The Boys Season 5 Finally Reveals The Show's Most Mysterious Superpowers

Contains spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 2 — "Teenage Kix"

Along with many other game-changers, the ending of "The Boys" Season 4 features a big Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) cliffhanger. As a Hail Mary plot to save herself from Homelander's (Antony Starr) Vought purge, she took Compound V to gain superpowers of her own, and her head started promptly bubbling. There seemed to be two ways this could go; Either she'd become one of the strongest characters on "The Boys," or she'd be reduced to some sort of particularly unfortunate abomination as an exclamation point to her eternally harangued status. In "Gen V" Season 2, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) teased the latter development with a line that suggested Ashley has indeed turned into something truly nasty.

During the first two episodes of "The Boys" Season 5, we gradually find out that the show did take the abomination route — but in a way that's far more interesting than mere gross-out tactics. Ashley is now the Vice President, in a marriage of convenience with Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), and saddled with a psychic twin that manifests as a face in the back of her head. The twin is more than just a nasty visual and a mind-reader, though. It constantly talks to Ashley and second-guesses her every move, acting like a conscience of sorts. The overall effect is that Ashley now has an extremely strange Jiminy Cricket whispering in her ear, which could lead to interesting developments during the show's endgame. 

The psychic twin power might be frustrating for Ashley — it does sound pretty exhausting. However, it's also an incredibly fitting superpower for this particular character. Ashley has always survived by the skin of her teeth, falling upwards into increasingly powerful positions while simultaneously being under constant threat by more powerful figures. Her new supe status continues this trend. It allows her to remain a part of the ruling regime. Yet, she's still constantly on the edge, and completely at the mercy of stronger supes, as has been the case throughout her arc. 

The fact that the psychic twin plays as something of a conscience also teases a potential impending heroic turn, which reflects the way Ashley has grown increasingly disillusioned, stressed, and uncomfortable with her situation over the seasons. She's been balancing the line between a genuine antagonist and a victim of her circumstances for quite some time now, and it'll be interesting to see whether she'll eventually try to do the right thing. Yes, she'll almost certainly fail, but at least Colby Minifie will likely have plenty of juicy scenes to work with.

"The Boys" Season 5 is streaming on Prime Video.