Eric Kripke on Hughie’s Tough Goodbye, ‘Gen V’ Crossover, Those Supe Animals & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 5, “Beware the Jabberwork, My Son.”]

The Boys dished up a lot of drama in its latest episode, “Beware the Jabberwork, My Son,” which saw Hugh Sr. (Simon Pegg) awake from his coma after being injected by Compound-V. Meanwhile, the titular vigilantes took a trip to a wildly infected farm filled with Supe animals, and Gen V made its debut in the flagship show with the appearances of Cate (Maddie Phillips) and Sam (Asa Germann) at the Vought Expo.

TV Insider caught up with showrunner Eric Kripke, who answers some of the burning questions we have after this pivotal installment, which bid Hugh Sr. farewell after Hughie (Jack Quaid) and his mom Daphne (Rosemarie DeWitt) assist in his death by injection. The decision was made after Hugh Sr. gains uncontrollable powers and finds himself extremely confused as he unintentionally massacres people at the hospital in which he’s staying. It’s a teary event, far from the heart-pounding thrills of the farm where Butcher (Karl Urban) and co find themselves as they uncover Victoria’s (Claudia Doumit) operation to further develop the Supe-killing virus introduced in Gen V. Meanwhile, Cate and Sam appear to be interested in a more substantial role involved with the Seven. Below, Kripke breaks it all down.

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Hughie had to say goodbye to his dad in this episode. What went into deciding to kill off Hugh Sr., and how important was it that viewers see Hughie share one last happy moment with his parents before the tragedy strikes?

Eric Kripke: It was always the plan. Such a [big] part of growing up and becoming an adult is that moment when your parents go from taking care of you to you taking care of your parents, which is just this very universal thing. We thought it was a necessary step for Hughie because he’s always the young one in the group and this season we wanted him to become a fully dimensionalized adult. A big part of that is dealing with his parents, both with his mother reappearing in his life and then with his father’s illness. So this was always the plan and the necessary step for him to become independent. But it’s heartbreaking and the scene makes me cry every time. We really wanted to have one good scene of the Campbells all together, mending the hurt feelings between them and being able to laugh together because I think they earned that and Hughie earned that happy memory before, as is typical in our world, things become bloody and horrible.

When Hugh Sr. discovers his powers, it’s horrifying. How do you balance the tone, especially when bloody moments like the ones he experiences are usually played off for comedy on the show?

Yeah. I have to say, I laugh when he ends up in the middle of that Wall Street bro, who we lovingly call the “Bronut.” But the rest of them, I totally agree with you, and I think it’s maybe simplistic to say, but I think it just always comes down to character. Hugh Sr. is confused and terrified, and his family is really worried about him. I believe the audience plugs into whatever the characters are feeling, and we can goose that along with music choice to make it feel a little more serious [than] the V on Ice massacre, which is hilarious and clearly intended to be a joke. But for this one, we treat it seriously and scary, and I think that the audience does too.

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Gen V‘s Cate and Sam make their introduction to The Boys with this episode. What made this the perfect opportunity, and what can you tease about their ties to The Seven moving forward?

It felt like the right episode for a couple of reasons. One story is about acquiring this virus, which was born in Gen V. So thematically, this was the episode where Gen V was starting to bleed into The Boys and then this notion of this fan expo [where] they’re promoting all their movies, but what they’re really doing is bringing all of these heroes together so that Homelander can enlist them as the beginnings of an army, which is really quite scary. Cate and Sam, as is unfortunately typical in our world, are being rewarded for their horrific behavior in the Gen V finale, and turned into celebrities starring in ridiculous teen comedies who have a level of fame and notoriety now, whereas the real heroes of that day are languishing in some undisclosed location somewhere that you’ll learn about when Gen V Season 2 drops. So I think Kate, who’s very anti-human and pro-Supe, drinks a lot of [that up], and I think Sam is probably a little more reluctant, but also Cate’s pretty good at touching him and making him not feel things, which I think keeps Sam happy and on mission.

It’s interesting you mentioned that because I noticed Cate’s hands were intact…

I’ll just say it in a very simple way. She is wearing a glove Luke Skywalker-style on one hand, and so there is not a real hand there. It didn’t grow back. She’s just covering up one of them.

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The rest of the Boys take a trip to the farm where they run into Suped-up animals. How did that come about in the writers’ room?

Evan Goldberg, one of our EPs, has been pitching from the beginning, “I want to see V’d up animals,” and he kept pitching a bear, which I just do not know how to pull off. And so when this notion came up of Neuman working on the virus in some pretty isolated location, someone [suggested] a farm because we’ve really been looking for a way to do V’d up animals. And the writers, I think very rightfully, said, it shouldn’t be big scary animals, it should be cute farm animals. And it’s much more ridiculous and horrifying, like the bunny and Monty Python.

And so it was a peanut butter and chocolate combo. It was a notion we’d been wanting to do for a very long time. We knew that we wanted to bring [Stan] Edgar and Neuman together and they deserved to have a story after the events of Season 3, and then searching for this virus, which becomes this really important magic bullet… It was just all of these different elements mixed together into this particular bloody stew.

The Boys, Season 4, Thursdays, Prime Video