The Boys Season 5, Episode 7 Gives The Team Its First Major Death
Contains spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 7 — "The Frenchman, The Female, and the Man Called Mother's Milk"
"The Boys" Season 5, Episode 7 is called "The Frenchman, The Female, and the Man Called Mother's Milk" for a reason. Marvin "Mother's Milk" Milk (Laz Alonso) gets a lot of attention and discusses the origins of his nickname. Kimiko "The Female" Miyashiro (Karen Fukuhara) might become the world's only hope if the Boys' plan to give her Soldier Boy's (Jensen Ackles) supe-depowering abilities works. And Serge, "The Frenchman" (Tomer Capone)? He's dead.
Frenchie confronts Homelander (Antony Starr) when the latter arrives to seek his newest dangerous enemy, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward). Frenchie manages to successfully convince the freshly immortal supe that they've managed to replicate Soldier Boy's power. The combination of this potential threat and Frenchie's taunts is enough to make Homelander focus exclusively on him and leave the premises, instead of tearing the place apart in search of the hiding Sage and Kimiko. Unfortunately, the Hail Mary plan doesn't end well for Frenchie, who's gruesomely and fatally injured by Homelander.
As Frenchie passes, he gets a final heartwarming moment with the love of his life. His last words to Kimiko, "From the first," are the same as they are in the comic, though the manner of his death is different. In the comic, Billy Butcher (played on the show by Karl Urban) kills both him and The Female with a bomb.
It's curtains for Frenchie, but not before he finishes his story
In retrospect, the bold and occasionally brilliant "The Boys" Season 5 telegraphed Frenchie's demise by giving him a series of moments to shine. He temporarily led the team when the others fell victim to weaponized supe toxoplasmosis. He was instrumental in manufacturing the supe virus, and was involved in the attempt to give Kimiko the ability to strip other supes of their powers. He even finds the time to get in Sister Sage's good graces by bonding over "Love Island," of all things. Combine all that with his love story with Kimiko finally nearing its peak with their plans of getting a dog, and Frenchie's narrative arc was pretty much done and dusted.
While Frenchie is the first of the Boys to fall, his live-action arc has been far better than it ever was in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comics. The print Frenchie has his moments of lucidity, but overall, he's a homicidal maniac whose sole interest in the concept of reality is The Female. Compare this with the show's far more complex Frenchie, and it's easy to see that Tomer Capone's character went a long way from the source material — even though he didn't quite make it to the finish line.
As for his killer, it's been clear for a while that Homelander deserves a fate worse than death on "The Boys" Season 5. The only question is who's going to deliver.