The following story contains spoilers for The Boys season 3 premiere, “Payback.”
If you’ve come to Season 3 of The Boys wondering how showrunner Eric Kripke and co. could possibly top their most epic highlights from seasons past — including tons of whale blood and a room full of exploding heads — you’ve probably stopped wondering asking after 12 minutes of the beginning of the first season episode titled “Payback”. Let’s set things up real quick: After last season, our heroes are set up to monitor Supe activities. So, after the premiere for a movie called Pocket Romance, we find Frenchie (Tomer Capone) supervising the afterparty for his hard-partying, swanky star, Termite (Brett Geddes). Termite has the power to grow very small and (presumably) very large, and displays this in front of his adoring party guests.
Then we hit that 12 minute mark and Termite returns with a romantic suitor to do some drugs. OK, good to do a lot of drugs. And then the romantic suitor Termite says he wants to take things to the next level. Termite knows what he means – he shrinks to the size of a bug and suddenly we see things from his perspective; He climbs into his suitor’s penis like he’s drilling in a cave, and once inside he touches the sides like some sort of erotic play.
But, uh, remember, these guys just did some drugs. Termite almost sneezes, but he holds back. Crisis averted! But then he sneezes again and can no longer keep his small size with the sneeze. He grows back to normal, splitting his romantic suitor into many pieces from the penis in the process. Blood, guts and probably bodily fluids are everywhere. It’s… well, we don’t need to beat around the bush: it’s extremely gross. Never doubt The Boys production team again, okay?
Amazon Prime
Of course, Frenchie’s job is to oversee this and he’s doing his job. He tells Termite he didn’t see anything, but then Termite has no interest in knowing this is coming out – he shrinks down to bug size and in a nice reference to the famous Ant-Man endgame theory tries to fly in Frenchie’s butt, to explode it. Luckily, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) is monitoring from afar and comes in to save the day: he tosses termite in a bag of cocaine and shakes it like a powdered sugar dispenser for a delicious Sunday cone. crisis averted? Kind of?
How did The Boys shoot the termite penis explosion scene?
In the trivia on the Amazon Prime Video episode, they reveal that everything that comes on the table when Termite shrinks, including cocaine and the penis, was created with visual effects. “The VFX team did a tremendous amount of research into what these objects would look like on this tiny plane from Termite’s perspective,” it says. The text also reveals that the inside of the man’s urethra was practically built, the final draft by production designer Arv Greywal, who died in October 2020.
Amazon Prime
It also reveals that a silicone cast of the actor was made to represent the man’s devastated body – whose name appears to have been Peter. “Then viscera were made of silicone, from blood to viscera to various organs, and packed into the doll’s hollow chest so that when it fell on the bed, the blood and viscera would flow out.”
Who is Termite in The Boys?
Amazon Prime
This is Termite’s first major appearance of Kripke and company on the show, although he has previously appeared at the secret Supe sex club that Butcher and Hughie went through in the very first episode. He also appeared in Vol. 5 of The Boys comics titled “Herogasm”. It’s also clear that Termite is intended as a direct parody of one of the most popular characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Ant-Man, played by Paul Rudd.
While Episode 1 of Season 3, “Payback,” was Termite’s first official appearance on The Boys as it appears on Amazon Prime Video, the character was first introduced with an online episode of FOX News-like Vought News Network: Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman Show where viewers can watch The Deep (Chace Crawford) and Homelander (Antony Starr) in Season 3.
Coleman gave a comment on Termite’s new movie on the show:
“Vought’s tiny, fun-loving superhero, Termite, known for his ability to shrink to the size of a bug, has released a new movie on Vought+ – a romantic comedy titled ‘Pocket Romance,'” he says. “In the film, Termite’s co-star plays a lonely toy store manager named Dolly, who first discovers that Tiny Supe is hiding among the action figures while working on an undercover mission. Action and hilarity follow as Dolly is drawn into the world of Termite. When the unlikely duo discover that no matter how small you are, finding true love may be the greatest mission of all.”
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Vought News Network: Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman (January 2022)
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Of course, there are some obvious differences: In the Marvel films, Scott Lang (Rudd) only has the ability to shrink and grow tall when wearing the suit designed by genius Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). In The Boys, Termite can shrink (and presumably grow) his entire body. It is unknown if he has to be naked like his old friend Translucent (who, as you may recall, exploded with a bomb in his butt in season 1). We’d guess he’s just such an idiot.
Evan is the culture editor of Men’s Health with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV and listens to music more often than usual.
