The Boys Season 5 Episode 2: Soldier Boy Twist Rewrites the Endgame for Homelander and Butcher

Season 5 of The Boys is the show sprinting to the finish line. Two episodes in, we already have a major death, a bigger twist, and the war between Homelander and Butcher is clearly the whole ballgame. Also: the show wastes zero time. Good.

Heads up: spoilers for The Boys Season 5, Episodes 1-2.

The Episode 2 stinger everyone will be talking about

Episode 1 goes out with A-Train dead. Episode 2 flips that energy: it looks like Soldier Boy bites it after getting wrecked by the Supe-killing virus (which also takes out two members of Teenage Kix), and even Homelander strolls off assuming his dad is toast. Then Jensen Ackles does the full Undertaker sit-up right before credits. Not dead. Not even a little.

"He is not dead."

— showrunner Eric Kripke, confirming Soldier Boy survives

So how did he survive something that kills Supes?

This is where the nerdy lore detail matters: V-One (aka V1), the original Compound V that created the first-generation heroes like Soldier Boy and Stormfront. Unlike the later stuff, V1 basically makes you immortal in the 'you do not age' sense — which Homelander definitely does not have, and he was spiraling about that in Season 4.

The virus we have now was built off regular Compound V, not V1. That would explain why Soldier Boy shrugs it off while heavy hitters like Rock Hard drop. Also relevant: both Soldier Boy and Stormfront are slated to pop up again in the 1950s-set prequel Vought Rising, which lines up with the whole 'they do not age' thing.

The V1 chase is the season's engine

"The reason for Soldier Boy's immunity becomes the MacGuffin of Season 5."

— Kripke, on what everyone is chasing

• Homelander is already on the hunt for V1 in the trailers, and he seems to be teaming with Sister Sage to cook up a fresh batch. If anyone can reverse-engineer it, it is Sage.
• If Homelander gets true V1 into his system, he becomes functionally immortal. Yes, he survived Project Odessa — along with Marie Moreau — but that used an unstable V1 variant. Different enough that he still wants the real deal.
• The most obvious V1 source is Soldier Boy himself. Sage could likely use his blood to recreate it. He will not love being a walking pharmacy.
• On the other side, if Butcher and the crew snag V1 first, it does two big things: - it could make their allied Supes — Butcher, Kimiko, Annie, etc. — immune to the current virus (which we already know does nothing to humans), removing the last big risk of using it; - and it lets Dr. Sameer Shah try a new, V1-based strain specifically designed to kill Homelander.

Are Soldier Boy and Homelander actually good now?

Short version: complicated. Homelander basically sent Soldier Boy to die, and Soldier Boy has presumably put that together. That father-son mess was already messy. But the trailers do show them together — at what looks like a medical facility — which sure smells like a V1 mission. Whether Soldier Boy eventually turns on him is the big question the show is clearly saving.

New episodes of The Boys drop Wednesdays on Prime Video. This season is moving fast, and if V1 really is the key, things are about to get messy in the best way.