Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Boys Season 5, Episode 7, “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man Called Mother’s Milk.” There’s now just one episode of The Boys left, meaning only one episode for the heroes to defeat Homelander, a task that’s harder than ever since he injected himself with V-One. Billy Butcher had one last trick up his sleeve, repeating the radiation experiments used on Soldier Boy, this time on Kimiko, in order to give her the ability to remove a Supe’s powers. There’s also still the matter of Ryan Butcher, who hasn’t been seen since the end of The Boys Season 5, Episode 3, but is still alive.
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Also among the options to defeat Homelander that are still on the table for the finale is Marie Moreau, from the now-cancelled Gen V. The spinoffs two seasons established Marie as one of the most powerful Supes in the world, and a potential rival to Homelander. Crucially, both were the only survivors of Vought’s Project Odessa, an operation designed to create God-like Supes, meaning she at least could grow to be as strong as he is.
However, while Mother’s Milk acknowledges this, referring to her being the “Chosen One” and having Homelander-like strength, Marie shuts down that notion, saying: “Reports of my awesomeness have been greatly exaggerated.” This doesn’t really align with what we saw of Marie in Gen V, where its two seasons had built up her power level, only for The Boys to reduce it straight away.
The Boys’ Use Of Gen V’s Marie Moreau Is Understandable, But Hurts Both Shows
How The Boys Season 5 would use its Gen V characters has long been a major question mark hanging over the final season, and one that’s even more pertinent now the spinoff has been scrapped at Prime Video. In fairness to showrunner Eric Kripke and the writers, this isn’t an easy balance to get right: you can’t have the ending of your five-season series determined by new characters from a show many viewers won’t have watched, but at the same time, if you’re bringing those characters in at all, it has to be true to their storylines, the investment fans of Gen V have, and needs to serve a purpose.
Kripke has been keenly aware of overdoing it with the Gen V characters and not wanting them to avoid overshadowing things, which is why it’s taken until the penultimate episode for them to turn up, and only for a couple of brief scenes at that. Unfortunately, while the intent was admirable and understandable, I think the outcome is a worst of both worlds scenario, where it doesn’t serve either show well enough, nor their respective fans.
If you haven’t seen Gen V, then their appearance in The Boys is a bit distracting and still risks characters you don’t know having an important role, and it’s perhaps even worse if you have seen Gen V. That’s because of this attempt to take Marie out of the running to take down Homelander. As well as her saying her abilities are exaggerated, Starlight refuses to let her play a part because, as she says, “What’s good’s all that power, Marie, if you can’t control it?”
This doesn’t work as well as it’s intended as a reason for keeping her off the board, because the entirety of Gen V Season 2 was about Marie learning how to control her powers. That doesn’t mean she’s reached the peak of her powers or there might not be some struggles still, she obviously can still train and improve, but there was certainly not a sense she had such a lack of control that she couldn’t be involved in the fight. She had developed into one of the most powerful Supes in the world, as she’d always been intended, and now that’s suddenly been wiped out.
Again, I have to sympathize with what’s a difficult balance to get right, if admittedly one that was self-inflicted in the first place, but there should’ve been a better scenario than this. It should’ve been possible for Marie to play a role, and be introduced as a character The Boys fans knew and cared about enough, without her also being the one to straight-up defeat Homelander or stealing too much of the spotlight. After all, considering a lot of time has been spent on setting up Supes for the Vought Rising prequel, some of that time could’ve instead been spent integrating the Gen V characters into the series.
That might not have been perfect, but it’s better than what now looks like happening: they’re only really significant in the finale, and essentially coming out of nowhere for the endgame (since Starlight visits Marie and Jordan Li again at the end of Episode 7). Similarly, it shouldn’t feel the need to try and play down her powers after an entire show was devoted to telling that story (and it’s also going to be weird if she is then powerful enough to stop Homelander in the finale after all and apparently has no issue controlling her powers, leaving non Gen V viewers wondering what the hell Starlight was on about).
This is also just a microcosm of the bigger problem facing The Boys‘ ending: there is so much to wrap-up in just one episode. It still has over a dozen important characters whose arcs need to be resolved, and has to turn Homelander from an immortal God into someone who can be defeated with enough time to then have some character focus (which sounds very similar to Stranger Things‘ series finale issue). Hopefully, it can pull it off, and there’s been enough good character work in Season 5 that it is not impossible, but it’s certainly a tall order, and Marie is one big part of that.
The Boys‘ series finale releases on Wednesday, May 20th on Prime Video.
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