The Boys Season 3 Finale Interview with "Mother's Milk"
Laz Alonso
Interview curated by Paige Jones
Photographed by Jen Cooper
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Amazon Primes hit show, The Boys, has wrapped its craziest season yet, with the Season 3 finale premiering last Friday. While setting up one of the most epic battles to date, the finale gave much-needed closure for star Laz Alonso’s character Mother’s Milk, who finally gets revenge on Soldier Boy. In an exclusive interview, Alonso reflects on MM’s Season 3 journey, his struggles of being a single father and trying to break generational trauma, and how his unveiled past created his OCD.
"...at the end of the day, you have to really embrace who you are, embrace where you come from, and teach your kids their history. They need to know where they came from."
- Laz Alonso
First off, I just want to say thank you for your time. I love the boys and just recently finished episode seven last night. As we know, The Boys has become a social phenomenon. For those just catching on, how would you describe the show in a nutshell?
I would describe the show as a mirror. We try our best to mirror society and kind of shine a light on what we're currently doing, what we have done, and how we've justified a lot of crazy shit that's happened in real life. And the fact that our world is so over the top. It's pretty fitting for a lot of the stuff that we're highlighting that happens actually in our everyday life, you know, that we've normalized that we've accepted it, but it's pretty ridiculous when you see it in our, in our setting. So, you know, we just kind of try our best to shine a mirror at society and be like, you know, we got work to do. We got work to do.
Photo provided by Amazon Primer
Photographed by Jen Cooper
Photographed by Jen Cooper
Could you tell us a little bit about your character in The Boys?
Well, this season was an interesting season for Mother's Milk because we finally learned his backstory. We always knew that he had OCD, but we never understood why what was the trigger that caused it. This season, we actually learned from the trauma that's connected to his OCD, that OCD is just a symptom. But the trauma behind it, the cause of the OCD, is what is the root of everything...even why he's a part of the boys that changed his life the most. You know, I mean, who knows what Mother's Milk would have been had the traumatic moment that happened with the Soldier Boy, his granddad and his family not having, one moment, one night changed his life forever. We also saw his tremendous effort at not passing on his generational trauma to his daughter and how even his best efforts to not pass it on. You can only act but for so long before the truth comes out. And at the end of the day, you have to really embrace who you are, embrace where you come from, and teach your kids their history. They need to know where they came from. So there were a lot of little messages in character this season that I felt were very powerful messaging. And imaging to you know, I mean, one of my favorite images of the season is when MM is in his apartment, doing his daughter's hair. You know, I mean, any black man out there who has a daughter has to learn how to do hair. Because if you are taking care of your daughter, and in this case, you know he has her certain days, and she's not with her mom, then he has to do things that, you know, he may not have had to have learned had he been still with Monique, you know, but being a single father now he has to learn how to do so little moments like that. I feel like just the image of him being present in her life and doing those types of things are important for us to see.
With what we know, so far, as we said, a lot of his backstory in his past that brought up the most in this season. How would you say? Or how would you compare Marvin’s hunger for vengeance compared to that of his late father?
Um, I think that he was repeating a generational trauma, he was repeating a family trauma, he was doing exactly what his father did. And you know, in the beginning of episode one, he tells Butcher that his father, literally, he watched his father die over revenge and that he wasn't, and he was also starting to do that to his own daughter. And that's actually what he was doing. He was hiding it from his daughter, that was the only difference. So I really, really connected with the part about passing on your trauma to your children. Avoiding passing parental trauma to your next generation, you know, kids aren't born racist. Kids aren't born sexes. Kids aren't born homophobic. All these things are things that they're taught. And so, you know, a lot of the storyline was MM, thinking that he's saving his daughter from what he learned from his father. And part of what he was doing was just repeating it all over.
Okay, very last question. At the very end of Episode Seven, we see that it's revealed that Homelander is Soldier Boy's son. With this new information, what do you think we can expect from the season finale? Any surprises?
Um, you know, I mean, I think that as the season finale goes, this is the first time that we're going to really be able to see Homelander be tested. Homelander, really, for the last two seasons, hasn't had anything to worry about. He really hasn't had a physical threat. He's been threatened to be exposed, and he's been threatened, which means a lot to him because his ego is weak. But now he's actually physically threatened. His life is physically threatened. You know, and so I think that that was the Civil War. Ah, what we have been waiting for for the last three seasons is what makes this season finale special.
Photographed by Jen Cooper
Photo provided by Amazon Primer
Also, now that you mentioned that, it was a time when like his daughter Marvin idolized the worst kind of Supe, and a complete monster and Soldier Boy, seeing his daughter do the same thing he once did by analyzing Homelander, how do you think that's affecting his relationship? I wouldn't say it with his daughter, but just how is that putting tension on him trying to be a father in the right way.
I think it was teaching him. I think it's, him learning how to teach her that people should not be idolized. I think it also points to the fact that how adults can groom children into idolizing people to the point where it's almost cult-like, you know, with her stepdad, Todd. So there were a lot of messages in that relationship and in that storyline, but I think you hit it on the head with the disappointment that MM felt after having idolized Soldier Boy, and he's trying desperately to save his daughter from doing the same thing with Homelander.
In what ways or if any ways do you relate to your character, and do you agree with his ideals and the things that he's done? Especially this season.
Yeah, I relate to Mother's Milk tremendously, because in many ways, you know, I connect with his story, especially with his moral principles of, we have to get out of our own way, you know, and if we begin to behave the way our enemy behaves, and who's to say, we really are the good guy, you know, aside from the fact that we're telling ourselves that we're the good guy, and we so called, or the good guy. But if we're behaving the same way they are, just as we're telling ourselves, it's just a better story. You know, and so, I think that it's, again, a mirror to society, you know, we've got these, these dueling factors, who, you know, are saying, you know, those people are trying to take your rights away, or those people are doing this, or those people are doing that, and they're trying to take your guns or whatever it is, we're here to save you, we're here to protect you. But you know, are you really or is that the story that you're telling me? And so, I think that in this particular storyline, the MM storyline, he's really trying to point out to people to think for yourself and really identify what you're doing.
Photo provided by Amazon Primer