trigger. Hughie proves him wrong.

What's left of Translucent is stored in a zinc box and dumped in the ocean, where it is later discovered by the Deep (Chace Crawford). His son, Maverick (Nicholas Hamilton), attempts to get revenge on a genuinely remorseful Hughie in Season 5. However, he's accidentally killed by the telekinetic Cindy (Ess Hödlmoser), who means to hit Hughie but can't see the invisible teenager in the crossfire.

Season 1, Episode 8, "You Found Me"

On paper, Elisabeth Shue's Madelyn Stillwell was Vought's senior vice president of hero management, responsible for keeping the Seven running smoothly and profitably. In practice, she was the person most directly responsible for keeping Homelander (Antony Starr) in line by any means necessary.

Suffice it to say, Homelander develops a complicated, deeply messed up romantic-slash-maternal dependency on Stillwell, which is shattered when he learns she has been hiding the existence of his own son, Ryan Butcher (later played by Cameron Crovetti). When Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) tries to use her as bait to kill Homelander, Homelander arrives to interrogate her. After she admits to being scared of him, he uses his heat vision to burn a hole through her face. Butcher sets off the explosive trap anyway — it fails to kill Homelander, instead giving Vought the evidence to blame Stillwell's death on him.

Season 2, Episode 1, "The Big Ride"

One of the central mysteries of Season 2 is the identity of an unknown, head-popping Supe with the ability to assassinate targets from a distance. Their first victim is Susan Raynor (Jennifer Esposito).

With Butcher blamed for Stillwell's death, the Boys are forced to go on the run. Raynor, in her position as deputy director of the CIA, is technically supposed to be helping lead the efforts to hunt them down. But owing to her previous romantic relationship with Butcher and her suspicions that Vought is doing everything in its power to fold Supes into the military, she decides to aid the Boys instead.

However, before Raynor can explain the full extent of her suspicions to them (sans Butcher) in a secluded industrial yard, her head explodes. In the Season 2 finale, it's revealed that the progressive, seemingly non-powered politician Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) is the killer.

Season 2, Episode 7, "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker"

Lamplighter is absent from the first season of "The Boys," having mysteriously "retired" from the Seven prior to the pilot. The vacancy he left is filled by Annie January/Starlight (Erin Moriarty). He's somewhat of a specter, having been responsible for the fire that killed Grace Mallory's (Laila Robins) grandchildren and helped fuel Frenchie's (Tomer Capone) self-destructive guilt spiral.

When Lamplighter is finally introduced in Season 2 (played by "X-Men" alum Shawn Ashmore), we learn that he feels plenty of guilt himself for what he did. "I think Lamplighter has PTSD from the horrible things that he's done," Ashmore told TVLine in an interview during Season 2. "He's living in a hole, and it's pretty sad. He's just trying to deal with the horrible things that he has done and is continuing to be asked to do by Vought."

The Boys pick Lamplighter up from his job as a lethal orderly at the Sage Grove psychiatric facility for Supes. He helps them briefly, seemingly to atone, but ultimately decides to self-immolate after sneaking Hughie into Vought Tower.

Season 2, Episode 8, "What I Know"

The TV series gives Becca Butcher a very different storyline from the comics. Rather than have her "fridged" off-panel prior to the start of the plot, the show reveals that Becca (Shantel VanSanten) actually survived Homelander's assault. Vought keeps her hidden from both Homelander and Billy Butcher in a remote safe house, where she raises her and Homelander's biological son, Ryan.

Throughout Season 2, Homelander forces his way into Ryan's life to the point of abducting him from Becca. He ultimately wants to raise him with Stormfront, his devoted Supe-Nazi (played by Aya Cash). When Butcher, Becca, and the Boys launch a rescue mission to take Ryan back as leverage against Homelander, a bloody battle ensues. Stormfront, bloodied but not beaten, tries to choke Becca to death in front of a defenseless Butcher and Ryan. To save his mom, Ryan lets out an uncontrolled stream of heat vision — it maims Stormfront and mortally wounds Becca.

With her dying words, Becca begs Butcher to make sure Ryan knows her death isn't his fault. It's a devastating ending to one of the best episodes of "The Boys."

Season 3, Episode 2, "The Only Man in the Sky"

From a certain perspective, perhaps including that of the villain herself, Stormfront suffers a fate worse than death after being maimed by Ryan's heat vision. She is left in constant, unbearable pain and confined to a hospital bed in Vought Tower, where she remains under private supervision and is still forced to tend to Homelander's needs, psychological and otherwise.

Homelander is characteristically indifferent to her desires, which are as grand as they are unspeakable, leaving Stormfront without even the hope of seeing her ideal tomorrow come. Off-screen, she chews off her own tongue on Homelander's birthday and dies. Homelander learns of her death from a news broadcast in the middle of a rescue and, enraged, forces the victim off a rooftop. Cash will co-lead the prequel spinoff "Vought Rising" with Jensen Ackles.

Season 3, Episode 4, "Glorious Five Year Plan"

Miles Gaston Villanueva's Supersonic is the most decent Supe introduced in Season 3. Of course he wasn't going to make it out alive.

The boy-band-inspired hero initially enters the picture as an aspiring new member of the Seven, competing on the reality program "American Hero." When Annie learns that Supersonic is likely to be chosen, she warns her ex-boyfriend from their teen hero days that joining the Seven could put him in danger. Supersonic believes he can help Starlight turn the tide against Homelander, and the pair even consider recruiting A-Train (Jessie T. Usher).

Sadly, when Supersonic attempts to bring the speedster into their plan, A-Train betrays them to Homelander. Homelander guts Supersonic offscreen and leaves his body on a roof, where he uses it to threaten Annie into silence. Vought publicly states that Supersonic died of a drug overdose.

Season 3, Episode 8, "The Instant White-Hot Wild"

Season 3 spends much of its time introducing us to the members of Payback, an Avengers-inspired team of Vought Supes that disbanded under mysterious circumstances. We eventually learn that they turned on their leader, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles), during a mission in the 1980s, with the subsequent fight leaving Black Noir in the mute, damaged condition he's in throughout the series.

Black Noir (played by a silent Nathan Mitchell) feels that Soldier Boy is his responsibility not only because he helped turn the team against their abusive leader, but because he secretly knew Soldier Boy was Homelander's father. When Homelander finds this out, he confronts Noir, whom he considers his closest friend, then punches a hole through his chest after Black Noir admits he knew the truth. It was a shocking loss for the series at the time, so much so that creator-showrunner Eric Kripke quickly reassured fans via TVLine that Black Noir would return in some form.

Season 4, Episode 5, "Beware the Jabberwock, My Son"

Matthew Edison's Cameron Coleman was strangely one of the more prominent recurring characters on "The Boys." He was Vought's favorite newscaster and in-house propagandist, seemingly inspired by such reactionary, demagogic media personalities as Tucker Carlson.

Earlier in the season, the Seven had attempted to frame "Starlighters" (activists resisting the Seven in the name of Starlight) as responsible for the deaths of three "Hometeamers" (devout Homelander fans). A-Train, who participated in the killings, leaks footage to the Boys exonerating the Starlighters, then forces Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) to help cover for him after revealing that he was the leak.

To save them both, she frames Coleman, who had previously broken off their clandestine BDSM relationship. Homelander has him beaten to death in Vought Tower by members of the Seven. Firecracker (Valorie Curry) replaces him as the lead VNN anchor, while the network attributes Coleman's death to a brain aneurysm supposedly caused by the flu vaccine.

Season 4, Episode 5, "Beware the Jabberwock, My Son"

Hughie's father, Hugh Campbell Sr. (Simon Pegg), suffers a stroke at the beginning of Season 4. He is comatose for the first half of the season, leaving a guilt-ridden Hughie close to reviving him with Compound V. He ultimately decides against it, but his mother, Daphne (Rosemarie DeWitt), goes through with it anyway.

Hugh Sr. awakens physically refreshed, but with his stroke-related disorientation and memory loss dramatically worsened, along with the dangerous ability to phase through solid matter. He kills multiple people in his confused state. Realizing the danger his father poses to those around him, Hughie decides to medically euthanize him. Hugh calls Hughie "Wee Hughie" in their final scene, a nod to the character's nickname in the comics. Artist Darick Robertson had originally drawn Hughie after Pegg's likeness, and Pegg added the line himself with Eric Kripke's blessing, honoring the actor's decades-long relationship with the character.

Season 4, Episode 8, "Assassination Run"

After Becca's death at the end of Season 2, Ryan goes to live with Grace Mallory, the former CIA deputy director who formed the Boys. Butcher remains part of his life, but his failure to overcome the distance between them throughout Season 3 helps push Ryan into Homelander's arms. 

Ryan becomes increasingly wary of his father and reconnects with Butcher. When he reunites with Grace and Butcher at a CIA safe house, however, he feels betrayed by their plan to train him to take down Homelander.

Grace clearly loves Ryan, but is scared enough to attempt to trigger knockout gas when he gets angry. Before she can hit the button, Ryan pushes her into the wall, accidentally breaking her neck. Seeing Grace die becomes the ultimate breaking point for Butcher, who fully embraces the idea that every Supe needs to go. 

Season 4, Episode 8, "Assassination Run"

The full extent of Victoria Neuman's mind-blowing scheme is revealed in Season 4. She allies herself with Homelander, joining his plan to remove Bob Singer (Jim Beaver) and install her as president. To no one's surprise, Homelander expects her to be yet another henchman regardless of her office, and proves as much by outing her as a Supe on Vought TV before privately threatening her daughter. Frightened, she defects to the Boys in exchange for protection from Vought.

Earlier, the Boys discovered that Neuman's partner, a Vought scientist named Sameer (Omid Abtahi), had refined a Supe-killing virus. As Butcher's cancer and resentment of all Supes grow throughout the season, he becomes sold on the idea of using the virus to wipe every Supe out — including himself. His monstrous tentacle powers are revealed in the very scene where he arrives at the Boys' safe house and rips Neuman in two.

Season 5, Episode 1, "Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite"

A-Train's redemption arc is well underway by the end of Season 4, with the Supe escaping Vought's influence to take himself and his brother into hiding. At great personal risk, he answers Annie's plea for help and saves the Boys during their escape from Homelander's "Freedom Camps," where they were interned in the final moments of the Season 4 finale.

Homelander, aware of A-Train's betrayal, abandons the fight to chase him down. A-Train leads him far away from the camps, dodging laser beams all the way, but stumbles when he nearly runs into a bystander on the street. He successfully avoids her, poetically resolving the show's original sin from the pilot, when A-Train accidentally ran through Hughie's girlfriend. A-Train's caution sends him flying into the woods, where Homelander corners him and snaps his neck. Jessie T. Usher told TVLine after the episode aired that he was grateful A-Train got to face Homelander one last time before his inevitable demise.

Season 5, Episode 5, "One-Shots"

Valorie Curry's Firecracker never had the most impressive powers. Her utility to the Seven was her seemingly single-minded devotion to Homelander, and her willingness to debase, degrade, and potentially even destroy herself to serve him.

She goes as far as blaspheming against her Christian faith and denouncing the church that raised her to support Homelander's rising crypto-religious, fascist regime. However, when Homelander discovers that she had secretly been sleeping with his father, Soldier Boy, and begins to question whether she truly believes in his divinity, he attempts to banish her from the Seven. In an interview with TVLine, Eric Kripke described her fate as reflective of the way President Donald Trump treats loyalists in his own administration.

Having already sacrificed her faith and much of herself to prove her devotion, Firecracker desperately appeals to Homelander one last time. Furious that she ever doubted him, Homelander slams her head onto the sharp wing of an eagle statue, impaling her on the spot.

Season 5, Episode 6, "Though the Heavens Fall"

With the original Black Noir gone, a replacement (still played by Nathan Mitchell) is brought in to prevent further blemishes on the Vought brand. This Noir is basically an actor upset that the "character" he's playing has no lines or legible emotions.

In his personal life, "Justin" performs for Vought filmmaker Adam Bourke (P.J. Byrne), who promises to help him realize his potential as an actor. Before that can happen, the Deep kills Adam out of resentment toward both Bourke and Justin. Justin retaliates by punching a hole in an oil pipeline the Deep publicly endorsed, killing more than a billion fish and ultimately getting the Deep banned from the ocean for life.

Before recording an episode of their manosphere podcast, Justin reveals his role in the catastrophe. The Deep ends their escalating feud by strangling Justin with an audio cable and stabbing him with one of Justin's own knives.

Season 5, Episode 7, "The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother's Milk"

As Eric Kripke told TVLine in the aftermath, there was no way the Boys were going to face Homelander in the finale with their whole team intact. Someone had to be sacrificed, and Frenchie's central emotional role made him a devastating choice.

Just after he completes the radiation treatment intended to recreate Soldier Boy's depowering blast in his love, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), Frenchie's lab is discovered by Homelander. Frenchie attempts to distract Homelander by leading him into a radiation chamber. The two share a tense final conversation while Kimiko hides in a zinc-lined air vent. 

Homelander is mostly immune to the radiation and mortally wounds Frenchie offscreen (in a deleted scene, he punctures Frenchie's stomach with a finger and slowly guts him with it). He bleeds out in Kimiko's arms once Homelander leaves. When Kimiko finally faces off against Homelander in the finale, she's only able to use her powers by summoning Frenchie's memory. 

Season 5, Episode 8, "Blood and Bone"

In the series finale, the Boys covertly infiltrate the White House as Homelander gives a speech from the Oval Office. Hughie and Mother's Milk (Laz Alonso) take on Oh Father, a Supe religious leader with the power to let out supersonic screams. When he isn't helping run Homelander's cult-like takeover of the country, he's... "spending time" with his wife, Ashley. She commissions an indestructible ball gag to prevent him from destroying their bedroom.

During the final fight in the White House, M.M. finds the gag and uses it to muzzle Oh Father mid-scream. The trapped sonic energy causes his head to explode. His death isn't particularly cathartic, since Oh Father had only been a main character for one season, but it does provide a fittingly literal gag kill for the series finale.

Season 5, Episode 8, "Blood and Bone"

While Oh Father is being Oh-bliterated by his own sex toys, Annie leads the Deep to a one-on-one final showdown. His treatment of her in the pilot episode is the first major example of the misconduct allowed within Vought, catalyzing an anti-redemption arc that degrades him over the rest of the series. The company protects him from real accountability for the most part, to the point that the mere idea of accountability seems like a terrifying unknown to him during his final scene.

Annie gives him one last chance to accept responsibility, which he of course declines angrily, before launching him into the ocean. Violating his lifetime aquatic ban (delivered courtesy of Samuel L. Jackson), the Deep is immediately swarmed by sea creatures, including a giant octopus that skewers him on a tentacle. It's a bit of karmic justice, considering what the Deep did to his octopus lover.

Season 5, Episode 8, "Blood and Bone"

Homelander's death was arguably the most anticipated of the entire series. Having decided against releasing the Supe virus, at least for the time being, the Boys send Kimiko (now with Soldier Boy's ability to depower Supes) and Butcher into the Oval Office to beat Homelander once and for all. They even get a surprise assist from Ryan, who's willing to put aside his anger toward Butcher long enough to help subdue his father.

The plan works. Kimiko removes all of Homelander's powers — and Butcher's, for that matter — in a burst of energy. The two men have a human, man-to-man brawl which is satisfyingly one-sided. Now powerless and facing death, Homelander begs Butcher to spare him. Butcher is undeterred, ending Homelander's reign of terror with a crowbar to the skull. Homelander's humiliating death is aired on national television, tarnishing his already strained legacy in the eyes of the American people.

Season 5, Episode 8, "Blood and Bone"

Fan reaction to the series finale of "The Boys" was divided, to say the least, so much so that Eric Kripke actually felt compelled to comment on the notable dissatisfaction of many viewers. One point of criticism was the death of Butcher, with some viewers describing it as a rushed version of the character's comic-book ending.

With Homelander dead, Ryan estranged from him, and his dog, Terror, succumbing to old age, Butcher nihilistically decides to unleash the Supe-killing virus on his own. Hughie believes there's good left in Butcher and tries to talk him down, but brings a gun to the conversation just in case. They have one last brawl. When Butcher prepares to let the virus loose, he hesitates after seeing his dead brother in Hughie, giving Hughie the chance to take the shot. Hughie comforts Butcher as he bleeds out and apologizes for shooting him, but Butcher reassures Hughie that he did the right thing.