“You, are, so, beautiful, to me…” Patton Oswalt sure has pipes on him, man! Shame he could only display them as a set of humanoid gills, don’t you think? The Deep is undoubtedly one of the two “breakout” characters from Amazon’s The Boys, along with Black Noir.
He was formerly among The Seven’s most vile members, but now, both in-universe and in real life, he is a fan favourite! Given that The Deep is only a supporting character and a startling voice of reason in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s writing, it is astonishing that Chace Crawford’s excellent portrayal of this emotional wreck of a character has managed to make him more relevant than Queen Maeve. But who is The Deep, exactly?
What spurs him on to be a superhero? How different from his original appearance is he in the Amazon series? And what direction is his narrative taking? In this video, titled The Deep’s Origins – Explored, we will address all of these questions and more. Oh, and this is your spoiler alert since this video will contain a LOT of them.
The Most Mature and Disrespected Member of The Seven – The Deep’s Comic Book Origins
As we’ve mentioned already, there isn’t a lot to talk about in terms of The Deep’s origins, because we never find out anything about him… beyond the fact that he is 1) well-spoken, 2) African-American and 3) one of the longest-tenured members of The Seven. But these three facets of his personality are enough for you to get an idea of just how The Deep is perceived in The Seven; because if your mind went straight to ridicule casual racism, then you’d be pretty much bang on with your assessment.
The Deep is essentially the “diversity hire” of The Seven; meaning he’s there to satisfy demographics and numbers than to actually do anything substantial or of note for Vought or the team. And what’s worse is he doesn’t even have the powers that they advertise! They call The Deep the King of the Seas, but in truth, his superpowers have nothing to do with water or marine life. He can’t talk to fish, he can’t swim underwater for a long period of time, he can fly, but that is more of an aviator trait than a marine one and no, flying fishes do not count.
What’s more is they make him wear a gigantic diving helmet as part of his costume, and a garish green cape that would give Edna from The Incredibles a right fit. Oh, and you want to know why he wears that helmet? It’s because it has an ancient Atlantean curse on himwhich makes it impossible to take it off of his head; a marketing story created by Vought that is apparently so effective that even Deep buys into it, although that might just be brain damage instead.
Because for all his mature-talk and his level-headedness, The Deep is a member of The Seven at the end of the day, Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson have made it very clear that no Supe has clean hands in their universe. Though The Deep typically acts as a voice of reason whenever The Seven have a team meeting, he is often dismissed on racial, superficial and frankly, petty grounds.
But that doesn’t mean that this sparks a desire in him to take down The Seven, oh no sir, because he is right there with A-Train when it comes to how they both want to treat Starlight; and if you’ve seen our A-Train origins video, then you know exactly where we’re going with this.
The Deep is actually one of the featured characters in the Herogasm mini-series, and most of the graphic, sexual splash pages in ithave his seaweed-tangled dome all over them. In fact, the only thing that he seems to care about is his own reputation and payday, as he is often found complaining about his financial package being a joke when compared to those of the Big Three.
And even when he tries to stand up for himself, he fails to do so and ends up becoming the literal punchline of the existential joke that is his life. Case in point, he turns up at the Flatiron Building all pumped up and ready to confront Billy Butcher’s Boys but ends up getting his head bashed in and asked to politely eff off by the man he came to mess with in the first place.
It’s one of the funniest moments in the entire series, and honestly, kinda encapsulates what The Deep is to the important players of the series; and that is irrelevant. The Homelander doesn’t really care for The Deep and doesn’t try too hard to get him to join his plans for a coup and subsequent world domination. As a result, Deep never enters Washington on that fateful day, and not one single member of The Boys goes after him to take him out of the picture; which says a LOT about how seriously he was taken in the comics.
In fact, The Deep is the only member of the original Seven that makes it into Vought’s next incarnation of a Supe team. But before you can delude yourself into thinking that this shows his tenacity, don’t forget that The Boys is a commentary on superheroes in the first place, and The Deep is the cockroach of this story. Sadly for him, that is not a compliment, even though cockroaches are some of the most naturally-tenacious creatures in existence.
Because really, Deep’s participation in American Consolidated – Vought’s “new trading name” following the Washington nightmare – isa personification of the phrase “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Actually, it might just be worse than that because the idea that the marketing guys came up with for TRUE – that’s the name of the post-coup Supe team – usesthe same template that Vought did with The Seven, and somehow makes its presentation even worse.
Because 7 individuals with colourful backstories and costumes is at least something you can sell to the public; but an entire team of Supes dressed in all white with no discernable reason for existence beyond the fact that they were “needed”? No wonder James Stillwell went crazy after he saw TRUE, because, as he observed, nothing had truly changed. One of the members of TRUE was sporting a rager in the middle of a photoshoot, while another looked like he was going through withdrawal; and hard.
Stillwell could see that The Deep was clearly still “in the team”, but for some reason, American Consolidated thought that putting a white, pointed hood above the diver’s helmet of a black superhero would be a good idea. Maybe this is where Spike Lee got the inspiration for Black KKKlansman, eh?
Needless to say, The Deep was never heard from again after this appearance; we did see James Stillwell in the sequel series Dear Becky, wandering in a pineapple field rambling about good products and bad products and quoting Milton Friedman like the madman he had become. So all in all, The Deep is really just a background character that appears noble but is as bigoted as the rest and happens to play the long game marginally better than his drugged-up, sex-crazed former teammates. This is ironic because that is exactly how one would describe The Deep from Amazon’s adaptation of The Boys.
His real name is Kevin Moskowitz – And he is as stupid as he is depraved – The Deep from Amazon’s The Boys
The one thing that Eric Kripke and his team have done so well with The Boys’ IP is that they’ve given it much-needed depth that takes the series beyond mere commentary and into the realm of true artistic perfection. Every character has defined objectives, traits, and a set of ideals that you can invest in. The Deep starts off the series with none of those things, at least not in the positive sense of the term, because in Amazon’s version of The Boys, he is the one who assaults Starlight; not A-Train, Black Noir and the Homelander.
From the off, we get the feeling that this guy is only interested in indulging himself. And he’s going to go to any lengths to get what he wants. For instance, he told Starlight that he was the “number 2 guy around here” and used that lie to coerce her into gratifying him.
And he wasn’t satisfied with that either, because, throughout season 1, we see him antagonizing Starlight and trying to get back at her even though he was the one who was in the wrong in the first place. The Deep in the TV show is much like A-Train from the comics in that he has a chequered past with women at best; it’s no secret that he loves degrading and humiliating women at Vought Tower, whether they’re into that sort of thing or not.
Ashley even recalls an instant where Deep “fingerbanged” a kindergarten teacher backstage at an awards ceremony before giving her the Teacher of the Year Award; only to bail on her as she put on her clothes and did not even finish the presentation. So, we can see that The Deep is one of, if not the most depraved, members of The Seven. He is not above using his position to commit horrific acts of violation against women, and he doesn’t care about the consequences that his actions have.
All he cares about is being in The Seven because The Deep is very cognizant of the fact that he is the weakest link of the team. See, where things change for The Deep is when we see him go to therapy. That’s where we learn why he behaves the way he does, and it makes us feel sick to our gut because somehow, Eric Kripke managed to make us empathize with a character whose stance on morality can only be called revolting, and he did it without even trying. Up until the point, we saw Deep in therapy, we had only seen his words and actions and not learned much about his motivations.
We know that he seems to enjoy the way he treats women and isn’t above manipulating people in his own way, but where does it all come from? Turns out, The Deep is a psychological mess of a person, and it really makes sense because if I started randomly hearing fish and lobsters and all kinds of sea life trying to talk to me at a Red Lobster at the age of nine, I’d lose my mind, too!
And we aren’t even talking like a Dr. Doolittle kinda situation, either.Most of the marine life that The Deep ended up “interacting” with always asked him for one thing. That thing was to cut them loose and return them to the deep, wide oceans. Because, at the end of the day, seafood comes from sentient life, and The Deep’s relationship with marine animals was only just getting started.
He freaked out when his powers started manifesting – naturally – buthis mom simply told him that it was a gift and that he should learn how to use his powers for good, instead. But really, how impressive is the fact that Deep can interact with fish when he’s got teammates that can bifurcate airplanes with their eyes? As he tells his therapist, “I can talk to fish, so what?” And that’s where we see the real source of his behavior.
Deep’s concept of self-esteem is so low that he derives it by violating that of others. Though it doesn’t excuse what he has done, it does explain a lot about him. Chace Crawford is an exceptional actor because through all the crazy stuff that his character pulls, he somehow manages to make Deep’s more reserved and reflective moments so emotionally investing that you can’t help but be drawn into his story.
And after Starlight exposes the fact that he tried to assault her at the Believe EXPO, such instances only increase in occurrence. Madelyn Stillwell gets The Deep off of the team because she knows who Starlight was talking about – lookat Deep’s history – and Vought needs to have a clean image now more than ever as they are trying to get their Supes into the military. And besides, The Deep had already broken into one of their dolphin enclosures and gotten one of their star attractions killed in a misguided attempt to be “useful in some way”.
So really, he was just a PR nightmare for them, and they needed him out of sight and out of mind, so they sent him off to Sandusky, Ohio for a “sabbatical” with no intention of bringing him back. And this is where Deep’s naivety, arrogance and borderline-childish innocence, all culminate into what is possibly his darkest hour. He gets sexually assaulted by one of his “fans” who, well, fingerbangs his gills for pleasure.
He realises that his sabbatical is going to last for much longer than he himself had anticipated. And he can’t bear being out of The Seven, so much so that he regularly drinks himself blind in Sandusky and once even has a rowdy drunken encounter with children at the water park. This leads him to getting thrown in jail and being bailed out by a blast from his past. Eagle The Archer isn’t a Supe Deep remembers working with, but the Archer recalls their times together and gives him what he needed the most at the time; honest companionship.
But everything in this world happens for a reason, and we find out Eagle’s reasons are instigated by ulterior motives too, as he tells Deep that he was just like him a few years ago. He realised that being an archer in a world with tech-nines is as good as being obsolete, but changes tracks when he brings up the Church of the Collective, which helped him get his life back together apparently.
He tells Deep that they can do the same for them and he isn’t buying whatever cult Eagle is trying to sell him on; until he mentions that they can get him back into the Seven. After that, The Deep is willing to do anything the Church asks of him, including signing over his personal bank account to them, in order to regain his lost social status. That doesn’t mean that we don’t get to see the emotional side of Deep anymore; in fact, if anything, it escalates.
Eagle gives Deep some magic mushrooms and forces him to face his own fears, which causes Kevin to openly accept his body-image issues for the first time on-screen. Remember how we mentioned that Patton Oswalt’s rendition of You Are So Beautiful is damn-near angelic at the start of this video? Well, turns out, it was a duet between him and The Deep; that’s right, folks, Mr. Oswalt played The Gills of The Deep, the source of his shame and his greatest embarrassment.
In a scene that is genuine as touching as it is gross and visually nauseating, The Deep reconnects with his own body and embraces his gills for the first time, singing the song with them and crying at the end. Later on, when Alastair Adana asks him about his perception of Eagle the Archer, he calls him his best friend and credits him with getting him out of the darkest place of his life, all of which is true.
But because The Deep can’t catch a break, even his sincerest emotions are used to play out running gags throughout the series. For instance, every member of the Church must drink Fresca – which fans, and we here at MV, have speculated is drugged to make members more suggestible to their teachings. Because whenever The Deep starts drinking Fresca, he starts mindlessly siding with the objectives of the Church.
After asking Deep his opinion on Eagle the Archer, Adana tells him that the latter is a “toxic personality” and is not to be contacted and Deep 180’s on his stance so quick that is throws off A-Train completely, who is also present at the time. When The Church announces that they’re going to find him a bride, instead of letting him choose a wife for himself, they pick one out for him and force him to marry her by telling him it’s all in the service of getting him back into The Seven.
But in the end, when it comes time for him to get his due, Adana ends up picking A-Train to rejoin the group, blatantly breaking his promise to The Deep. This is perhaps the first time we see Deep take agency for himself in the series, because so far, all he’s done is in the service of someone else, or his own desire to join The Seven. He used to behave like Homelander’s lap dog when he was in the team to stay in his good graces.
When he was kicked out, he joined the Church and did whatever they asked of him without once questioning them; even when Adana told him that they were all space pores, which is the second Church of Scientology reference that the show makes in relation to the Collective.
The first one was when A-Train calling Deep “the next Leah Remini”, which is extremely accurate foreshadowing on his part, because that’s exactly the path that The Deep takes when he leaves Adana’s cult. After exclaiming “eff Fresca” and being labelled a “toxic personality”, The Deep writes his own memoir called “Deeper” – well, gets it ghost-written, but is that really surprising news, dear viewer? – and proceeds to expose the Church and its horrid misdeeds whilst getting himself all the positive PR he needed to fix his public image and get back into The Seven.
Once he does get there, though, he comfortably slips back into his old role as Homelander’s lap dog, because, throughout season 3, all we see him do is agree with Homelander and carry out his orders with encouragement from his new wife Cassandra; even when it involved literally eating his eight-legged boyfriend Timothy. The Deep obviously doesn’t want to eat him but Cassandra’s pressure and Homelander’s death stare manage to coerce him into doing it anyway, in what is perhaps one of the darker scenes in the entire show.
So you can see that The Deep is determined to do anything to stay in the Seven, including eating someone that he loves probably more than his own human wife. But that’s all null and void if Homelander finds out what he did for Queen Maeve, because in his quest to get back into The Seven, Deep fished out a video recording of the infamous plane crash that Homie and Maeve ended up becoming accomplices to and gave it to her so she could use it as leverage and protect herself and Elena.
It was a ballsy move, but given how stupid The Deep is, he obviously didn’t cover his tracks well enough because A-Train was able to put two and two together and use the information to blackmail Deep into silence over his own involvement with Stormfront’s downfall.
The last time we see The Deep is when he arrives at Herogasm on a mission from Homelander but ends up messing it all up to, as always, satisfy his own urges first. After re-joining The Seven, The Deep gets announced as the head of Vought’s Crime Analytics department as a thank you for his loyalty to Homie. His first act as boss is to fire every employee who tweeted negative comments about America’s Favorite Hero, which leaves the entire department empty with the exception of Anika. And even she gets fired when she speaks up against Deep, so really, it’s just him who is left in the department.
If you hadn’t guessed already, this leads to some comically intense interactions between him, Homelander and Ashley, where the poor CEO of Vought Industries comes out as the one being threatened with her life for Deep’s mistakes. So, you know, a typical day at work. What isn’t typical is Soldier Boy showing up at Crimson Countess’ place, 40 years after being presumed dead in action, and blowing it and her to smithereens.
This freaks Homelander the eff out and he starts to attempt to do damage control. The Deep actually proves helpful to him for a change, because he figures out Soldier Boy’s objectives – thanksto Cassandra –andalso manages to pinpoint his next target’s location. Homelander tells The Deep to go there and call him if Soldier Boy shows up, so he goes to the home of the TNT twins in Vermont to keep an eye out for his mark.
But he loses all sight of his mission as soon as he realises that their mansion is the site of the 70th anniversary of Herogasm and uses the opportunity to bring a recurring motif of his character to a full-circle moment. Remember Timothy, the octopus that The Deep ate and was allegedly dating? Well, the inspiration for that came from the Oscar-winning 2020 Netflix documentary called “My Octopus Teacher”.
t’s a beautiful film that documents the relationship between a man and an octopus in intimate, if somewhat uncomfortable details; and it’s that last bit that is really pertinent to The Deep’s character, because when show-runner Eric Kripke saw the thing, all he could think of was, “is he gonna eff that octopus?” And well, he decided that he’d answer that question with the strongest of affirmations, because, in the Herogasm episode, The Deep engages in…consensual skin-on-skin action with an octopus that is alarmingly close to his nether regions.
We were all Erin Moriarty in the moment where Starlight takes a picture of Deep, well, “mating” with the cephalopod; just holding our jaws to keep them from falling off. But while Deep was getting busy with his eight-legged friend, he lost sight of his objective, and Soldier Boy showed up at Herogasm, blowing apart the entire mansion and killing Supes and civilians by the dozens.
The last time we see The Deep is when he puts his tentacle coital partner in a baggie filled with water and drives off before Homelander can arrive on the scene. We are, by no means, endorsing or promoting any of the multiple horrific things that The Deep does in the show. He is a callous, depraved and dumb person whose emotions rule him, and he doesn’t know the first thing about doing things smartly, because just look how things ended up being for poor Lucy the Whale.
But with the help of their team of exceptional writers and Chace Crawford’s impeccably nuanced and emotive performance, Eric Kripke& Co. have managed to make The Deep one of the fan-favourites of the entire series. Well, that, and the fact that they gave him powers that actually fit his billing as the Lord of the Seven Seas.
How Powerful is The Deep?
Well, this question has two answers, but both of them culminate with the conclusion that The Deep is the weakest member of The Seven. In the comics, his only powers are enhanced strength, flight, and physical endurance, with only the last one playing any major role in his character portrayal; and even that takes place at Herogasm, so make of it what you will. His title – Kingof the Seas – isas performative as his ancient diver’s helm is, and he seems to be deluded too, because he actually believes in the curse that Vought fabricated for his backstory.
So basically, The Deep really isn’t what he is made out to be, which is not the case in the TV show, because at least there they give him some powers that make him more unique and allow him to fit the show more seamlessly, as bizarre as that might seem.
After all, The Deep is supposed to be a parody of Aquaman and Namor from DC and Marvel respectively, but he ends up feeling like a Black Manta cosplayer instead. At least in the show his title of “Lord of the Seven Seas” feels more appropriate because, as you might have guessed by now, The Deep is The Boys’ version of Aquaman and Namor, complete with a set of anthropomorphic gills that allow him to breathe underwater.
The Deep shares an innate connection with the marine life of planet Earth, at times showing them more sympathy than he would to actual human beings. This weirdly makes him the most empathetic and pathetic member of The Seven because on one hand, he actually cares about marine life and wants to save more of it because he can not only hear their pain, but he can also feel it.
But, as he is wont to do, The Deep often cocks up his “heroic rescues” with his trademark stupidity. The dolphin he rescued ended up dying because he didn’t secure its body, the whale he rode in on to intimidate The Boys ended up getting gutted by Butcher’s speedboat – literally – andevery time he does use his powers successfully, like when he recovered Translucent’s body or that incriminating Go Pro for Maeve, he is summarily dismissed as second fiddle instead of being praised for his efforts.
But that doesn’t mean that his powers are entirely useless, because earlier in that same speedboat scene, The Deep summons a bunch of sharks to circle around Butcher’s boat in a moment that was Jaws-level of terrifying in the way it was built. On top of that, The Deep’s unique physiology allows him to withstand the immense amounts of pressure that exist at the bottom of the ocean.
The Deep can freely move around under pressure that exceeds 16000 pounds per square inch. Admittedly, this is nowhere near as impressive as Starlight being able to stop bullets with her skin, or Homelander being able to travel at Mach speeds without even breaking a sweat, but it still makes him the best sea-based Supe in history. In fact, his swimming skills are unparalleled, as witnessed first-hand by Annie when she had to team up with him to solve a “water crime”. He’s faster than a speeding missile when he’s underwater, which automatically gives him home-court advantage in a marine setting, which sadly isn’t how things usually play out in The Boys.
The Deep’s weakness isn’t something like running out of water or being out of touch with water bodies for too long; it’s his gills, which most people don’t even know exist underneath his scaled jacket. As for people who do, let’s just say they know that one good gill punch can take Deep out of commission, and that information might come into play in the closing stages of the series.
But as far as everything else is concerned, The Deep might not be the strongest member of the Seven but he deserves his place on the team, thanks solely due to the singular nature of his powers; which is also his greatest shame, ironically enough, but we don’t want to climb into that blowhole again.
Suffice it to say, his membership isn’t entirely down to him being a diversity hire, and with him seemingly starting to connect more with his “true purpose”, it’s looking like he might execute a face-turn in the coming future. Whether that actually ends up happening remains to be seen, though; so keep checking your Prime Video subscription every Friday, folks!
Marvelous Verdict
If you’ve only read Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s work and are unfamiliar with Amazon’s TV adaptation of the same name, then you might be confused as to how could we even come up with 20 mins of content on a character that is practically white noise for The Seven in the source material. But the credit goes to Eric Kripke and his uber-talented team of writers; they managed to make us care about the Supe that was the least interesting thing in the comics.
Chace Crawford as The Deep is what people will remember whenever they talk about The Boys now, not that dumb, helmet-wearing “grown-up” from the comics whose only concern is his position and pay. Crawford’s dedication to making sure that every frame he is in is teeming with earnest emotion is what makes The Deep’s character work on so many levels.
He’s a comic relief character, a tragic hero, a sycophantic deviant, an unwitting cult escapee and a marine life protector all jumbled into a single, rather visually appealing package that you just can’t keep your eyes off of; even when he flashes his gills.
The fact that Amazon is releasing an in-character audio book called Deeper and Deeper with Chace Crawford reprising his role and releasing it on the UN’s designated 2022 World Oceans Day just goes to show how beloved the character is; and how invested the show-runners are in making him really connect with the audience. The Deep is undoubtedly one of the best characters from Amazon’s The Boys, and we personally can’t wait to see where they take him on his wacky, Wet-n-Wild ride.