Laz Alonso as Mother's Milk on season five, episode three of "The Boys."

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Warning: Spoilers ahead for season five, episode three of The Boys.

With each episode of The Boys’ fifth and final season, Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) is shedding the dejected, cynical survivalist he’s become and beginning to rediscover his old optimism.

In season five, episode three of The Boys, the titular vigilante group and The Seven figure out that Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) survived the supe-killing virus in last week’s episode because he was injected with V1, the first and most potent iteration of Compound V. Although the formula hasn’t been in circulation since the ‘50s, The Boys realize that if any of it still exists and Homelander (Antony Starr) gets his hands on it, he could become immortal and immune to the virus — derailing their plan to eliminate supes for good.

Searching for answers about V1, they turn to Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), Vought’s calculating and duplicitous former CEO, who was ousted in season three.

Inside Stan’s heavily fortified bunker, the team combs through his V1 files while MM uses his cyber skills to crack redacted intel, uncovering a lead: an old army hospital called Fort Harmony.

After a breach alert, Stan brings MM to an artillery room, where they share cigars. MM reflects on the irony of being there with Stan, who represents everything his late father fought against. Stan recalls MM’s father as a determined Harlem lawyer who dreamed of taking down Vought, before bluntly asserting that he failed, and MM will too, because he’s up against an “unbeatable foe.”

“There's so much history between these two characters that you really see and feel it,” Alonso said of the scene. “There is an animosity there and also an incredulousness. Here I am with the guy that ruined my life, and instead of strangling him to death, which I could do at any moment, we're sitting here having cigars stuck in his bunker, both possibly going to get killed.”

MM recognizes that when the dust settles, Stan, always the strategist, will try to run Vought again. When that day comes, MM vows to kill him himself.

“I think that it’s important that it ended the way that it did, because it shows that we can have a conversation, but at the end of the day, we're still on opposite sides of this war, and that ain't going to change,” Alonso said.

When The Deep (Chace Crawford), Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell), Dogknott (Zach McGowan) and Cindy (Ess Hödlmoser) infiltrate the bunker, Stan abandons MM, Annie (Erin Moriarty) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) to fend for themselves as he attempts to escape, only to be captured and taken to Seven Tower for a reunion with Homelander.

By episode’s end, The Boys regroup as Frenchie (Tomer Capone) shares a silver lining: the decrypted files reveal disturbing new details about Fort Harmony.

“Well, that’s where we’re headed,” MM says, lighting his cigar from earlier.

Alonso said the moment reflects MM’s gradual process of “finding himself again” this season.

MM begins season five after a year in an internment camp, defeated, cynical and convinced they won’t survive the looming war. By the end of episode three, he’s rediscovered his resolve and remembered what — and who — they’re fighting for.

“I always use this reference that in the life of a freedom fighter, every day isn’t always going to be perfect,” Alonso said. “There are going to be some bad days where you feel defeated and you wonder, ‘Why the heck am I even doing this crap?’ And we wanted to show the reality of that, how it affects not just the person, but the people who love them.”

Alonso said that each season five episode sprinkles in “a little bit of the old MM” and shows the battle between the new, dejected version of the character and the old optimist.

This shift in MM’s was also evident in episode two, when he spared the life of Countess Crow (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), a member of the group Teenage Kix, after seeing that she was just a scared young supe trapped in Vought’s system.

Alonso said that MM saw glimpses of his daughter, Janine, in Countess Crow.

“I think that under any other circumstance, if it had been any other person, he probably would’ve killed that supe and moved on with his day,” the actor said. “But the fact that it was a teenage girl so close to what he's fighting for, he saw the humanity in it.”

If the season five premiere’s death of A-Train is any indication, the remaining episodes won’t spare any characters. It’s a bleak reality the good guys know all too well, yet they press on, determined to make the world better — even if they don’t all live to see it through.

“Even though he’s starting to find himself again, he still realizes that this is probably it,” Alonso said of MM. “I think he’s accepted that, which is very dismal, but it’s liberating. He’s always been fighting to make it back home and while that kept him alive, it also kept him tremendously stressed. And this season, he’s not fighting for that anymore. He's still fighting, but he's accepted that he might not make it back, and that's okay. So, there's some freedom there within this season that we haven't seen in previous ones.”

The first three episodes of season five of The Boys are streaming on Prime Video. New episodes release weekly on Wednesdays, leading to the series finale on May 20.