The final season of The Boys has taken a dark turn, and no one is safe. In Season 5 Episode 6, titled “Though the Heavens Fall,” the long-simmering tension between The Deep (Chace Crawford) and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) explodes in a shocking act of violence. What starts as a petty revenge prank—Noir damages a pipeline, killing countless fish—quickly escalates into murder when The Deep snaps, strangling his former brother with cords in their podcast studio. It’s a moment that left both actors reeling.
In a recent interview, Mitchell revealed he learned of Noir’s fate in a call from showrunner Eric Kripke. “I was sitting in my trailer and got a call saying, ‘Please hold for Eric,’” Mitchell recalled. “He said, ‘It’s time for Noir to go.’ I understood. As an actor, you want to be in the series until the final episode, but we have a lot of story to tell. It made sense for Noir’s journey to end here, at the hands of The Deep, because that’s who his arc has been with this entire time.”
Mitchell explained that Noir didn’t expect The Deep to go that far. “I think Noir was like, ‘Ha, ha, I got you back.’ He didn’t think The Deep would take it to that level because he didn’t want to die. If The Deep hadn’t caught him off guard, wrapping those cords around his neck, it was a perfect storm. Noir was caught up in this cycle of revenge, losing sight of how far they were actually taking it.”
Crawford admitted he was conflicted about the scene. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s really funny.’ But then it felt real. I thought, ‘Oh, no, we’re losing people.’ Nathan is always amazing. I remember seeing it in ADR and thinking, ‘Wow, it looks really crazy and really dark.’ It was a sad day to shoot. The podcast stuff was so fun, but this was a really intense, bare-hands way to do it. It wasn’t Homelander doing it—it was The Deep. He’s really gone off the end and snapped. He’s killed one of his best friends.”
The actors worked hard to capture the intensity of the struggle. Mitchell described the physical challenge: “Having these cords around your neck and having to pull them, but also having them being pulled—you don’t want it to be too tight. It was intense and physical. We had to really communicate the violent struggle of it.” Crawford added, “It wasn’t just one snap thing. He flew into a full rage. The machinations behind how it happened with the pipeline is just so funny to me. They finally got to have fun and start getting rid of us.”
This shocking betrayal echoes the toxic dynamics that have defined the series, much like the corporate dystopia explored in 'The One 'Severance' Quote That Perfectly Defines Apple TV's Hellish Corporate Dystopia'. For fans, it’s a gut-wrenching reminder that in The Boys, even brotherhood can turn deadly.
