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The following contains spoilers for The Boys season 5 episodes 1 and 2.
The Boys has always walked a fine line between reality and fiction. One part satirical send-up of our pop culture’s superhero obsession and one part cynical display of the worst excesses of corporate greed, it’s a series that purposefully refuses to idolize its characters or glamorize the world they live in. Part of the reason its later seasons have often felt so uncomfortable to watch is that their subject matter has been steadily veering closer and closer toward our own reality. Just two episodes into its final season, The Boys has already featured everything from government “freedom” camps and AI hoaxes to the terrifying implementation of full fascism, as evidenced by Homelander’s (Anthony Starr) determination to jail those who have done so much as post a meme criticizing him.
Perhaps it’s a sign of just how bad everything has gotten in the world of this show that the introduction of a band of teenage TikTokers provides the premiere with its primary source of levity. But here we are.
Maitreyi Ramakrishnan plays Countess Crow, a young supe with the weirdly specific ability of communicating with corvids. But rather than saving the day, she and her fellow teenage heroes spend most of their time hawking sponcon on TikTok. But while Countess Crow is busy half-heartedly extoling the virtues of Black Noir-branded eyeliner online, the actress who plays her was hoping to experience one of the show’s traditionally violent deaths.
“I knew of The Boys because my friends are huge fans, but I hadn’t personally watched before,” Ramakrishnan tells Den of Geek. “When the audition came through, I was like, okay, let me audition for this, because if I got it, that would be so cool to be a part of, just to show my friends. And I also really wanted my friends to see me die and maybe get merked by Homelander. Of course, I started watching the show and now I can say I am a fan. But… yeah! Kinda sucks that I got away, huh?”
A member of the young superhero group Teenage Kix alongside Jetstreak (Dylan Colton), Rock Hard (Andrew Iles), and Sheline (Emma Elle Paterson), Countess Crow is notable for her dramatic, almost Gothic appearance, which admittedly goes with the whole murder bird theme.
“Shoutout to the makeup department, because the eye makeup was crazy. And them having to match that perfectly [in every take]… the attention to detail on the show is crazy,” Ramakrishnan says. “The coolest part of working on The Boys was working on The Boys, genuinely, as a production, because I’ve never been on a set that is more obsessed with attention to detail than this show.”
Ramakrishnan cites the show’s immersive dedication to its sets and world-building as a helpful tool for its performers.
“There should be a The Boys museum,” she says. “Every piece of equipment in the gym, for example, was branded with ‘Vought.’ Every poster. Unfortunately, investing in practical effects is dying more and more, but… Rock Hard was real. And goopy. Real and goopy and way too huge. A person goes inside that! That’s crazy!”
Countess Crow’s abilities may be much less… overtly goopy, but they are equally unique. As her name implies, she’s capable of communicating with and possibly even manipulating crows. (Though her personal murder has decreased in size thanks to the cat-like Sheline.) This, in theory, could provide her with everything from physical protection to access to a vast web of information.
“At first, I thought okay, so, she just talks to just specifically crows, no other birds, alright, I guess that’s fine,” Ramakrishan says. “But then Laz [Alonso, who plays Mother’s Milk] and I were talking about it, and he actually had a lot of knowledge about crows, and was explaining to me that crows are incredibly smart and if you mess with a crow they’ll remember that for life. Then they’ll tell their friends! So crows that you’ve never met now will also hate you. Isn’t that wild? It is a cool power. And to think that Countess Crow once had, you know, a bunch of crows? That’s kinda scary. Also, the crow was real, by the way. Russell was real, and that was honestly so cool.”
Intriguingly, Countess Crow is also the only member of Teenage Kix who seems in any way reluctant about her life as an influencer or her involvement with Vought.
“I just kind of pieced it together based on everything that we saw in the episode,” Ramakrishnan says when asked to share her thoughts about her character’s personal history. “She’s this young kid who was given a nice little chunk of change to join the Teenage Kix situation and probably got a nice deal. She’s just an innocent, in her earlier days, when she had more crows. Obviously, I think she has realized that she hates this life, but she’s probably stuck in some shitty contract that she can’t get out of, and obviously is very depressed. She’s just a normal kid that would probably like to go back to living her life and going to school, maybe study abroad, and talk to crows around the world and call it a day.”
Everyone who has ever watched The Boys has probably wondered what kind of superhuman ability they might be able to wield in its dark — and often extremely messed-up universe. But while Ramakrishnan herself plays a supe, she’s not sure if she would want an ability like her character’s. Or anyone else’s.
“I don’t even know if I necessarily would want a power,” she says thoughtfully when asked about what sort of ability she’d like to wield in The Boys universe. “So many of them are bad. Or they have a drawback. That’s what it is. You can’t quickly say, like, A-Train, because look at the pilot episode. Shit goes bad. And also, if it’s a power from The Boys, then there’s a solid chance there were also some crazy drugs. I don’t want some serum. I think I’d actually just like to stay human.”
For Ramakrishnan, The Boys works precisely because its approach to the entire concept of a world where superpowers run rampant is so unique — and so unashamedly bleak.
“I think that’s why the show does so well, actually, because there are real consequences in this universe. That’s why I love the show, because it’s not just like, ‘Oh, a cool power, wow!’ It comes with a price, so it’s not something that’s been romanticized. I also think something the show does very well is that it takes the power that a person gets and puts it on a personality. So that if the personality was different, we’d have a very different story. And I think all those different factors, all those layered details make the show so much more compelling.”
Whether we’ll see Countess Crow again in The Boys’ final season is a question that only the show itself can answer. But whether we see her onscreen again or not, Ramakrishnan is hopeful her legacy as the corvid queen will live on.
“I can’t say anything, I guess we’ll never know!” she laughs. “I don’t know. But it was really cool to have that ending where she kind of walked away… a little mystery. In the Eric Kripke universe of it all, characters always love to come back. No one’s ever really gone. And you know what, maybe even if I’m not physically back, my legacy will probably be referenced. Countess Crow will be referenced, maybe at another point, you know?”
New episodes of The Boys season 5 premiere Wednesdays on Prime Video.
The post The Boys: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan Wishes Countess Crow Got Merked by Homelander appeared first on Den of Geek.
