chace crawford’s Black Noir 2 was killed in The Boys season 5 episode 6 after The Deep strangled him and stabbed him in the throat. The death takes another major Supe off the board in the final season, and it also triggered viewer complaints that the show sidelined Black Noir 2’s flight and bulletproofing in the fight.
Season 5’s latest kill
Black Noir 2 was the latest Supe dispatched after replacing the original Black Noir, and episode 6 closed his run after he confronted The Deep. The series has already used season 5 to thin the roster: A-Train died in episode 1, and Firecracker died at the end of episode 5, both at Homelander’s hands.
The sequence itself is blunt. The Deep strangled Noir before stabbing him in the throat, ending a conflict that had been building all season over Stan Edgar. For a show that has made a habit of pruning its cast late, this one lands as the latest removal of a major player from the final stretch.
Stan Edgar and the oil pipeline
The feud sharpened after Black Noir 2 punched a hole in the ocean pipeline The Deep had been campaigning for as entirely safe, an act that resulted in the death of more than a billion fish. Episode five then raised the stakes again with Adam Bourke’s murder, which pushed Noir to the point of confrontation.
That chain of events gave the episode a cleaner motive than the execution itself. Noir was not just another casualty; he was the character who had been forcing The Deep to answer for the pipeline and the fallout from Bourke’s death, which is why the confrontation arrived so quickly once they met again.
Why viewers pushed back
Fans reacted with confusion over how a bulletproof Supe who can fly was beaten so easily. One Reddit user wrote, "His character literally had a line saying 'Did you know I can fly' and the writers forgot to have him fly back or up while he was being choked." Another wrote, "Did the writers forget Black Noir has powers?"
Other viewers were harsher. One said, "Black Noir might've had the lamest death I've seen in a show." Another argued, "Regarding Black Noir, we don't know how his flying works. Maybe he has to focus on it, which would be difficult while being strangled." One more added, "I'm more bothered about a knife being able to kill him despite him being bulletproof."
That reaction leaves the show with two pressures at once: it has to keep removing major characters to drive the final season, while also making those exits feel earned inside its own rules. On the evidence of episode 6, the death did the first job cleanly and left the second one in dispute.
