Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: amazon prime video, eric kripke, Jack Quaid, prime video, rosemarie dewitt, simon pegg, the boys

The Boys: Eric Kripke on Simon Pegg's Improvised Memorable Moment

The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke on Simon Pegg's memorable, heartbreaking moment in the latest episode and the nod to the original comic.

While Prime Video's The Boys thrives on being the chaos incarnate of TV shows, delivering the goods on gratuity every which way, there are powerful emotional moments when the Eric Kripke superhero series delivers something gut-wrenching. Episode five of season four, "Beware of the Jabberwork, My Son," represents a watershed moment for one of the major protagonists in Jack Quaid's Hughie Campbell, who's desperate to save his dying father Hugh, played by Simon Pegg in a recurring role, and the lengths he would go through. Kripke spoke to Entertainment Weekly on Hughie's efforts. The following contains major spoilers.

The Boys: Eric Kripke on Simon Pegg & Jack Quaid Dynamic in "Beware the Jabberwork, My Son"

Hugh finds himself in the hospital as his son, Hughie, discovers the reason why is because he's suffered a stroke, and there's no way to save him as his organs start shutting down. Desperate, Hughie calls in a favor to A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) to steal a vial of Compound V from Homelander's (Antony Starr) stash as a last-ditch effort. After the speedster delivers, Hughie mulls over the decision before changing his mind and accepting his father's fate. As he turns away, his estranged mother and Hugh's ex-wife, Daphne Campbell (Rosemarie DeWitt), use the vial, injecting him. Daphne was already on thin ice with Hughie for leaving them both when he was a child, but what surprised their son more was the family's lawyer revealed Hugh granted her power of attorney in case he was incapacitated, infuriating his son.

While Compound V restored Hugh to a lucid state, it didn't restore his already damaged brain from its deprivation of oxygen as his organs were shutting down. Hugh still suffered from lapses of memory and now, developed powers of phasing through matter like X-Men's Kitty Pryde. Without mastery over his powers as per the brand of the Kripke series, Hugh amasses a body count phasing in and out of people, reducing them to a bloody mess. Resigned to his situation, Hughie develops a lethal cocktail to euthanize his father from what he learned in his time around Frenchie (Tomer Capone) as mother and son say goodbye.

"There's really only so many powers. You start to run through them," Kripke said of Hugh's phasing abilities not related to Stool Shadow, who shares similar phasing abilities from the Garth Ennis comic. "It's always good to riff on powers that we have seen in comic book movies but get to put our 'Boys' spin on it, which is if you stop phasing in the middle of somebody, that would be really terrible." On Hugh's final words to his son, "my Wee Hughie," "That came from Simon," Kripke said. "That was not in the script. He reached out to me, and he said, 'Can I call him 'Wee Hughie' as one last nod?'" The line was a direct reference to Hughie's nickname in the comics. "For him, this wasn't just him leaving the show; this was him saying goodbye to 20 years of this character being a part of his life," the showrunner adds. "I thought that was a perfect way to come full circle."

For more on how Kripke breaks down the themes of season four, you can check out the full interview. New episodes of The Boys on Thursdays on Prime Video.

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