'The Boys' star Erin Moriarty says Starlight 'summons a dark side of herself' on season 2

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for season two of Amazon Prime Video's "The Boys."
• "The Boys" star Erin Moriarty (Starlight/Annie January) spoke to Insider about how her character's experiences during season one shaped her mindset on season two.
• Moriarty told us that Starlight came to the realization that she had to "summon a strength inside her she didn't know existed" in order to adapt to the world she's now part of as a member of The Seven.
• The actress added that Starlight "is still on track to attain her mission of making the world a better place."
• But her methods to reach that goal have changed, as fans see on season two.

"The Boys" star Erin Moriarty opened up about how her superhero character Starlight (aka Annie January) "summons a dark side of herself" on season two of the hit Amazon Prime Video show.

"I think she's adapting to this world that she's been inducted into that she had no idea would be like this," Moriarty told Insider.

Growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, all Annie wanted was to save the world. She solved local crimes, competed in superhero pageants, and attended the bible camp, Capes for Christ. Her whole reason for auditioning to be part of The Seven, a prestigious "supe" group that's run by Vought International, was to carry out this mission of saving others with her supposedly God-given superpowers.

While Annie was initially thrilled to join The Seven, she quickly learned that her colleagues are far from the moral figures they pretend to be in public.

"I think that she kind of came to this point of having to figure out whether she was going to give up and be defeated by it, because it really is just not the world she expected, or summon a strength inside her she didn't know existed," Moriarity said.

After being inducted into the group, Starlight was sexually assaulted by another supe called The Deep (Chace Crawford). She learns in season two that she wasn't born with her powers, but her mother worked with Vought to give her an experimental superhero-making drug called Compound V as a baby.

And the one person who she thought she could count on, Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid), lied to her on multiple occasions.

"I think that the end of season one and what happens to her in terms of her heartbreak with Hughie and the heartbreak that she experiences with her mother as well as going through sexual abuse in season one, I do think adversity builds character and strength," Moriarty told Insider.

Throughout season two, Starlight's character arc is much darker. She blackmails an old bible school friend and supe so she can get a sample of Compound V and threatens new Seven member Stormfront (Aya Cash). She even teams up with The Boys for missions and accidentally kills a man with her energy blast.

"Maybe once I would have cried over him, but now he was just another person in our way," Starlight says of the man who she unintentionally killed during episode six.

Moriarty said that Starlight's evolution this season is a byproduct of the experiences and revelations from season one. Plus, her character is no longer the starry-eyed girl from the Midwest who thought that supes were admirable people.

"I think that by the end of season one, she has, through adversity, built enough strength to be able to adapt to the world and rewire her way of thinking so that she is still on track to attain her mission of making the world a better place," Moriarty told us.

"But the means by which she achieves that mission has to change and she deals with it. She adapts. She summons a dark side of herself," she added.

"The Boys," which is based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic-book series, debuted on Amazon in July 2019 to rave reviews. Season two of "The Boys" kicked off in early September and concludes with a finale dropping on Friday.

• Read more:
• 'The Boys' star Erin Moriarty says it never gets easier to get into her Starlight costume
• 'The Boys' star Karen Fukuhara talks about creating Kimiko's 'powerful' sign language on season 2
• 'The Boys' stars Aya Cash and Colby Minifie talk about the real-world events shaping season 2
• 44 details you might have missed on season 2 of 'The Boys,' so far