‘The Boys’ Star Erin Moriarty Addresses Starlight’s Game-Changing Scene
Erin Moriarty plays Annie January, aka Starlight, on Amazon’s superhero series, The Boys. Her character has been stuck between two worlds since season 1. But after that pivotal scene in Season 2, Episode 6, “The Bloody Doors Off,” Moriarty says Starlight’s course is now very clear.
[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Boys, season 2, episode 6.]
What happened with Starlight on The Boys, season 2, episode 6?
Episode 6 of The Boys second season opened with Annie finally asking Frenchie (Tomer Kapon) to take out her Vought tracking chip. She tells the Boys that she found a lead about the Sage Grove Center in Stromfront’s (Aya Cash) emails. Butcher (Karl Urban), Hughie (Jack Quaid), Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara), and MM (Laz Alonso) decide to utilize Annie’s lead and check out the facility.
Dressed as Sage Grove nurses, MM, Kimiko, and Frenchie make their way into the facility’s security room. Through the live camera feed, they discover Stormfront is working with Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore) to create adult Supes and burn the ones that don’t comply.
But when the three try to leave the building, they face off with Lamplighter. One of the center’s powerful new Supes manages to escape, and she lets the rest of the patients out as well.
Hughie gets hurt and Annie takes a life
During the scuffle, one of the Sage Grove patients makes his way outside to the van where Annie, Hughie, and Butcher are waiting. Out of fear, he blasts the three of them with a force of energy which sends the van flying with Hughie in it. Hughie is critically injured, so Annie and Butcher decide to take him to a hospital.
But when they try commandeering a car from a seemingly harmless driver, he pulls a gun on them. Annie tries to talk him down. But when he doesn’t comply, she kills him with an electricity blast.
They get Hughie to the hospital in time. But Annie is still reeling from the murder she just committed.
‘The Boys’ star Erin Moriarty reveals how the episode was a turning point for Annie
In an interview with Collider, Moriarty talked about Annie’s emotional evolution since Season 1. And she explained how that driver-killing scene in Episode 6 cemented the character’s future course.
“That episode is a really important one because it makes her realize how far she’s going in keeping herself safe, maintaining her objective to take down Vought and also it really wakes her up to realize – I think she’s kind of been in denial about how much this world and being in Vought has changed her, you know?” The Boys star said. “If we think back to Episode 1, Season 1 of Annie or Starlight, we all know that that would have not been a feasible thing for her at all, and I think the way she digests the death and that she causes it and what’s going on in that episode is, it’s a really hard pill for her to swallow.”
Moriarty also noted that Annie is just starting to learn about herself in this new world. And she revealed that the Supe might finally begin to let people in.
“And I think that that episode and the death she causes makes her realize how far she’s strayed from herself,” Moriarty continued. “I think that she knows that certain things have to be done. I think she thinks that it did have to be done, but I think that it’s the beginning of her starting to find herself again after all of her deep heartbreaks in Season 1 and her exposure to this immensely dark world; her facade and walls have become excessively thick and she sets out to find the in-between, between being not naive or ignorant but also being her true, good self.”
New episodes of The Boys air Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.
