The Boys Season 3 is well on its way to drawing a close but has been the weekly topic of the pop culture zeitgeist. This season has shown some extreme, outrageous gore, nudity, twist and turns, and setups that have received rave reviews from viewers and critics. However, the show rarely pulls its punches with commentary on today’s society, politics, glorifying comic book heroes, and even relationships. Yet, showrunner Eric Kripke continues to find exciting and entertaining ways to convey those messages.
Minor spoilers ahead.
Near the tail end of Episode Four, “Glorious Five Year Plan,” the Boys had finally found the location of Solider Boy (Jensen Ackles). Unfortunately, during the rescue mission, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) was on the receiving end of a powerful blast by Solider Boy while saving Frenchie (Tomer Capone). Episode Five, “The Last Time to Look on This World of Lies”, found Kimiko in the hospital healing from her wounds and Frenchie right beside her the entire time. What later occurred is perhaps, and in my opinion, one of the best scenes in the series.
One factor that has worked well in this season of The Boys is Kimiko rediscovering her identity and relationship with Frenchie. The two become very close during the comic book run. The live-action adaptation has finally dived headfirst into that notion with a unique and out-of-nowhere musical number during episode five. Recently, Kripke spoke with us about how this expression of Kimiko’s love came to be for this season of The Boys.
So how long did it take to get that whole thing together – and did you have to edit anything that didn’t work with that musical number?
Eric Kripke: You’d be surprised by dark The Boys is – but I love Hollywood musicals. It’s a genre that I completely love, and I was like dying to get a musical number into the show. So we actually tried in Season Two – in the script stage. It was gonna be a number for Karen [Fukuhara], but we never could quite pull it together, and it wasn’t right to the story, and it sort of fell away.
So I’ve always had my eye on doing it. And this season, we sort of found the perfect story opportunity to do it. But then you actually have to pull it off, right? So the composer—I mean, it has to go off like clockwork, so the composer needs to write exactly the right length of this and edit it together.
Kripke understood the level of editing, choreography, and detail needed to pull one hell of a musical number but wouldn’t break too hard from the reality of this ultra-violent comic adaptation.
Eric Kripke: It’s a classic Hollywood song, but it must be edited to exactly the right length. So then our choreographer, Amy [Wright]—who was just brilliant, had to get Karen and Tomer into weeks and weeks of choreography [and] all the background dancers. Plus, that’s really Karen singing. I mean, not live, but we recorded it, but that’s really her.
She does all of her own singing this year – so you have to bring all of these elements together. Then you have to shoot it like a classic Hollywood musical with cranes and overhead shots, and Nelson [Cragg]—our director, did such a fabulous job with that. You have to bring all of that together and make it work.
So after we worked that hard on all of those elements, there was no way I was cutting any of it down because we busted so much ass to pull that off. And I love it. It puts such a smile on your face. I love that, for as dark and cynical as the show can be, there are these relationships and little beating hearts in the show that are so pure – and I think Frenchie and Kamiko are one of them.
Honestly, I absolutely love that moment in the series. The hard work really shows on the screen.
The Boys Season 3 is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Be sure to come back to ScreenGeek soon for a big Homelander scoop regarding the Season Finale.