For 15 shining minutes, The Boys Season 5 became a Supernatural reunion.
In Season 5, episode 5, titled “One-Shots,” Supernatural leads Jensen Ackles, Jared Padalecki, and Misha Collins share the screen again in a sequence that, in classic The Boys fashion, goes completely off the rails.
Ackles has played Soldier Boy on The Boys since Season 3, while Padalecki and Collins take on the roles of Mister Marathon and Malchemical, respectively. Tying the Supernatural connection in a neat bow is The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke, who created Supernatural and served as its showrunner for the first five seasons.
Padalecki and Collins’ The Boys roles are lower-level Supes whom Homelander (Antony Starr) has scorned in the past, and who disagree with his puritanical fascist regime. So when Homelander and Soldier Boy show up at Mister Marathon’s mansion in search of a dose of V1, Mister Marathon and Malchemical take their visit as an opportunity to destroy Homelander once and for all.
Malchemical breathes noxious gas in Homelander’s face, knocking him unconscious. Meanwhile, Mister Marathon tries to convince Soldier Boy to chest blast his son into oblivion. That’s right: Working together, the Supernatural trio has the potential to end The Boys‘ Homelander problem for good.
Mashable Top Stories
For some baffling reason, though, Soldier Boy decides that no, now is not the right time to rid the world of Homelander. He was literally trying to kill him back in episode 4, but he chooses now to become the Father of the Year to a fascist with a god complex?
(Okay, that award might be a bit of a stretch. Soldier Boy does utter the phrase “Nobody fucks my son but me,” so there’s still room for growth.)
Soldier Boy’s about-face kicks off the episode’s most diabolically fun sequence. It all begins with Soldier Boy crushing Malchemical’s throat, or, in Supernatural terms, Dean’s actor murdering Castiel’s. Don’t worry, Destiel shippers have seen far worse. I didn’t even follow Supernatural that closely, but even I remember Castiel confessing his love for Dean before getting shot into Super Turbo Hell in the show’s divisive final season. Does this neck snap act as a funny bookend to that infamous moment? Or does it reopen old Supernatural wounds?
Either way, it does set the tone for the rest of Soldier Boy’s bloody showdown with Mister Marathon (and the many celebrities currently hanging out at his mansion). Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, Will Forte, Craig Robinson, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse all become cannon fodder for Soldier Boy, who throws them in Mister Marathon’s path. Several explosive deaths and one lube slip-n-slide later, and Soldier Boy is able to break Mister Marathon’s legs. Stop the Winchester-on-Winchester violence!
In the end, the Supernatural reunion only takes up a small portion of “One-Shots.” Yet it’s a memorable one, playing on the audience’s knowledge of the actors’ prior work together to pack a bigger punch. Plus, in a relentlessly gloomy season stifled by Homelander’s megalomania, it’s a nice change to see him get knocked out of the equation for a bit. Season 5’s dourness comes rushing back in once Homelander wakes back up and goes on to terrorize Firecracker (Valorie Curry), but at least with the mansion set piece, we were granted a return to form to the earlier days of The Boys‘ more irreverent (yet no less gruesome) WTF-ery.
New episodes of The Boys premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.
