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The Boys is a show known for pushing the boundaries of acceptability and testing the strength of its audience’s stomach.
Across four seasons and 32 episodes, Amazon Prime’s superheroic satire has shown supes behaving very, very badly, octopus-related trauma, and who could forget, the worst-timed sneeze in human history?
All that and we haven’t mentioned countless deaths, most of which involve people being reduced to raw sausage meat at the hands of some deranged superpowered killer… or Billy Butcher.
Still in the words of Bachman–Turner Overdrive, ‘you ain’t seen nothin’ yet’!
Or at least that’s what Nathan Mitchell and Colby Minifie – who play Black Noir and Ashley, respectively – told Metro when we sat down with them to chat about The Boys season 5.
‘It’s gut-wrenching,’ said Nathan when we asked them to describe what we can expect from the season in two words.
‘Heart dropping is a good one,’ added Colby before joking that the main thing she thinks people will say is ‘oh sh*t’.
What exactly will have us saying ‘oh sh*t’? Well, neither Nathan nor Colby is willing to tell me, lest they become the target of Vought’s crack squad of spoiler-suppressing assassins.
Still, Nathan did spill some of the Vought-brand tea.
‘I’m thinking of a particular scene,’ he explained. ‘It’s definitely going to be the first time you’ve ever seen anything like it on television.
‘You’re just going to be like, “Wow, I didn’t know, I didn’t know that could happen. I don’t understand the physics of that.”’’
Colby, meanwhile, was clear that as shocking as the spectacle may be on The Boys, there’s always method behind the mayhem and madness.
‘I think the writers have done a really good job of not just doing shock value stuff,’ she said. ‘It all is integral to the structure of the show, and they also have an amazing ability to come up with the craziest stuff that still works for the structure of the show’
Nathan and Colby aren’t the only members of the cast promising bigger thrills and surprises from season five.
‘It’s the final season of The Boys, and The Boys is notorious for constantly sort of topping itself in terms of big booms,’ said Valorie Curry, who plays Homelander’s most loyal follower, Firecracker.
‘It would be ridiculous to expect that there wouldn’t be something.’
Susan Heyward, who plays Sister Sage, also promised the most ambitious season, yet fittingly, considering she plays the smartest person on Earth, she wasn’t just thinking about the spectacle.
‘The audience is going to see the level of emotional manipulation go to a new level, and the stakes are higher than ever,’ she began.
‘One of the reasons we’re doing this right now in Rome is to reflect just how large the ambitions of everyone on the show have gotten.
‘Homelander started out wanting to run Vaught, then he came to Sage, “Hmm, that’s not enough.” And so Season Five takes us into a completely different level of ambition that we haven’t seen before.’
So with the series constantly upping the stakes, are Nathan, Colby, Valorie, and Susan sad to say goodbye to their characters and bring these stories to a close?
Well, opinions are mixed.
‘I mean, it’s hard to say goodbye,’ said Colby. ‘We’ve been taking care of these characters for seven to eight years. And I didn’t know that I would even be on this show as long as I’ve been on this show. So it’s, it was a huge surprise to get to last this long.
‘But I also think, you know, a really good story has a beginning, middle and an end, and we have a really strong ending. And I also feel like the writers wanted to end it on their own terms. And we’re lucky that we got to end it on our own terms, that we weren’t just cancelled.’
As for Valorie and Susan? Well, they’re thinking a little more practically and looking forward to not having to wear those superhero suits anymore, especially the boots, which I’m told are very uncomfortable!
As for Nathan, he’s sad but fulfilled to know these characters are going to live on in people’s minds and hearts.’
Oh, and he’s gutted that he won’t get to wear Noir’s costume anymore, which apparently ‘fits like a glove’.
In all seriousness, though, the cast all agreed on one thing. They want this final season to live up to fans’ expectations, as probably best expressed by Colby.
I hope they’re super satisfied by the ending,’ she said. ‘It’s them we care about the most. They’re the reason why we’ve been able to last this long, and we really want them to be happy.’
The Boys season 5 is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video
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