It’s Time to Give Flowers to the Hardest-Working Actor on ‘The Boys’

The Big Picture

• Ashley Barrett’s resilience in a sea of Supe chaos makes her a standout character in
  The Boys
  .
• Colby Minifie’s scene-stealing performance as Ashley is both hilarious and multidimensional.
• Ashley’s evolution and survival tactics make her a compelling and integral part of
  The Boys
  universe.

If there’s one thing we know for sure about The Boys‘ shared universe, it’s that human beings are expendable. From Flight 37 to Victoria Neuman’s (Claudia Doumit) congressional head-popping massacre, human casualties are frequent, violent, and usually not given a second thought by the Supes who kill them. Aside from the core members of the Boys, non-Supe characters have come and gone, but one human character who has somehow survived all four seasons is none other than Vought CEO Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie).

Ashley is also one of the few characters to appear in both The Boys and Gen V, and, as a long-time Vought employee, has dirt on just about everyone. Homelander (Antony Starr) could (and probably should) have killed her by now, but she’s made herself useful enough and allied herself with the right people to survive, and based on the Season 4 finale, she’s not going down without a fight. Her evolution from Madelyn Stillwell’s (Elisabeth Shue) assistant to Vought CEO is compelling, as she fully embraces the moral bankruptcy of her job, even as it starts to weigh on her conscience. Despite being used for comic relief, Ashley is far from one-dimensional and deserves to stick around based on the strength of Colby Minifie’s performance alone.

Ashley Barrett Is One of the Most Interesting Non-Supe Characters in ‘The Boys’

Most of the non-Supe characters we’ve come to know in The Boys aren’t the biggest fans of the Super-abled on a conceptual level, but for Ashley, they’re also her annoying co-workers. She has to manage the volatile personalities of the various members of The Seven while also trying to appease Homelander, who appointed her to the CEO position after killing Madelyn. Though she’s no angel, you can’t help but sympathize with Ashley at least a little bit. Anyone who’s ever had to deal with an overbearing boss, work a stressful corporate job, or deal with inconsiderate co-workers can see a bit of themselves in her. She’s always on edge, working under a man who is liable to kill her at any moment, trying to maintain a positive image of Vought and The Seven, and handling PR crises on almost a daily basis. While she lives in constant fear of Homelander, she still calls out other members of The Seven, like A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) and The Deep (Chace Crawford), when they’re making her life more difficult or acting a little too high and mighty.

Ashley is constantly putting out fires in both The Boys and Gen V, trying to control the narrative around the less-than-heroic behavior of the Supes at Vought and Godolkin University. One of the most compelling aspects of her character is her transparency about how disingenuous Vought’s social justice messaging really is. The essence of her job is to push pro-Supe propaganda and sell its phoniness as a polished, marketable product, whether it’s Dawn of the Seven or Brave Maeve’s Vegetarian Pride Lasagna. She’s ambitious, but seeing as Homelander fast-tracked her up the corporate ladder, she finds herself in way over her head.

As Vought CEO, Ashley does, in theory, have some power, but is beholden to the whims of the tyrannical Homelander. She’s essentially trapped in a highly stressful job because she knows too much damning information about Homelander and the rest of The Seven to simply resign and start over. Her frequent, compulsive hair-pulling, also known as trichotillomania, is a coping mechanism that has left her mostly bald and forced to wear a wig to keep up appearances. Considering her lack of real power at Vought, she seizes power wherever she can get it. This manifests both at work in how she treats her assistant (also named Ashley) and in her sex life, becoming a dominatrix and even making an appearance in Tek Knight’s (Derek Wilson) sex dungeon.

Colby Minifie Never Fails to Stand Out in ‘The Boys’ and ‘Gen V’

Though she doesn’t get a great deal of screen time considering the magnitude of The Boys‘ ensemble cast, Minifie is a consistent scene stealer. There are plenty of unhinged characters to go around in The Boys shared universe, but Ashley’s freak-outs are legendary, and her delivery of lines like “Is that a video game about the slave trade?” and “Stupid people who think they’re smart make me want to eat my own shit,” are pitch perfect. Minifie also shows off some great bits of physical comedy every time Ashley has to dash out of the massive, slow-moving door to The Seven’s meeting room in her stilettos. Much of Minifie’s performance is comedic, but she also brings a sense of vulnerability to Ashley, especially in Seasons 3 and 4, as we get to know her a bit better. In the Season 3 finale, it’s heartbreaking and even hard to watch when Homelander forces Ashley to take off her wig to reveal her patchy, mostly bald scalp for seemingly no reason but to humiliate her. In the Season 4 finale, we get a glimpse of the person Ashley used to be when she glances wistfully at an old photo of her sporting long armpit hair and a Che Guevara shirt at some kind of political protest.

Minifie finds a great scene partner in Jessie T. Usher as Ashley and A-Train get more screen time together in Seasons 3 and 4. Both Ashley and A-Train become more and more disillusioned with their role in the Vought hierarchy, and their relationship progresses in Season 3 after she calls him out for his hypocrisy, which earns his respect. As Homelander goes further and further off the deep end and any attempts to reign him in prove pointless, Ashley can see what’s coming and doesn’t know what to do with herself. She makes a last-minute, desperate plea to A-Train to run away with her to Florence, and the guilt and weight of everything she’s witnessed and participated in has finally gotten to her. She gets Cameron Coleman (Matthew Edison) killed to cover up the real identity of Vought’s mole, and is heartbroken at having to fire her assistant to save him from a similar fate. Despite her desperation to jump ship, when A-Train returns and agrees to run away with her, she’s changed her mind, accepting her fate, but also injecting herself with Compound V to give herself a fighting chance.

Ashley is consistently hilarious but has some truly devastating moments as she comes to terms with what her life has become. She’s an ambitious, hardworking employee who’s both exploited by Homelander and complicit in covering up some truly horrific crimes. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing Ashley as effectively as Minifie, and her role in Gen V, among a cast of almost entirely new characters, also serves as an important anchor to the larger, shared universe of The Boys. Now that Ashley has Compound V in her bloodstream, she’s guaranteed to return for Season 5, and her new superpowers will likely make her even more unhinged, which is always a welcome sight.

All four seasons of The Boys are available on Prime Video in the U.S.

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