‘The Boys’ Showrunner Eric Kripke on ‘Frankly Disturbing’ Twist for Aya Cash’s Stormfront

“She really does reveal her true colors in a number of ways and really presents a threat on a number of levels for Homelander,” actor Antony Starr tells TheWrap

The Boys Stormfront
Amazon Prime Video

(Warning: This post contains spoilers for “The Boys” Season 2 Episodes 1-3.)

By the end of Episode 3 of “The Boys” Season 2, viewers learn that series newcomer Aya Cash’s character, Stormfront, “is a racist piece of garbage.”

That’s how showrunner Eric Kripke described the newest member of the Supes of the Seven, who kills Kimiko’s (Karen Fukuhara) brother, Kenji, — a man who has been given Compound V and turned into a “super terrorist” — and takes quite a lot of pleasure in slaughtering the “f—ing yellow bastard.”

Up until that fight, the audience is led to believe Stormfront is a social-media savvy superhero trying to bring some progressive change to Vought.

“We sort of intentionally misdirected that in the beginning [of Season 2] for the frankly disturbing reason that, if you look at a lot of nationalism and white supremacy these days, it’s online,” Kripke told TheWrap, referring to keeping the secret of Stormfront’s dark side throughout the first three episodes of Season 2, which all launched on Amazon Prime Video Friday.

“It couches itself in very savvy, friendly terms to attract young people. And we wanted to reflect that, because hate doesn’t come at you with a big neon sign that says, ‘Hey, we’re hate.’ They come at you in pretty insidious and attractive packages because they know how social media works. So we wanted a character that when you first met her you’d be like, ‘Oh, wow. What a free thinker. She’s so attractive and interesting.’ And then you sort of reveal that she’s peddling the same s–t that people having been peddling for a thousand years.”

Stormfront kills Kimiko’s (a.k.a. The Female) brother Kenji (played by Abraham Lim) at the climax of a giant fight in an apartment building, where she has murdered residents to get to the “super villain.” Kenji is killed by Stormfront while Kimiko looks on in terror, having just been in the middle of an attempt to turn her brother back to the “good” side before her, Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid), Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) and Frenchie (Tomer Capon) have to turn him into the authorities.

Kripke says there’s no way this traumatizing event is going to be something that Kimiko lets slide.

“Yes, we are definitely heading towards a Kimiko/Stormfront showdown,” he told us. “Kimiko is somebody you do not want to cross and I would say Stormfront has crossed her in a pretty bad way.”

So that’s what Stormfront’s racist agenda means for The Boys, but what about the other Supes? Well, Homelander (Antony Starr) is the only one of them who witnessed that behavior and what he really cares about more than anything right now is how she’s stealing his thunder.

“At the end of Episode 3, she really does reveal her true colors in a number of ways and really presents a threat on a number of levels for Homelander,” Starr told us. “She makes it very clear that she wants The Seven to be hers and that’s really– I mean, Homelander’s identity is based on upon his position within Vought as the leader of The Seven. So naturally, there is going to be a battle. There is going to be blood. There are going to be issues between the two. And taking down that super villain in Episode 3 was going to be Homelander’s way back into the group, and regaining some of that territory that he feels he’s lost. And she very clearly puts him on the back foot and it’s great.”

As for where things go from here, Starr says that as bad as you might think Homelander has been throughout “The Boys” Season 1 and the first few episodes of Season 2, he thinks “Stormfront is worse.”

“And I think most people should think she’s worse and it all becomes very clear as the season goes,” he said. “She really is such a big threat for Homelander and she’s definitely, because of the way she comes in, she’s a whole new kettle of fish for him. She doesn’t respect him and she puts him publicly on the spot right off the bat. So she’s a whole new group of issues for him to deal with and he’s gotta come up with a new approach and fast.”

A new episode of Season 2 of “The Boys” premieres next Friday, Sept. 11, on Amazon Prime Video.

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