The final season of The Boys is here, and one of its stars says filming it felt nothing like the previous four years. Jessie T. Usher, who plays the speedster A-Train, openly shares that returning to set for Season 5 was a strange and completely new experience. He describes it as almost working on a different series altogether.
Usher explains that even though he is playing the same character, everything around him has shifted. The physical sets look different. The mood on set has changed. The way his character talks to others and the information he seeks out are not things A-Train ever cared about before. This shift made Usher feel like he was acting in a weird spinoff rather than the main show.
Why Season 5 Is So Different for A-Train
For four seasons, viewers watched A-Train struggle with fame, guilt, and his place in the Seven. He started as a selfish celebrity more worried about his public image than doing the right thing. But heading into the final season, his entire world has turned upside down. Usher notes that A-Train is now in a very complicated mental space. He has left the Seven and is no longer under Homelander‘s direct control. This freedom forces him to deal with the consequences of his past actions, something he avoided for years.
The actor reveals that every scene this season has trigger moments for A-Train. Every character he meets reminds him of something bad he did or a person he hurt. Usher says he had to find a careful balance while acting. He could not make A-Train look like he had already figured everything out. At the same time, he could not ignore that A-Train is now fully aware of the danger around him. The character knows Homelander is a monster, and he knows what is coming.
One of the biggest changes Usher points to is a very small detail: his shoes. At the start of the series, A-Train wore expensive, high-tech running shoes that made him look like a top athlete. In Season 5, he wears casual winter Vans. This tiny change completely affected how Usher moved and felt while acting.
“Now it’s like I’m in a totally different thing; maybe it’s the shoes, I don’t know. And now I’m in like a casual shoe and it just feels different. Like I felt like I was an athlete forever and now he’s like a person, he’s just like a dude.”
This small wardrobe change shows a larger shift in the character. Without the fame, ads, and super suit, A-Train is just a man trying to survive.
A-Train Joins the Fight Against Homelander
The The Boys Season 5 premiere already showed major changes for A-Train. The first two episodes dropped on April 8, 2026, on Prime Video. The show releases new episodes weekly, with the finale scheduled for May 20, 2026. For global audiences, the streaming schedule is the same worldwide on Prime Video, available in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India, and other regions.
Warning: Spoilers for The Boys Season 5 premiere ahead.
In the season opener titled “Fifteen Inches of Sheer Dynamite,” A-Train makes the ultimate sacrifice. After spending a year on the run from Homelander, he finally stops running. He helps Starlight (Erin Moriarty) break Hughie (Jack Quaid) and the other Boys out of a Vought prison camp. During his escape, he almost repeats his worst mistake. He sees a young woman in his path and swerves to avoid her, just like he failed to do with Hughie’s girlfriend Robin in the very first episode. This choice causes him to fall, allowing Homelander to catch him.
Facing death, A-Train does not beg or cry. He laughs in Homelander’s face. He calls the most powerful supe on Earth a “pathetic, weak, sniveling loser.” Then Homelander snaps his neck. Usher says he shot this final scene almost one hundred times to get it right. He worked closely with Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, to figure out how A-Train would get a final mental victory. In the end, Usher says he just looked at Starr in his red, white, and blue suit and genuinely laughed because it looked ridiculous. That real reaction became the final shot.
Usher Never Expected A-Train to Survive This Long
Looking back at his time on the show, Usher admits he never thought his character would make it to the final season. He expected A-Train to die long ago, possibly even before the heart transplant storyline in earlier seasons. Getting to play the character’s complete change from villain to hero has been very fulfilling for the actor.
“It was A Train pretending to be super for a long time and then eventually choosing to do the superhero thing, and put other people first and actually make an attempt at saving lives and doing good.”
Usher explains that he did not expect playing a redemption arc to feel so good. He says it was refreshing to have those small moments where A-Train finally stops pretending and starts being a real person. The character spent a long time hating himself. Seeing him come out of that shell and be honest was a great experience for Usher.
The actor also says he is staying away from any information about the rest of the season. He left the cast group chat and told his co-stars not to tell him who dies or what happens. He wants to watch the final episodes as a regular fan, week by week, so he can be surprised and shocked just like everyone else.
The Boys Season 5 is streaming now on Prime Video with new episodes every Wednesday.
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