Why is Kimiko unable to speak in The Boys?

The Boys is gearing up for the finale of its fourth season – on July 18 if you don’t already have it in the diary – ending on a high note with a seventh episode that has resolved many issues while simultaneously leaving numerous mysteries unanswered.

Fear drives Kimiko silence

Kimiko Miyashiro, for example, is one of the most beloved characters of the series, and for a long time, the mystery surrounding her muteness remained. Finally, however, it was revealed why the character, played by Karen Fukuhara, cannot speak: her captors in the Army of the Bright Light taught her to fight with deadly consequences if she spoke or screamed.

Under that threat, Kimiko became an assassin who took many lives, and throughout the process, she imposed silence on herself, which remains with her to this day. The actress discussed the character in an interview with TheWrap, highlighting that “from the initial conversations with [writer/producer] Eric Kripke, we discussed that Kimiko’s muteness shouldn’t stem from a physical attribute because if it was physical, sometimes it’s impossible to recover the voice after a physical trauma.

“So I said, I don’t think it can be a physical attribute if we want that tint of hope, if we want to change the plot or incorporate that in future seasons, and he was really receptive to that from the beginning.”

The Boys and the great development of its characters

Fukuhara also spoke about the current season and how The Boys is revealing greater depth in characters we thought we already knew.

“I love it because this entire season is about even the heroic characters facing their demons, like Annie’s past with Dynamite. She was never the good person we always expected her to be, and I love all that story because it gives her much more humanity.

“I think the writers have managed to do this with Kimiko,” Fukuhara continued. “She has always seen herself as a victim of Starlight, a victim of Compound V, a victim of all the crap that has come her way, but in the fourth season, she had to confront her own darkness and admit all the harm she did to others.”