Analyzing The Abilities Of Characters From The Boys Pt. IV

Analyzing The Abilities of Characters From The Boys Pt. IV

🫀A-Train🫀

From the fastest man alive to one of America’s most wanted, A-Train/Reggie has known nothing but stress and urgency his entire life. Despite his relatively laid back demeanor he leads with most of the time, under the surface of his douchey jock persona is a vulnerable and terrified individual. Him being a speedster seems to be the result of the Compound V (acting as a form of instant evolution for most patients) giving him the ability to escape gunfire by outrunning the bullets when he was younger. This story foreshadows his future, with the issues he’s constantly outrunning increasing in severity until the shift from internal struggles of addiction and balancing his public persona with his personal love of Popclaw, to external survival issues like Homelander and the rest of Vought.

His redemption arc plays itself out to juxtapose The Deep. While both characters harmed Hughie/Annie deeply in the first episode alone, A-Train goes on to feel remorse and even tries to make up for it. He risks his life by being the leak in order to make amends for everything he’s done. The fact that he saw Ashley as someone worth saving meant something remarkably significant to me about how their characters both feel trapped at Vought despite the tremendous power they both wield. Ashley’s quite literally the CEO of one of the most influential corporations on the planet, and yet she behaves like a cockroach, even at times being reduced to crawling on the floor to appease Homelander when attempting to leave the room. A-Train is the fastest man alive, and yet he feels powerless to put an end to Vought’s tyranny up until the end of S4. When he finally strikes The Deep and makes it evident that they are two opposite sides of what once was the same coin, he revealed to the audience that regardless of having Blue Hawk’s heart beating in his chest, his heart’s still in the right place. Ultimately, it’s this desperation to right his wrongs and “escape” his still potentially deadly fate that make me view his speed as being a fitting ability for his character to inherit.