Cherry (The Boys episode)

"Cherry" is the second episode of the first season of the American superhero television series The Boys, based on the comic book series of the same name by Garth Ennis. It is set in a universe where superpowered individuals, known as Supes, are portrayed as corrupt individuals instead of the heroes the general public believes they are. The episode was written by the series showrunner Eric Kripke and directed by Matt Shakman.

The episode follows Billy Butcher and Hughie Campbell reuniting with the former's old partner Frenchie to find a way to kill Translucent before Vought can find him. This is much to the shock of Hughie, who continues to struggle with the death of his girlfriend, Robin. Meanwhile, the Seven's leader, Homelander, starts an investigation of his own to find Translucent after Vought's vice president, Madelyn Stillwell, dismisses the latter's disappearance.

"Cherry" was released on the streaming service Amazon Prime Video on July 26, 2019. The episode received positive reviews from critics, praising the visual style, direction, performances, black humor, faithfulness to the comics, and Frenchie's introduction. However, criticism for the episode's was aimed at the writing, which felt repetitive and overwritten.

Plot
After their fight with Translucent, Billy Butcher and Hughie Campbell hide the former's body in the trunk of Butcher's car and manage to escape before the police arrive. Translucent is revealed to have survived the fight. The two approach Butcher's former partner Frenchie to aid them in finding a way to kill Translucent. Frenchie refuses to cooperate, but Butcher forces him to help them after he makes him an accomplice when Translucent sees him with the other two. As Translucent has an impenetrable diamond-hard skin that makes him hard to kill, the three take him to the basement of an abandoned restaurant and lock him in an electrified cage to ensure Vought can't find him through his tracker, while they find a way to kill him.

At the Seven's tower, Madelyn Stillwell and her assistant Ashley Barrett start worrying about Translucent's disappearance after A-Train replaces the former's place in a visit to a kid with cancer in a hospital that goes awry. The Seven's leader Homelander starts questioning Stilwell about finding Translucent and offers to find him, but the latter refuses. Stilwell also tells Homelander that the Deep found evidence incriminating him in the plane crash that killed the Mayor of Baltimore. Homelander tells her that he did it because he heard him blackmailing her, but she tells him not to interfere in her business. Homelander threatens the Deep to not approach Stillwell the next time a similar incident occurs, to which the latter fearfully agrees.

Frenchie creates a bullet made with the same material from Translucent's skin, hoping that the bullet would go through his skin and kill him. Butcher shoots Translucent but the bullet bounces back. The bullet destroys the foil shielding the basement's ceiling, allowing Vought to track down Translucent's location, prompting Stillwell to dispatch a security team to find him. Butcher approaches his former lover, CIA deputy director Susan Reynor, to ask her for Translucent's files. However, Reynor reveals that the files are buried and admits that she would not give him the files anyway.

Annie January struggles to settle into her new job as the newest member of the Seven. For her first assignment, Stillwell's assistant Ashley assigns her on a patrol alongside The Deep. While patrolling the docks and investigating a smuggling drugs case, Annie rebuffs The Deep for what he did to her and warns him that she will kill him if he ever touches her again. After foiling the operation and capturing the thugs, several Vought journalists show up to use the recent events for publicity. Later, Annie saves a woman from two boys who were about to rape her, unaware that she was being recorded - exposing her secret identity in the process. Ashley berates Annie as the video only shows her beating up the two men after the woman ran off, which will result in negative PR for Vought and the Seven. It doesn't matter if Annie did the right thing because the only thing most Supes care about is their public image and most of their "heroic acts" are staged for the media.

During a Vought fundraiser, Stilwell approaches Senator Calhoun intending to convince him to recruit the Supes for national defense, but the latter refuses, stating that no one wants to outsource the country's weapons and admits that he is afraid of Homelander being on the front line. As a result, he is tricked into having sex with a shapeshifter named Doppelganger who takes the form of a female bartender to take intimate photos. Stillwell uses the photos to blackmail the Senator into cooperating.

Hughie approaches Translucent to find out what A-Train was doing when he killed Robin. Translucent attempts to manipulate Hughie into giving up his attempt at avenging Robin. Frenchie finds a way to kill Translucent after realizing that while his skin is indestructible, his insides are the same as a normal human. He proceeds to insert a C-4 explosive into Translucent's insides via his rectum. Translucent begs for his life and reveals that A-Train was on his way to visit his girlfriend, Popclaw, when he killed Robin.

Homelander decides to find Translucent on his own, coercing a Crime Analytics employee named Anika to tell him his exact location. He arrives at the restaurant, prompting Butcher and Frenchie to leave Hughie alone in the basement with the detonator to buy some time. Frenchie distracts Homelander just long enough for Butcher to detonate a nearby building, diverting Homelander's attention.

Meanwhile, Translucent escapes the electric cage by using a bottle of his urine to destroy the cage's battery. Hughie notices this, and threatens Translucent with the detonator. Translucent tries to convince Hughie not to kill him, telling Hughie that the rest of The Seven will get their revenge if he does, and saying he will be the hero if he lets him go. Hughie hesitates, but his rage shortly takes over. He detonates the C4, showering him in Translucent's viscera.

Development
An adaptation of the comic book series The Boys was initially developed as a feature-length film in 2008. However, after several failed attempts to produce the film, which caused it to be in development hell for several years, the plans for a film were scrapped in favor of a television series. In 2016, it was announced Cinemax would develop the show. Erick Kripke became the series showrunner and head writer, alongside Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, who directed the pilot episode. In November 2017, Amazon acquired the rights to develop the show, announcing that they would produce over eight episodes for the first season while confirming that the previously announced creative team would still be attached to the series. The episode titled "Cherry" was written by Kripke and directed by Matt Shakman. The episode is titled with the name of the issues #3–6 of the comic book series of the same name.

Writing
Kripke considered that the character Jack from Jupiter's alien-looking design was too fantastic for the world that he and his crew were creating in the series, and that would mess with the mythology of the human characters being born with powers. Intending to keep the realism of the TV series, Kripke decided to replace it with a more human-like character created exclusively for the TV series known as Translucent, though he retains the same powers of having an indestructible skin. For the character's death by being blown up from the inside, Kripke admitted that this wouldn't be probable to do in real life due to the strength of the skin that would have contained the blast, accepting it was a conscious decision he took, and commented: "Yes, you're absolutely right, the skin should have contained the blast, but then we'd have missed out on that amazing bloody explosion of blood and meat. Keep Your Rules in Mind, but Never Logic Yourself Out Of Entertainment."

The episode also made a pivotal and major change from the comics, where Hughie kills for the first time. While the part where Hughie murders a Supe remains the same, the way the character did it is changed. In the comics, he accidentally kills a Supe under the name of Blarney Cock in self-defense as the latter attacked him. In the TV series, Hughie decides to kill him on purpose after initially intending to let him go by blowing up the bomb that was inside Translucent. This major change was released by Kripke, as he and the production crew intended to increase the level of violence and gore instead of keeping the same one from the original comic book series and without any intention of toning it down.

Casting
The episode main cast includes Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Antony Starr as John Gillman / Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Annie January / Starlight, Dominique McElligott as Maggie Shaw / Queen Maeve, Jessie Usher as A-Train, Chace Crawford as Kevin Moskowitz / The Deep, Tomer Capone as Frenchie, Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir, and Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell. It also stars Simon Pegg as Hugh Campbell Sr., Alex Hassell as Translucent, Jennifer Esposito as Susan Reynor, David Andrews as Senator Calhoun, Shaun Benson as Ezekiel, Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, Ana Sani as Anika, and Jordana Lajoie as Cherie. Laz Alonso and Karen Fukuhara are credited for their respective characters as Mother's Milk and the Female, though neither of them make an appearance at the episode. Mike Massaro makes a cameo appearance as an ESPN interviewer for the episode.

Filming
The filming of the first season took place in Toronto while the story takes place in New York City. Filming took place at the exterior of the Roy Thomson Hall to emulate the exterior of the Vought International company headquarters, known as Seven Tower, while the tower was created digitally. For the tower's interior, which includes some of the rooms and the modern lobby where the company makes the fundraiser event in the episode, the filming for such scenes would take place inside the Roy Thomson Hall. The scenes that took place at the fictional in-universe Tony Cicero's restaurant where The Boys kept Translucent imprisoned were filmed in a restaurant in the district of Etobicoke in the province of Ontario.

Visual effects
Visual effects for the episode were created by DNEG TV, Framestore, Folks VFX, Mavericks VFX, Method Studios, Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies VFX, Mr. X, Pixomondo, Rocket Science VFX, Rodeo FX, and Soho VFX. It was announced that visual effects supervisor Stephan Fleet would be in charge of overseeing the development for the visual effects. A scene where Translucent is dumped into the back of a car, Fleet decided to keep the actor in a grey suit that he used for the fight scene in the previous episode to keep him invisible, as he considered that it was important to maintain the character's human weight. For the creation of the series one of the most violent and gory scenes where Translucent explodes, the visual effects team decided to make the scene entirely practical without using CGI to capture the realism of the scene.

Music
The episode features "Dans Ma Ruche" by Guizmo, "Neat Neat Neat" by The Damned, "La Foule" by Youssoupha, and "Cherry Bomb" by The Runaways.

Release
"Cherry" premiered on Amazon Prime Video in the United States on July 26, 2019. It was released alongside all the episodes from the season, which were released on the same date. The episode, along with the rest of The Boys ' first season, was released on Blu-ray on May 31, 2022.

Reception
"Cherry" received positive reviews from critics. Brian Tallerico from Vulture rated the episode with 4 out of 5 stars, for which he praised its design and performances, but stating that the episode suffers from the talky superhero-philosophy dialogue, which sometimes feels overwritten and repetitive and also criticizing the episode's story, which he deemed added nothing new to the series plot. However, despite the episode's flaws, he still considered that there is still enough hope for the television series to continue. Greg Wheeler from The Review Geek rated the episode with four out of five stars by stating: "With the facade of the Seven chipping away, it'll be interesting to see what direction the show takes from here but for now, The Boys delivers another progressive and well written episode." Darryl Jasper from ScienceFiction.com gave a positive review of the episode and commented that the episode continues expanding the world and considered that the character Billy Butcher's past would be something interesting to follow and explore in the upcoming episodes for the series.

While writing a review for Tilt Magazine, Randy Dankievitch stated that the episode takes a deft turn for The Boys, with an interesting deconstruction of the classic "villain captures hero" trope. There are also a lot of intriguing other ideas brought into play, be it the power hierarchy inside the Seven or Madelyn's larger goals of getting some of that good American defense spending money injected into Vought International. Martin Carr from the Flickering Myth gave the episode a positive response to the episode to which he commented: "In many respects The Boys is still getting warmed up, stretching its collective legs and establishing tone. Some have come for the guns, gore and censorship baiting excess, while most will stay for the depth, breadth and social commentary."