The Boys creator explains the importance of Ashley Barrett’s new powers
According to The Boys creator Eric Kripke, Ashley Barrett’s new mind-reading powers are a reflection of her inner turmoil. Her hair loss, which began as a side effect of her ongoing stress at Vought International, has transformed by way of Compound V into a face on the back of her head who has so far acted as an angel on her shoulder.
In fact, this face actually has a name, says Kripke in an interview with TV Insider. “Yeah, I mean, the character’s official name is Back Ashley, but we call her Bashley for a short,” he reveals. “The thing I love about that power, beyond the fact that it’s just gross and silly and absurd, is that the best powers are metaphors for what that particular character is going through.”
While he notes that Ashley has had a “spark of a conscience” throughout the series, she has backed away from following through out of fear of reprisal and death. Turning herself into a Supe, despite her mind-reading abilities being weak compared to the powers of almost every other Supe we’ve seen so far (like, say, the telepathic abilities of Gen V’s Cate Dunlap), has saved her from being purged and granted her the position of Vice President by the start of the fifth season. But while she has climbed the corporate ladder and has been shown as a vindictive domme, she is still very much a subservient mouthpiece for The Seven.
“So she’s a little bit at war with herself, and so it was just like, let’s give voice to that conscience,” Kripke explains, “let’s have Bashley be a really likeable moral character who is trying to convince Ashley to do the right thing, who represents who Ashley used to be… Will she ever listen to Bashley, which is really listening to herself, or will she keep being a bootlicker?”
That said, the consequences of defecting from The Seven have not been pleasant, to say the least. While we don’t see Ashley’s reaction to the shocking death of A-Train at the end of the first episode of the fifth season, it provides a clear example of what happens to someone who Homelander marks as a traitor. A-Train and Ashley had a pact of mutually assured destruction in Season 4, and A-Train tried to convince her to quit (finally) from Vought Industries to no avail. With his murder, it’s no surprise that Ashley doesn’t listen to Bashley most of the time.
But with what we’ve seen with Butcher’s transformation in the fourth season with his sentient tumor, Ashley’s other face has a voice of its own and has the potential to switch her allegiances at the last minute (well, this time to the good side). Against her better judgment, this would likely require her to sacrifice herself, given the show’s track record of Vice Presidents meeting their end after trying to switch sides (i.e. Victoria Neuman). But her powers being generally weak would be an advantage in terms of flying under the radar, perhaps even below the notice of Sister Sage. Out of every character at Vought, Ashley is in the lowkey stealthiest position to betray The Seven when the time is right.
