Warning: This story contains major spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episode 5. Please proceed with caution!
A decade after Supernatural went off the air, the stars and creator are still carrying on, my wayward son.
Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins reunited in the April 29 episode of The Boys for a very special episode overseen by their former boss, Eric Kripke. “It was good for the soul,” the showrunner and executive producer tells Gold Derby exclusively about the highly anticipated Supernatural reunion.
Titled “One-Shots,” the hour was helmed by Phil Sgriccia, a former director and producer on Supernatural, and written by Judalina Neira. It takes place a little more than halfway through the fifth and final season of Prime Video‘s anti-superhero drama, which filmed last year in Toronto.
The plot of the episode is driven by a unique narrative structure in which several supporting characters are temporarily given main-character treatment. Everything culminates in the newly blasphemous Homelander (Antony Starr) murdering Firecracker (Valorie Curry) after learning she’s been sleeping with his father, Soldier Boy (Ackles) — and because it took her a bit too long to accept him as her new God.
Read on for Kripke’s behind-the-scenes perspective on this instant-classic The Boys episode.
Jensen Ackles, Eric Kripke, and Jared PadaleckiMichael Buckner/PMC
‘So much more money to play with’
Running for about 12 minutes, the Supernatural sequence begins when Homelander and Soldier Boy travel to Hollywood to track down a lead about the powerful V-One serum from The Seven’s original speedster, Mr. Marathon (Padalecki). The stakes are incredibly high: Homelander believes that by injecting himself with V-One, he will become immortal like his father.
Kripke: I won’t say it felt like a high school reunion, because I realized that most of those are fraught and annoying. It felt like going back to your hometown and getting together with your best friends. Between me, Jared, Jensen, Misha, and Phil Sgriccia — who directed so many episodes and was a producer on Supernatural, and is my producing director on The Boys — we’re just all there, with so much more money to play with. [laughs]
Misha Collins and Jensen Ackles in The Boys final seasonPrime Video
‘Incredible cameos in the room’
While at Mr. Marathon’s mansion, the main characters witness a poker game between Malchemical (Collins) and the following A-list celebrities all playing themselves: Seth Rogen (who also serves as The Boys executive producer), Kumail Nanjiani, Will Forte, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Craig Robinson.
Kripke: There are incredible cameos in the room with us, and we’re all kind of giving each other looks like, “Can you believe that we are all getting away with this?” Like, “Isn’t it amazing that security hasn’t come to throw us all out of the building?” It was really fun to get that group together. [The Supernatural team and I] picked up exactly where we left off. There’s obviously so much history and affection between all of us. It was just a blast. It was good for the soul.
Jared Padalecki cameos in ‘The Boys’Prime Video
‘[Jared was] appropriately miserable’
While trying to kill Homelander and Soldier Boy, Mr. Marathon accidentally speed-runs directly into all of the celebrities, killing them instantly and spraying blood everywhere. Homelander eventually smashes Mr. Marathon’s head in with his foot. Kripke now recalls how Padalecki reacted to being covered in blood and guts from head to toe.
Kripke: I don’t have total recall, but I vaguely remember him being appropriately miserable. He’s such a good guy and such a good sport. I’ll give you an example. When I was directing the Season 4 finale, we were killing Victoria Neuman [Claudia Doumit], and with two hours left to go in the day, I got the makeup blood on my hand. It’s all sugar-based, so it’s like corn syrup. I could not have been a bigger baby and more uncomfortable. Like, “Oh, I hate this. It’s so sticky, and it doesn’t wash off.” So imagine being covered head to toe in it. It attracts insects because it’s all made of sugar, and it does not come off on first washing. The fact that Jared had a good attitude through all of it shows you what a good guy he is.
Susan Heyward as Sister SagePrime Video
‘Ultimately, I was scared’
The writers fought for Episode 5 to include an unconventional storytelling approach in which the plot is told from the perspective of side characters like Firecracker, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell). In the end, Kripke accepted their vision, and the rest is history.
Kripke: It was a change-up I was a little nervous about. Judalina Neira, who wrote the episode, was really pitching for it, and the other writers were all backing her. I really tried to differentiate in the room, and I think, ultimately, I was scared — in a good way. I was like, “It’s so late for such a major change-up.” And their position was, “That’s what’s awesome! The show is so reckless that we’re doing an insane structural change-up in Episode 5 of the final season.” And they were right.
We really owed some character advancement for the characters that we focus on in that episode. The single hardest thing about writing this show is there’s, at any given time, 12 to 15 main characters. You can’t service them all. There just isn’t enough page count. The actors are amazing. They really deserve the focus. I don’t want to short shrift anyone, so it was the perfect opportunity for the people that we focused on to really push their storylines forward and give them the attention they deserve.
Valorie Curry as FirecrackerPrime Video
‘He demands ultimate allegiance’
As the death of A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) proved in the premiere episode, no one is safe in the final season of The Boys. Firecracker found that out the hard way. Kripke explains why now was the right time for the faith-based member of The Seven to bite the bullet.
Kripke: She wrestled with her faith and then decided to completely discard it, in exchange for total devotion to Homelander. The point we were making is, certain public figures who are in orbit around other certain public figures — whether it’s Homelander or this other person I’m thinking about — demand such total obedience. They seem to get a charge out of directly forcing that person to suffer every humiliation, and give up every single conviction they hold dear, and then throw them out into the cold.
It happens over and over again. It happened with Marjorie Taylor Greene. It happened with Pam Bondi. It happened with Kristi Noem. He demands ultimate allegiance, and then once they give up who they are as people, he discards them. We always knew that was going to be Firecracker’s fate. That’s the fate of literally everyone who gets too close to a certain someone, and so this felt like the right story to do it, because this is when she completely sacrifices everything she believes in. For the instant karma of that to cost her her life is probably pretty appropriate.
Season 5 of The Boys streams every Wednesday on Prime Video until the May 20 series finale. Be sure to check out Gold Derby’s full coverage:
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