‘Boots’ Stars Miles Heizer and Liam Oh Open Up About That Shocking Recruit Death: “Everyone Realizes How Serious This Is”

The new Netflix show Boots follows Cameron Cope (Miles Heizer), a closeted teen who joins the United States Marine Corps in the early ’90s, a time when it was illegal to be gay in the military. Over the course of Boots‘s first season, we see Cameron and his fellow recruits struggle with the physical, mental, and emotional parts of boot camp. However, when an unexpected tragedy strikes the platoon mid-season, the boys have to carry far more metaphoric weight than they bargained for.

**Spoilers for Boots, now streaming on Netflix**

Boots Episode 5 “Bullseye” ends with the death of one of the Netflix show’s most endearing characters. Ochoa (Johnathan Nieves) drops dead due to a toxic combination of heartbreak, exhaustion, and a congenital heart condition he kept secret. It’s a harrowing moment that Boots star Miles Heizer calls the “turning point for everybody.”

“It sort of kicks off the sort of second half of the show, that’s it’s a lot more about like interpersonal connections and less about just struggling through the physical challenges,” Heizer said.

Ochoa is first introduced as Cameron’s overeager bunkmate. The young man is sweet, but not exactly smart. He wants to be a Marine because he wants to impress his wife Gloria. When he winds up being a natural marksman, the thought of being a sniper — a trained weapon whose only purpose is to kill people — initially horrifies Ochoa. Nevertheless, he pushes himself to become the unit’s high shooter at gun training so he can win the grand prize: a phone call home.

Ochoa has spent most of Boots dreaming about Gloria and boasting about their passionate honeymoon. So when a man picks up the phone and Gloria can be heard calling him, “Baby,” in the background, it immediately becomes clear that Ochoa’s great love has been cheating on him while he’s been suffering through boot camp.

Now wholly disillusioned, Ochoa breaks. When Sergeant Howitt (Nicholas Logan) makes an off-color joke about his wife getting “dicked down by a Jody,” the recruit snaps at the drill instructor. Soon, Ochoa is in Howitt’s face and Howitt, ever the Marine, erupts. Ochoa begins working out at a terrifyingly intense clip, yelling, “Is this what you want?” Cameron attempts to defend his bunkmate, pointing out that he had found him unwell in the bathroom earlier in the episode. Howitt yells at Ochoa to stop, but the kid is relentless. He keeps going until he passes out and dies.

In the next episode, we learn that Ochoa lied about his health, covering up a heart condition, to get into boot camp. We also get to see the fallout of Ochoa’s death, from food fights to team bonding. Boots star Liam Oh thought there was one line in Episode 6 that really summed it all up.

“[One] character has a line about, ‘You know, it doesn’t necessarily always happen this early, but this type of loss is inevitable for the path that you’ve chosen, and some of you will will carry a lot of weight in your packs, and some of you will carry none,’” Oh said, paraphrasing.

“It’s unfortunate that this happened within the first couple of weeks of your experience as a marine,” Oh said, “but ultimately it’s something that you have to move through and remember him and move on and kind of carry his memory with you.”

The platoon continues to hold on to Ochoa’s memory throughout the rest of the season, culminating with the deceased recruit’s hat being carried through the USMC boot camp’s final challenge, the crucible.

“The last half [of the season], we get to sit on the bunks and have human conversations and interactions,” Heizer said. “I think that [Ochoa’s death] serves as this thing where everyone realizes how serious this is and starts to come together.”

“I think it shifted the dynamic on set because the story sort of starts to change and all of our characters start to change,” Heizer said. “So yeah, it definitely is a big turning point.”