The Boys includes a lot of very interesting and unique characters, but A-Train and The Deep are easily among the most twisted. During season one, the former was revealed to be addicted to Compound V, and that had deadly results for both him...and Hughie's girlfriend. The Deep, meanwhile, sexually assaulted Starlight, and found himself expelled from The Seven as a result.
Moving into season two, both characters are desperate to regain their celebrity status as part of this superhero team, but why? After all, it's not like their teammates treat them particularly well, and based on what actors Jessie T. Usher and Chace Crawford told us during a recent roundtable interview, it seems it all boils down to the status being a member of The Seven gives these "heroes."
Here's what Crawford said about The Deep's mission in season two to rejoin The Seven:
"I think it’s one of those situations where you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and your whole identity is wrapped up in this thing. Then, you just want to be back to that homeostasis of where you were before because that’s your 'family.' I think this season touches on it a little bit in that they could all be replaced eventually or at some point because they’re all pretty interchangeable or dispensable. I think that fear sets in, and they have that C/D list of celebrity, and they don’t want to fall all the way to the bottom and never have a career again. There’s definitely a lot out of fear and vulnerability and The Deep just really wants to get back in there with Homelander and his friends [Laughs]. He wants to be back."
As for Usher, he's still a member of The Seven when season two of The Boys begins, but A-Train's ego is also what leads to him doing whatever it takes to remain part of the coveted, celebrity team.
"You know, Josh, there was a thing that came up in season one when A-Train was talking to Popclaw, and she takes that statement as, ‘Oh, you don’t want to be a C-Level celebrity like me’ or whatever it was she said, and that’s kind of a tell of what the mentality is like for those in The Seven. They have this otherworldly status that’s more than what any of us can imagine. You’re the most famous person on the planet and you’re also one of the most powerful people on the planet."
"For someone like A-Train, and you’ll learn a lot more about his backstory in season two, that’s something that was not always the case. He feels like he came from the bottom and now he’s at this place, and the last thing he would want to happen is for that to be taken from him. So, whatever it is that he feels like he needs to do to maintain that status, he’s willing to do. We see him do some downright dirty sh*t in the first season, and it just gets grittier and grittier as time goes on because the thought of losing that is scarier that losing his life. He almost killed himself from dosing on Compound V just to maintain his status, so clearly, his life is not as valuable as his status is. It’s gonna get shaky, so we’ll see how things go!"
The first three episodes of The Boys arrive on Amazon on September 4th, with the following five instalments joining them week by week. We'll have a review of the former for you next Monday, but for now, you can check out the action-packed trailer for the show's second season below: