Death on The Boys finally sinks in

The Boys is full of death, but little grieving. Since season 1, Homelander has laser-blasted bystanders, punched Vought underlings through the chest, and ripped apart fellow supes nearly once an episode. The violence is so over the top that the loss of innocent life never really sinks in beyond “Good lord, someone needs to stop that guy!” It’s a bit of a miracle; each week, showrunner Eric Kripke and his team of writers and directors ride the edge(lord) between gleeful shock value and grotesque reality. There is no show that has made me yelp out loud more times than The Boys.

Which is why season 4 episode 5, “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” floored me. The episode is full of standard Boys absurdity, from the Marvel-at-Comic-Con parody of the V52 Expo to a standoff against Compound V-enhanced sheep. But through the mayhem, writer Judalina Neira and director Shana Stein swerve into a grim scene: Hughie (Jack Quaid) discovering that his estranged mother injected his dying father, Hughie Sr. (Simon Pegg), with stolen Compound V. Hughie almost gave the shot himself, a last-ditch effort to save his dad through superhuman means, but in the end threw the dose away, knowing long-term consequences all too well. His mom didn’t — and despite Hughie Sr. bouncing back for a moment, all hell quickly breaks loose.

Pegg’s screen time only amounts to 15 or 20 minutes of an hour-long episode, but it feels painfully long, in the way that standing by a declining loved one in those final years, months, or even days can feel. The Compound V causes Hughie Sr. to immediately lose control of his body, but instead of breaking a hip or having an accident, he teleports into a nearby patient’s torso, exploding blood and guts around the room. Hughie Sr. phases in and out of awareness of his actions. When he’s on, he’s in shock — how did he wind up holding a human heart? Hughie, who has seen these horrors before, remains calm… until it dawns on him that he’s never seen this horror before: his father, a simple but healthy man up until this point, completely breaking down.

A few weeks before The Boys season 4 premiered, my own grandmother’s years-long descent into dementia and pain ended with an abrupt bout of pneumonia that I can only imagine ended her suffering. The road to getting there was filled with unending care from her family and friends, who wanted to give her all the time she deserved, and many bumps in the road that could have very well been the end. So I was in A Helluva Place when I turned on “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son” and saw the entire saga of elder care flash through the mania of The Boys — and felt very terrifyingly right. Nothing prepares you for the shock of someone you’ve known for your entire life forgetting your name.

Pegg spent most of season 4 lying unconscious in a bed, breathing through tubes. At first I thought this was a cheeky gag for a franchise always willing to honor the actor. Pegg, after all, was The Boys comic artist Darick Robertson’s inspiration for the original Hughie, and his role in the show was stunt casting at its best. But Hughie Sr. popping back to life in “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son” is another cruel and familiar tease — there is no hope ahead in these circumstances. This was Pegg’s sendoff.

As the guy constantly shrieking while covered in blood, Jack Quaid doesn’t get enough credit for processing the ethical dilemmas of The Boys with a lighthearted touch. Next to Pegg, who’s never been so vulnerable on screen, Quaid tenderly reframes a question his character considers throughout the season: Will Hughie take a life to solve a problem? Most episodes, Hughie’s weighing the assassination of overpowered superheroes. In “Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” he’s confronted with euthanizing his own father. Based on what he witnesses, there is no hesitation.

“If we don’t do this,” he tells his mother, “then he spends the rest of his life scared and confused or in prison or an asylum or he kills more innocent people.”

The subplot isn’t Michael Haneke’s Amour, but it lands thanks to the ethereal quality of Pegg’s performance and Quaid’s commitment to playing all the sides of Hughie as Hughie. This is neither actor’s waterworks-cranking Oscar clip moment. It’s The Boys, subdued, and most important of all, a true end-of-life experience — one person fading away, and his family wondering where they go from there. There’s a whole Vought nightmare out the hospital door for Hughie; he feels it as he delivers a fatal injection to his father. But for one second all the chaos of The Boys fades away, and two men have a moment. A death with just a little grieving.