Some people are just too darn smart for their own good. This sentiment comes true in very catastrophic fashion in The Boys season five with Sage, who is the smartest person in the world, after she totally miscalculates the relationship between Soldier Boy and Homelander. In episode six, she’s rather smugly sure that Soldier Boy will get the V-One from Bombsight and destroy it. But because of his love for Clara/Stormfront, he gives it to Homelander (like an idiot).
So, in episode seven, Sage has to deal with the implications of her bad decision and finally figure out what she really wants after all. Is it solitude in a destroyed world? Or is it to save others after all? We spoke with Susan Heyward about Sage’s grand plan and how a major sacrificial death could change her mind.
Nerdist: I think one of the biggest questions that we’ve had in The Boys over the past couple of seasons is about Sage’s ultimate plan. What does she want? What is her purpose behind doing all these corrupt things with Homelander? And we finally got an answer to that this season. We find out that she basically wants to just break the world down, get rid of a bunch of bad people and go to a bunker to read some books and chill. I’m not totally opposed to that. What were your thoughts when you found out her master plan?
Heyward: I really enjoyed it. I feel like there’s so many things that get thrown on the backs of women, especially on Black women. There’s a certain expectation that we’re going to come in and fix everything that other people often mess up because they didn’t listen to us in the first place. I don’t often see stories that give Black women the opportunity to say, “No I’m not coming in and fixing this stuff. No.” So there’s that part of it.
And then on the other side, I really enjoyed being able to take a look at people who think they’re better than everyone else in the world and who actually are planning for a certain kind of collapse and have bunkers. That kind of mentality. And I don’t think it usually comes in this package. I don’t think people expect it to come in this package [of a Black woman]. So the opportunity to surprise people and represent both of those mentalities is really fun.
Yeah, I think a lot of people are definitely surprised by her truth because they’re thinking that her reason would have been something much more overtly darker or evil. But she just wants peace in a world that’s been structured to not necessarily benefit her. And so, from her perspective, if she can get the things she wants, then she will do what she has to do.
Heyward: I would say there is evilness, or it could be argued that it is a version of evil, when you can help but actively decide to withhold your help from people who actually need it and want it. And I do think that that makes her a villain. I know people were like, “No, she’s the hero.”… But in this moment, she’s supremely selfish and she’s withholding help that people really need.
That’s very valid. Now usually her thought processes and analysis of situations are pretty spot on, but she completely misreads the whole situation with Soldier Boy, who actually gives Homelander the V-One. Why do you think she missed that connection between them in her always calculating brain?
Heyward: Well, a lot of reasons. Eric Kripke and I talked a lot about how her power works and how she’s always measuring possibilities and hypotheticals. She’s thinking of the world in percentages. So, in her mind, there’s an 87% chance that when Soldier Boy sees a video of Homelander and Clara together, he’s not going to like it. But the probability that love for Clara would switch something in Soldier Boy wasn’t seen. He’s such a performer of patriarchy and that he would be self-sacrificial was surprising.
We’ve not seen that from him. And I think she didn’t really imagine that possibility at all. There’s also the experience of being loved. Her parents let her get shot up with V. She’s experienced her grandmother’s love certainly, but she’s gone now. After that, it’s just one relationship after another of someone trying to use her. I think her understanding of the willingness to sacrifice, to humble yourself in the name of love, is unthinkable for her.
There’s always that capacity for anyone to operate outside of what we perceive their boundaries are. So you always have to consider those extra factors. It’s messed up because she’s never missed, and this miss just happens to be a really, really big one.
Heyward: And that’s what makes it traumatic.
Absolutely. We see Sage trying to grapple with the consequences of having that big miss in episode seven. She’s back to lobotomizing herself and being unhelpful, but she finally gets it together. But things go awry and it ends with Frenchie sacrificing himself to save her and Kimiko from Homelander. So how do you think this moment is going to change her?
Heyward: It is the second huge lesson in self-sacrificial love she gets in two days. So it’s a great tension that I think she gets presented with after a lifetime of disappointment in humanity and selfishness and now two incredibly powerful demonstrations of self-sacrifice. At the top of episode eight, we find her really considering what it would be like to change course for the first time.
Also, she’s now around a system that actually is dysfunctional in its own way, but actually functions still. It does something to someone to be around something that functions like that. So I think we’re going to see her really consider for the first time what it might be like to change.