Meanwhile, the Seven's leader, Homelander, starts an investigation of his own to find Translucent after Vought's vice president, Madelyn Stillwell, dismisses the latter's disappearance.
The episode received positive reviews from critics, who praised the visual style, direction, performances, black humor, faithfulness to the comics, and Frenchie's introduction.
At the Seven's tower, Madelyn Stillwell and her assistant Ashley Barrett start worrying about Translucent's disappearance after A-Train replaces the Supe's place in a hospital visit to a child with cancer that goes awry.
The bullet destroys the foil shielding the basement's ceiling, allowing Vought to track down Translucent's location, prompting Stillwell to dispatch a security team to find him.
While patrolling the docks and investigating a smuggling drugs case, Annie rebuffs The Deep for what he did to her and warns him that she will kill him if he ever touches her again.
Ashley berates Annie as the video only shows her beating up the two men after the woman ran off, which will result in negative PR for Vought and the Seven.
During a Vought fundraiser, Stilwell approaches Senator Calhoun intending to convince him to recruit the Supes for national defense, but the latter refuses, stating that no one wants to outsource the country's weapons and admits that he is afraid of Homelander being on the front line.
Homelander decides to find Translucent on his own, coercing a Crime Analytics employee named Anika to tell him his exact location.
Erick Kripke became the series showrunner and head writer, alongside Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, who directed the pilot episode.
[9] For the character's death by being blown up from the inside, Kripke admitted that this wouldn't be probable to do in real life due to the strength of the skin that would have contained the blast, accepting it was a conscious decision he took, and commented: "Yes, you're absolutely right, the skin should have contained the blast, but then we'd have missed out on that amazing bloody explosion of blood and meat.
In the TV series, Hughie decides to kill him on purpose after initially intending to let him go by blowing up the bomb that was inside Translucent.
This major change was released by Kripke, as he and the production crew intended to increase the level of violence and gore instead of keeping the same one from the original comic book series and without any intention of toning it down.
[11][12] The episode's main cast includes Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie Campbell, Antony Starr as John Gillman / Homelander, Erin Moriarty as Annie January / Starlight, Dominique McElligott as Maggie Shaw / Queen Maeve, Jessie T. Usher as Reggie Franklin / A-Train, Chace Crawford as Kevin Moskowitz / The Deep, Tomer Capone as Serge / Frenchie, Nathan Mitchell as Black Noir, and Elisabeth Shue as Madelyn Stillwell.
[13] It also stars Simon Pegg as Hugh Campbell Sr., Alex Hassell as Translucent, Jennifer Esposito as Susan Reynor, David Andrews as Senator Calhoun, Shaun Benson as Ezekiel, Colby Minifie as Ashley Barrett, Ana Sani as Anika, and Jordana Lajoie as Cherie.
For the tower's interior, which includes some of the rooms and the modern lobby where the company makes the fundraiser event in the episode, the filming for such scenes would take place inside the Roy Thomson Hall.
[30] While writing a review for Tilt Magazine, Randy Dankievitch stated that the episode takes a deft turn for The Boys, with an interesting deconstruction of the classic "villain captures hero" trope.
There are also a lot of intriguing other ideas brought into play, be it the power hierarchy inside the Seven or Madelyn's larger goals of getting some of that good American defense spending money injected into Vought International.