Each member of the boys’ last words

from beginning to end, The boys is a brutal story where no one is safe and death is always on the cards. By the end of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic series, almost all of the titular characters are dead, and most of them at the hands of the same person. However, as cynical and sometimes immature as the series can be over, the creative team is careful to make sure that each of the main heroes gets a meaningful send-off.

Each of the boys’ last words says something about their characters and relationships, contributing to expose the humanity of the series’ deeply flawed heroes before they say goodbye for good – often in horribly violent ways.

Gregory Mallory

In The Boys #55, Mallory tells Butcher to hurry up and kill him

While Greg Mallory leaves the Boys before the start of the comic series, he is integral to the story, explaining the history of the group to Yuji and warning him about Butcher’s propensity for unfeeling violence. Mallory initially approaches Hughie in Ennis and Keith Burns’ tie-in series The Boys: Highland Ladydisguised as a friendly stranger who helps him adjust to the revelation that his girlfriend Annie January is one of the Seven.

When Yuji later seeks out Mallory for advice, he finds a much less sympathetic operator, who warns him in detail that Butcher is even more dangerous than he thinks, and that, “There is no one on earth who hates like that man does.” Hughie chooses Mallory for refusing to take a hand in the boys’ future, storms out and leaves Butcher’s mentor to his memories. Unfortunately, Yugi is not Mallory’s last guest.

in The Boys #55 (Ennis, John McCrea and Keith Burns), Butcher comes to find out what exactly Mallory told Eugene about their shared past. Because Butcher has come to kill him, Mallory explains that he is not afraid to die, since the trauma that Lamplighter visited on his family by killing his granddaughters left him with nothing to live for. The issue ends with a defeated Mallory saying:

Why don’t you do me a favor and get it the hell, mm?

While Mallory’s death is not shown on the page, in the backmatter of The Boys Omnibus #5Artist Russ Brown confirms, “And yes, Mallory is dead. Butcher killed him off camera, but pretty clearly he’s a dead man.”

The female of the species

In The Boys #68, the female speaks her only words of the series

Hughie uses the background provided by Mallory and a message from ally Vasily “Love Sausage” Vorishykin to discover that, having overseen the death of his wife’s killer, Butcher is moving forward with a genocidal plan to kill anyone who has any trace of Compound V .in their system – a move that will result in millions of innocent deaths. While he knows that he does not have a chance, Yuji asks the boys to stand with him – even the female, who is working hard to swear off violence.

Although the female is perhaps the only team member who could potentially beat Butcher one-on-one, Yuji acknowledges her right to stay out of the fight. However, at the last moment, the female joins their doomed mission by speaking The only four words she says in the entire series:

I hate bad people.

The French

In The Boys #69, French says goodbye to the female

Unfortunately, the boys are right to be wary of going against Butcher, and the issues that follow see him kill his former team. Knowing that he would be weak in a fight against French and the female, Butcher plants a bomb in their base in the Flatiron building in New York. While Frenchie finds the explosive, there are only two seconds left on the timer, giving it to him Just enough time to tell the female he has always loved her:

I do. From the first.

Although the Amazon adaptation portrays the bond between French and the female as romantic, this is not how it comes across in the comics, where the female is a younger character. When Mallory’s boys first capture the female, they intend to treat her as a living weapon, because of her ferocity and immense strength. However, French immediately sees her humanity, objecting that, “It’s not an it. She’s a she.” He volunteers to help integrate her into society, providing clothes and her first half meal, and spends the rest of the series trying to help her control her addiction to violence.

Franchise’s last words speak to the kinship he feels with the woman—someone whose humanity is often overlooked by the other characters, but who carries a deep and terrible grief similar to his own.

Mother’s milk

In the boys #68, mother’s milk rages at Butcher

Butcher gets up close and personal with Mother’s Milk, who he meets in the boys’ offices researching his plan. Mother’s milk beats butcher, blowing:

Why the **** you have to do this? Why do you have to be the way you are?! You think I ****** want this **** god dammit?

In perhaps the most haunting moment of the series, Butcher replies:

I know. I know. You are the best mate a **** I could hope for. I don’t deserve to ****** know you.

Butcher then reveals that he is holding a grenade, which he shoves in Mother Milk’s faceHe is wounded enough that Butcher can then strangle him to death. It is truly a terrible end for Mother’s Milk, who considered Butcher a close friend after Butcher helped save his daughter when she was a baby. Unfortunately, like The boys Gradually clear, Butcher is able to totally disconnect his violent nature from his emotions and morals, allowing him to kill MM without hesitation.

In many ways, Mother’s Milk is the character worst served by the series. Despite being introduced as a family man desperately trying to raise his rapidly aging daughter (a result of her own Compound V), he ends the story without a reconciliation with his child, who was traumatized by Butcher killing her mother (whom she believed to being at the request of mother’s milk.) MM’s moral and methodical nature makes it clear how undeserving butcher really is, but at the cost of giving his own story an incredibly bleak ending

Billy Butcher

In The Boys #71, Butcher thanks Yuji

Thankfully, Butcher’s genocidal plan is finally stopped by Hughie, who he admits he always hoped would take on the job his little brother used to serve and stop him from doing something terrible. When Yugi tries to attack Butcher, they both fall out of a skyscraper window because Butcher is unable to stop himself from trying to save his friend. The landing badly injured Yuji’s leg while leaving Butcher totally paralyzed. In response, the former leader of the boys tries to convince Yugi to kill him, rather than spend the rest of his life in prison.

Butcher eventually drives Yugi into a rage by claiming to have killed his parents (a lie, as Yugi later discovers), describing their home in vivid detail before fixing Yugi with his most evil grin and saying:

Look at me. ****** Look at me. You know I did it.

Convinced, Yugi stabs him with a piece of metal in a fit of rage, fulfilling Butcher’s wishes. Butcher thanks him for the accidental killing with a satisfied smile, with his last words:

Nice, mate.

Yuki Campbell

The Boys give Yuji 3 different ‘last words’ moments

As the sole survivor of the Boys, Hughie actually has three instances that qualify as last words. The first comes in Ennis, Robertson and Richard P. Clark’s The Boys #72. After taking over Butcher’s job policing the world’s remaining Supes, Hughie connects with Annie January, suggesting that after their bitter break-up in Central Park, the rebuilt Brooklyn Bridge could be their new ‘place’, so to speak. :

I thought it might make a nice new place for us. Well, you know. We had the park, but… it’s maybe a little sad for us now.

The couple then embrace in an echo of the moment of The Boys #1 Where Hughie’s girlfriend Robin is killed by an A-train, but this time ends in a kiss. The Brooklyn Bridge is a major metaphor in the comic series, which represents the damage that the innocent use of power can do to innocent people. It is also the site of Hughie’s tribute to the boys, writing their initials in setting concrete.

however, The boys Later returned to Ennis and Russ Braun’s Dear Becky – a 2020 mini-series acting as an epilogue to the main series and set over a decade after the finale. In the series, Hughie and Annie have moved back to Scotland, with Hughie repeatedly delaying their wedding. Butcher’s old diary to his wife Becky allows Yugi to finally process the loss of the boys and what they meant to him, and the miniseries ends with his marriage to Annie, with Yugi exclaiming. “…Jings.” When he saw his wife arrive for their wedding (an expression of surprise in Scottish vernacular.)

however, Dear BeckyIn the final scene, Hughie writes a letter to Becky, explaining his final thoughts about Butcher. While not speaking dialogue, The boys‘ Story ends with a close-up of Yuji’s message in a bottle, telling Becky that while Butcher tried his best to become a monster after her death, her memory kept alive a degree of morality that made it possible to stop him, writing:

You were with him the whole way.

Will Amazon’s TV show have the same last words?

Major changes mean the show is likely to go its own way

These are the last words of each member of The boys In the original comics, with the majority of the team killed as part of Butcher’s ultimate plan to kill every last Supe. Despite The boys‘ Flaws and love of excess, Ennis is one of the most talented writers in comics, and the final words of each character hit like a truck for fans who have spent dozens of issues in their company.

Due to the changes to Amazon’s TV series, it is likely that The boys Will get different final sentiments in the adaptation, but the comics leave behind an incredibly high bar for them to reach.