Yes, Kimiko Does Lose Her Powers in ‘The Boys’ — Here’s What Really Happens and Why It Matters

Kimiko Miyashiro has always been one of the most compelling figures in ‘The Boys’, a silent force of nature whose Compound-V abilities made her the team’s most dangerous asset. So when she loses those powers entirely in season three, it hits like a freight train, both for the characters around her and for fans watching at home.

Soldier Boy Is the Cause

In season three, episode four, “Glorious Five Year Plan,” Kimiko loses her powers after an encounter with Soldier Boy. When Billy Butcher leads his team into a top-secret Russian research facility, Soldier Boy is released from his metal casket and attacks with a strange energy blast he definitely did not possess back in 1984. This radioactive burst doesn’t just knock Kimiko through a concrete wall, it nullifies her Compound-V gifts completely.

The obvious follow-up question is whether the power loss is permanent. The source material offers little guidance since comic book Kimiko never loses her abilities, leaving no precedent for whether she can recover. But the show plants its answer fairly early. Kimiko wakes up in hospital, looks at her wounds, and smiles that she hasn’t healed. She then asks Frenchie to give her something heavy to lift, struggles without her super strength, and concludes that Soldier Boy took her powers. Overjoyed at the chance for a normal life, she kisses Frenchie.

A Wake-Up Call, Not a Happy Ending

The power loss initially feels like liberation for Kimiko, but the show refuses to let that relief go unchallenged. Karen Fukuhara described the arc as “a wake up call” for her character, explaining that Kimiko “was still the violent person that she feared she would be, and so she has to come to terms with that and face the realities of her identity.” That quote cuts to the heart of what season three is really doing with Kimiko. Stripping away her powers doesn’t strip away who she is. Her capacity for violence, born from years of trauma long before Compound-V ever entered her body, remains.

Kimiko herself comes to this realization after killing Little Nina’s henchmen without any powers at all. Though she had blamed Compound-V for making her a monster, she had been in Shining Light longer than she was a supe, which means the violence was likely already part of her survival toolkit. Her relationship with herself and with the V has been complicated, but this moment forces her to see that she is lethal and calculated regardless of what’s in her veins.

The Narrative Logic Behind the Decision

Powering down Kimiko solves two distinct problems the show had struggled with across its first three seasons. The first is characterization. Because Kimiko doesn’t speak and communicates via written notes or a bespoke sign language with Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara has had to work doubly hard to convey personality. The Boys does an admirable job of adding layers to her relatively two-dimensional comic book counterpart, but she is still often pigeonholed as the team’s resident powerhouse. The second issue is her backstory. Watching Kimiko use abilities that were forced on her as a direct result of child trafficking is a complicated pleasure, and celebrating something rooted in so much pain sits uneasily.

She Gets Her Powers Back — By Choice

The story doesn’t leave Kimiko powerless forever, and crucially, that’s the point. Starlight gives Kimiko a second dose of Compound-V to help her recover from Soldier Boy’s attack, restoring her abilities. Kimiko requests Annie get her the compound from Vought to protect herself and Frenchie, and after a romantic dance with Frenchie, she takes it, slowly regaining her powers as her wounds heal.

By the end of season three, Kimiko ends up permanently powered once more, while Hughie stops taking Temp V and goes back to being human. The difference this time is consent. Should Kimiko inject Compound-V of her own volition, the choice is entirely hers, and the pang of guilt that comes from watching her tear folk apart finally evaporates because she actually chose the power-up.

Kimiko is the first known supe to have recovered her powers with an additional injection of Compound-V after being depowered by Soldier Boy, making her uniquely the only known adult to have been empowered, depowered, and then empowered once more.

A Character Reborn

Fukuhara called season three a “rebirth” for Kimiko, saying she comes out of it having truly learned from her own experiences. The power loss arc is, at its core, a story about identity and agency. Kimiko spent her whole life having things done to her, from her kidnapping by the Shining Light Liberation Army to Compound-V being injected into her without consent. Getting to choose whether to take it back is, in its own brutal and messy way, the most human moment she’s ever had in ‘The Boys’.