The Boys: Is Frenchie Dead?

With just one more episode left in Prime Video’s ‘The Boys,’ the stakes have never been higher, and no character is safe. If plot armor were protecting the protagonists in a world where Supes have the power to do whatever they want without consequences, it doesn’t exist by the end of the show. The fifth season has delivered some shocking deaths, but so far, the penultimate episode takes the cake. The Boys suffer their first major casualty at the end of the episode, setting the stage for the violent, bloody finale to an equally diabolical series. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Frenchie Spends His Last Day Building a Weapon Against Homelander

After Homelander gets V1, all hope seems to be lost. However, Butcher is not ready to give up yet. Earlier in the season, he found Homelander trapped in a cell and exposed to enriched uranium. At the time, the Supe didn’t have V1, and the uranium weakened him to the point that he remained trapped in the cell for an extended period. This gives Butcher the idea that perhaps they could use the uranium to kill Homelander. Looking into Soldier Boy’s past, they know that he didn’t always have the power to blast Compound V off a Supe’s blood and turn them into regular humans. The Russians and their decades-long experiments gave him that power, and Butcher believes they can recreate that magic.

Kimiko offers herself as the test subject, which means she has to go through several rounds of exposure to the enriched uranium. It is a deeply painful process and highly risky, because being even slightly off on a single measurement could kill her. Since her mind is set on the task, Frenchie tries to find a way to do it as accurately as possible. He keeps asking Sage for help, but following her failure in the previous episode, she seems to have checked out. She finally comes around by the end of the episode, mainly because she is moved by Frenchie’s love for Kimiko. She corrects his calculations, and this is the only chance they’ll have to conduct their experiment. If this fails, Kimiko will die. Fortunately, that does not happen.

Kimiko survives the next round, but Sage and Frenchie don’t have the time to wait for her to recuperate and find out if the experiment succeeded. While they are busy turning Kimiko into a weapon, Butcher, Hughie, MM, and Starlight try to get their hands on Oh Father to figure out what Homelander is planning next. Butcher and Hughie are captured by a psychic Supe named Synapse. He not only holds them captive, but he also reads their minds, which means he knows exactly where Sage is hiding and what they are doing with Kimiko. While Butcher eventually kills him, Synapse has already done his job by relaying the information to Homelander, who has been itching to get his hands on Sage.

Frenchie Sacrifices Himself for the Greater Good

As soon as they are freed, Butcher and Hughie try to contact Frenchie, but he is busy with the experiment. He finds out about Homelander’s arrival through the radar he’d put in place specifically to be alerted to any flying Supes. It doesn’t take him and Sage much to realize that Homelander has found them. They don’t have much time, so Frenchie leads Sage and a still weakened Kimiko to a zinc-lined hiding place. This is the only thing that Homelander won’t be able to see through, so he wouldn’t know they are hiding there. However, Homelander expects this sort of trick. So, the moment he discovers there is a zinc-lined wall he cannot see through, he suspects that that’s where Sage is hiding.

Realizing that Sage and Kimiko will be caught, Frenchie, who hasn’t had the time to find a better hiding place, attracts Homelander’s attention. He gets the Supe in the radiation chamber where they’d been conducting the experiment on Kimiko. To keep Homelander distracted and stop him from further investigating the place, Frenchie exposes Homelander and himself to enriched uranium. The effect of V1 on Homelander is clearly shown in the fact that the uranium is not affecting him as adversely as it did the last time.

The Supe eventually walks out of the chamber and the building, believing that Sage has already fled the place. He is not affected by the uranium, but it proves fatal to Frenchie. The effects of radiation weaken him to the point that he cannot get himself off the ground. He starts bleeding, and his body starts to shut down. As soon as Homelander is gone, Kimiko and Sage come out of their hiding place, but by then, Frenchie doesn’t have a lot of time left. He and Kimiko say their tearful goodbyes, and he dies in her arms, having sacrificed his own life to save hers.

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