The Boys Season 5 Introduces A Truly Disgusting Character Played By An NCIS Actor

Contains spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 1 — "Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite"

"The Boys" Season 5 has left all the critics stunned, with many pointing out that show still knows how to play with shock value humor. The season premiere, "Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite," demonstrates this with an ingenious way to infiltrate a prison camp. For their mission to save Hughie (Jack Quaid), Frenchie (Tomer Capone), and M.M. (Laz Alonso) before an impending execution, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and Starlight (Erin Moriarty) recruit the help of a hack screenwriter. The twist: The guy's actually a supe known as The Worm. 

The Worm is played by Ely Henry. He's best known for his role as forensic chemist Philip Elertson in "NCIS: Origins," but fans of the procedural franchise are in for something very different here. The Worm is one of the grosser characters "The Boys" has introduced yet. His big power is to eat soil at great speeds, which he can use to tunnel underground. The nasty part: As Kimiko (who gets a hilarious upgrade for "The Boys" Season 5) and Starlight find out firsthand, The Worm gets rid of the excess soil the exact way people generally expel solid waste, only with far more volume and velocity than you might expect. 

It's practically traditional for a season premiere of "The Boys" to feature a magnificently unexpected gross-out moment. From the very unfortunate tender moment between the shrinking supe Termite (Brett Geddes) and his partner Peter (Jarrett Siddall) in the Season 3 premiere, to the extremely intimate picture Billy Butcher texts to Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) in the Season 4 opener, these brief blasts of obscenity are to be expected at this point. 

The Worm's grand moment is telegraphed more elaborately than most such scenes. We find out pretty early on that he's able to dig tunnels and legitimately eats soil, so it's technically possible to see the big moment coming. Still, the sheer audacity of the tunneling scene does the shock value trick, especially since the show devotes plenty of time to the fact that Starlight and Kimiko find themselves within the blast radius of the Worm's, uh, expulsions. The end result is as gross as it is entertaining, and it still manages to advance the plot. In other words, the bold final season of "The Boys" very much delivers on the nastiness front. 

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