The Boys Season 5 Gives One Of Its Best Characters A Hilarious Upgrade
Contains spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 2 — "Teenage Kix"
"Speech therapy, therapy therapy, and so much f****** TikTok" was all it took to turn one somewhat underserved "The Boys" main character into a genuine challenger for the title of the show's most delightful figure. Yes, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) speaks freely now, and it's amazing. Thanks to the rehab program-slash-social media binge that she apparently found the time to go through during her Manila exile, Kimiko has fully regained her ability to speak in the bold and occasionally brilliant "The Boys" Season 5 — but with one extremely entertaining caveat.
Because Kimiko's secret sign language that she devised with her brother Kenji (Abraham Lim) is her normal communication method, she's not used to verbal speech, and hasn't quite figured out the filter between a person's thoughts and what they actually say. As a result, she keeps simply speaking her mind without thinking, and since she's a character on "The Boys," her mind is absolutely filthy. In fact, much of her dialogue is either oversharing or brutally insulting people, even in casual friendly conversation; In fact, her very first line is to compare Starlight's (Erin Moriarty) oily skin to a McRib immediately after hugging her in genuine delight.
This development is a genius move on the show's part. Kimiko still gets to keep her intensity and character development, but now she comes with the added bonus of a steady stream of absurdity and comic relief.
Kimiko's muteness was always a strange holdover from the comics
Writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson's "The Boys" comic features a very different version of Kimiko than Eric Kripke's Prime Video show does. The print version doesn't get nearly as much character development, or even a name, and she's known as the Female (short for Female of the Species) throughout the comic's run. While she has a softer side, she's largely defined by her struggle with an innate need to kill, and she breaks her selective muteness briefly and rarely.
Kimiko's appearances in "The Boys" Season 1 start out in a similar fashion, but she veers in a different direction almost immediately, becoming a far more three-dimensional character than her paper counterpart as the show progresses. While her psychologically-induced muteness is still an important part of the character's backstory, it also starts working somewhat against her — after all, the selective muteness is ultimately a holdover from the comics, and a lack of dialogue always seemed to hold back the show's version of Kimiko a bit.
In the first two episodes of "The Boys" Season 5, Kimiko is a font of creative and (possibly) unintended insults. Allowing her to finally communicate freely (and very, very profanely) does wonders for the character. It also uplifts actor Karen Fukuhara, who's clearly having a whale of a time with her sudden abundance of great lines.
"The Boys" Season 5 is streaming on Prime Video.