When Black Noir Two arrived in season 4 of The Boys, the biggest departure from his predecessor was the simplest one. He could speak. That single change opened the door to something the original version of the character never had, a genuine dramatic arc with room for personality, vulnerability, and the kind of slow-burn relationship that the show rarely lets breathe.
The person on the other end of that relationship was the Deep, played by Chace Crawford. Together, the two formed one of the final season’s most unexpectedly watchable pairings. Both characters had been sidelined within Vought. Both were trying to reclaim relevance. And both were doing it in ways that quietly made the relationship between them more volatile over time.
Nathan Mitchell, who plays Noir Two, has described that bond as an exploration of what happens when ego and insecurity get tangled up with genuine connection. The need to be someone’s first priority, he says, can corrode a relationship from underneath without either person fully realizing it until the damage is done.
The moment the Noir and Deep partnership collapsed
In episode 6 of the final season, the partnership reaches a point of no return. Still grieving the death of Adam Bourke, Noir sabotages a Vought oil pipeline. The fallout destroys a significant portion of marine life, which the show describes as a fish holocaust. For the Deep, who treats the ocean and its creatures as sacred, that act is unforgivable. He responds by killing Noir.
The circumstances around Bourke’s death are among the season’s darker comic detours. The character, who has appeared since season 2 across roles as a film director, a university professor, and an off-Broadway performer, meets his end via an animatronic eel. Mitchell has described the sequence as genuinely elaborate to film, involving a mannequin body rigged with blood and a mechanical eel designed to flop convincingly. The result sits squarely in the territory The Boys has always claimed as its own, where horror and absurdity occupy the same frame.
How Nathan Mitchell felt about working with Crawford
Mitchell has been open about how much the pairing with Crawford meant to him. He had followed Crawford’s work as the Deep for years before they shared significant screen time, and what he found when they finally did was an actor with unusually precise comic instincts. Crawford manages to make the Deep feel briefly sympathetic without ever letting the audience forget how self-absorbed the character is, a balance that is harder to pull off than it looks.
Their friendship off set, Mitchell says, gave their scenes a warmth that made the eventual betrayal land harder than it might have otherwise.
There is one collaboration Mitchell says he wished had gone further. His scenes with Antony Starr, whose Homelander looms over both versions of the Noir character throughout the series, were limited on screen. A deleted scene from season 4, Mitchell has hinted, would have provided meaningful context for how clearly Noir understood Homelander’s volatility heading into the final stretch of the show.
What Mitchell says about the Noir pattern
The detail that gives Noir Two’s exit its weight is how closely it mirrors what happened to Noir One. Both versions of the character had dreams of acting. Both were undone by someone they trusted, Noir One by Soldier Boy, Noir Two by the Deep. Mitchell has confirmed the parallel is deliberate and baked into the structure of the story.
As for what the finale holds, he is not saying much. What he has offered is that storylines going back to season 1 will find resolution, and that the ending feels earned. The Boys streams on Prime Video, with new episodes releasing weekly.
