SIMON PEGG CAME UP WITH 'WEE HUGHIE' LINE FOR “THE BOYS” SEASON 4'S EMOTIONAL SCENE
"I thought that was a perfect way to come full circle," showrunner Eric Kripke tells EW.
Warning: This article contains spoilers from The Boys season 4, episode 5, "Beware the Jabberwork, My Son."
Simon Pegg has a long history with The Boys.
Artist Darick Robertson famously used the British actor of Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy as a model for the original Hughie Campbell of the comic books, co-created by Garth Ennis. So when TV producer Eric Kripke came on as showrunner for the Amazon series adaptation, it was a no-brainer to ask Pegg to play Hughie's father, Hugh Campbell, Sr.
Now that the character is making his way out of the show for good, Kripke needed a moment to honor that legacy — and it was a moment Pegg himself suggested.
The death of Pegg's Hugh Campbell on The Boys season 4's fifth episode, titled "Beware the Jabberwork, My Son," proved to be just as much of an emotional moment for his onscreen family as it was for the audience watching from home. The Compound V injected into his veins in the previous episode didn't heal him fully, but instead exacerbated his disorientation and memory loss from the stroke, while giving him the power to phase shift through solid objects.
The combination led to utter chaos in the hospital, as a frightened and confused Hugh murdered patients, nurses, and security guards alike — often by turning back into a solid form while in the middle of phase shifting through a person.
As it happens, there is a character in the comic books called Stool Shadow, who is a malfunctioning phase shifter and often can't finish her own thoughts, thanks to the multiple concussions she suffered in her life. However, Kripke says the figure was not a conscious inspiration for Hugh. "There's really only so many powers. You start to run through them," Kripke tells Entertainment Weekly. "It's always good to riff on powers that we have seen in comic book movies but get to put our Boys spin on it, which is if you stop phasing in the middle of somebody, that would be really terrible."
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Hughie (Jack Quaid) and his mom, Daphne (Rosemarie DeWitt), ultimately decide to put Hugh out of his misery so he doesn't have to suffer the rest of his life. In a gut-wrenching moment, Hugh turns to his son and calls him "my Wee Hughie" one last time. "That came from Simon," Kripke says. "That was not in the script. He reached out to me and he said, 'Can I call him 'Wee Hughie' as one last nod?'"
"Wee Hughie" is the nickname for the Hughie of the comics, and uttering it felt like a nod to Pegg's entire legacy with the character. "For him, this wasn't just him leaving the show, this was him saying goodbye to 20 years of this character being a part of his life," the showrunner adds. "I thought that was a perfect way to come full circle."
Related: The Boys used a Cecily Strong SNL sketch as inspiration for Starlight storyline
As for Quaid's "Wee Hughie" of the show, Kripke explains how so much of his story in season 4 is about growing up.
"He's always considered the young one, and he ends this season as a really mature, fully grown adult," he says. "Such a big part of that journey for anyone is dealing with sick parents or aging parents. It's just a very universal thing that everyone goes through. If you look at the episode in the very beginning, dad's calling him, 'You're still that kid.' By the end of the episode, Hughie's making decisions that are very mature and adult and real that his parents are unable to do. It's a little microcosm of a kid growing up."
New episodes of The Boys season 4 arrive every Thursday on Prime Video.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
2024-06-27T16:06:59Z dg43tfdfdgfd