Homelander

Homelander is the main antagonist in the Amazon series The Boys, known as the strongest Supe in the world and the leader of The Seven. He was born from the semen of Soldier Boy and a homeless woman, and raised in a lab where he underwent traumatic experiments and conditioning to become obedient. Despite his affable public persona, Homelander harbors dark secrets and a sociopathic alternate personality. He idolizes Soldier Boy, unaware that they are father and son. Homelander's first mission with The Seven ends in tragedy, leading to a mutual respect with Black Noir.

Homelander is a tall man with blonde hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. He wears a suit reminiscent to Superman and Captain America's, echoing a blend between both drawn from the comics. Homelander wears red gloves and boots, and has gold shoulder pads and wrist protectors, as well as a cape that stands for America, symbolizing patriotism.

Homelander's suit is apparently the only clothing he wears, almost all appearances without the suit have shown Homelander completely nude further reinforcing his singular identity when compared to other Supes, who have lives and identities outside of their careers as superheroes, though he was shown to wear normal clothing while growing up. Only on one occasion has Homelander worn normal clothes as an adult, when he visited Sister Sage to recruit her but it was clear that he did this so he could be 'incognito'. His suit also gives him the appearance of being more muscular than he actually is, as when he is seen not wearing it, he is actually rather lean.

Homelander's mission has always been to serve Vought International and on a deeper level, Madelyn Stillwell. Homelander is rational, initially worrying about Translucent's disappearance in Cherry while the rest of Vought, and the world, ignored it. He is a ruthless leader, doing whatever it takes to keep a high public opinion of The Seven, including threatening both Starlight and the Deep. Homelander portrays the true extent of his anger in You Found Me, killing Stillwell for lying to him about Becca Butcher and his child. As a person, he is deeply narcissistic, disturbed, violence-addicted and sadistic psychopath. For a superhero, Homelander is incredibly and needlessly violent, brutal and aggressive, throwing a bank robber into the air and letting him fall to his death, punching a shooter in the chest, senselessly decimating a group of terrorists around the world. This also highlights his high intelligence as he set up a meticulous plan to get superheroes into the military by forcing A-Train to spread Compound V around the world and is also charismatic, easily swaying the public to give him support.

Due to being raised in isolation inside a laboratory, Homelander struggles to feel genuine love, empathy and understanding for other people and their emotions. This has rendered him callous, immoral and psychopathic often threatening, abusing and intimidating the other members of the Seven in order to keep them in line much like his father while also killing anyone who stands in his way.

It is made clear that Homelander does not actually care about humanity, only the way Supes (but mainly himself) are viewed in their eyes. He is seen to be more than willing to let a plane full of families and children crash in The Female of the Species despite pleas from Queen Maeve to save the children but pretends to feel sadness about the incident while in the public eye. This act of negligent homicide was to cover up the fact that Homelander was completely unwilling to save the passengers after he jeopardized the mission and uses the crash to his advantage, as after Flight 37 went down and all the passengers died, Homelander manipulates the people into believing it was destroyed by terrorists and uses it to further both his and Vought's agenda of militarizing super-humans.

Homelander also suffers from an Oedipus Complex, which is projected onto Madelyn Stillwell who is the closest thing he has to a mother. However, after declaring her true feelings, that she fears him, Homelander burns her eyes and skull without hesitation but did feel second thoughts about it when he stares at a picture of them in her office during The Big Ride. Due to his longing for a maternal figure, women such as Stillwell, Rebecca, Stormfront, and Maeve have all been able to manipulate or control him to some degree due to them being women, and they appeal to a certain part of his damaged psyche.

Ultimately, Homelander is a damaged man, raised in a loveless environment, given extraordinary power and looks, and often told how great he is. Furthermore. the people raising him had a notable disregard for ethics, leaving him with a very similar mindset. This has left him with the paradoxical mindset of seeing almost everyone else as less than him, while at the same time having a deep desire for love. Maeve uses this desire to control him, often with a video of him leaving the plane crash victims of Flight 37, saying that if it went on the web, nobody would ever love him again. By the end of Season 2, Homelander is completely broken, having lost his son, his lover, and his power over The Seven.

In Season 3, Homelander's mental stability has significantly deteriorated even further, and he is now more deranged than ever. Due to his controversial relationship with Stormfront, he is desperate to be loved again by the public, putting on a relatable humane persona and saying he "fell in love with the wrong person." He is also shown to be more intolerant and easily agitated by anyone or anything that threatens to damage his image and reputation, as seen through his growing dislike for Starlight (especially after she was made co-captain of The Seven), and when he threatened to kill A-Train for simply talking back to him. Homelander displays a perverse and sadistic sense of humour, enjoying exerting his will as physical torture and emotional abuse onto others.

Since encountering newfound public scrutiny following footage of him accidentally maiming a teenage bystander in Africa being leaked to the internet and the attacks against The Seven perpetrated by The Boys, Homelander has begun to develop a worsening persecution complex,[3] seeing himself as the maligned victim of sinister elites controlling his life and a "biased" media that seeks to only smear his name. This is perhaps best illustrated during the infamous seafood dinner scene, where Homelander comments that after recently reading on the life of Martin Luther King Jr, he claims he shares many similarities with the beloved historical figure, one of them Homelander alleges is that he is being unfairly persecuted for what he believes in, like King was in the 1960s. The reality is, he is not, because people love Martin Luther King, but in this series, people fear Homelander.

Homelander appears to have a childish tendency to embarrass people that he dislikes but either can't or won't kill, often putting them into humiliating or demeaning situations while simultaneously putting on the front of being friendly or earnest. Following Starlight's promotion to co-captain of The Seven, Homelander made several attempts to embarrass her, such as having her sing on his birthday while having women in skimpy versions of her costume dancing behind her or announcing that they were a couple by surprise while knowing that Starlight hates him. Other victims of his harassment include Queen Maeve, who he announced was a lesbian (even though she's actually bisexual) on live television without her consent, and The Deep, who he forced to eat a seafood dinner in order to rejoin The Seven. Homelander often coerces his victims to participate in these farces through a combination of false sincerity and thinly veiled threats.

Despite Homelander's strength, he has admitted to being afraid of a few individuals, such as Stan Edgar. Following Edgar's departure from Vought, Homelander admits to having been scared of Edgar at one point, though he asserts that this fear is now gone. Despite this, and the constant disrespect Edgar shows him, Homelander still refuses to kill him. It is implied by Edgar that this is because Homelander secretly sees Edgar as a father figure and seeks his approval.

After learning that Soldier Boy was his biological father and that Vought had kept this from him for his whole life, Homelander appears to have become even more deranged. Despite his respect for Black Noir, he mercilessly killed him upon discovering Noir also knew the truth and kept it from him. Nevertheless, it hurt him to kill the one and only person he considered a friend and a reliable partner. He also became more hypocritical, as he condemned A-Train for his murder of a fellow Supe, despite having killed Noir only moments before and even informing A-Train, the Deep, and Ashley of it. Later, Homelander carelessly murdered a civilian in front of multiple witnesses because the man insulted him and threw something at his son, not seeming to care about this blatant act of brutality. His need for a family has also become worse and more dangerous, after his fight against Soldier Boy, he for the first time in his life feels desperate to have strong descendants with the perfect genetics, going as far as using Maeve to "harvest her eggs" to have those perfect children he always dreamed of.

In Season 4, Homelander's deranged mental state has become even worse. The accumulation of many of his actions of earlier seasons have begun to affect him, suffering from a clear PTSD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and is evidently more paranoid. And realizing Butcher, his archenemy, has only a few months left to live and their final confrontation they promised to each other may not be possible to happen, has affected him more than he expected, given it's the only actual thing that keeps him enthusiastic and Butcher, the one person he genuinely likes and doesn't look down to. His mental issues are clearly seen when in a meeting with the remaining members of the Seven and Ashley for recruiting new members of the team he orders Deep to pull out A-Train's penis and "blow him" right in front of him, though immediately stops them when they actually agree to do it. He is sick and tired of having people around him that do not have the stomach to challenge anything he says and emphasizes on being surrounded by sycophants and imbeciles and having to carry Vought on his shoulders. Furthermore, he dramatizes on how his supporters and fans are martyrs to the greatest cause so he orders to the rest of his teammates to beat them to death with baseball bats. Homelander is also going through a existential midlife crisis. This has, unwillingly, made him to ask for advice. He confesses to Sister Sage that he's unhappy even though he's got all that he ever wanted in his entire career at Vought, which was to scale to its peak, and feels meaningless that regardless of whatever he does, like saving or killing people, everyone cheers him, and feels like unnatural to see humans control everything despite being, on his own words, less than anything and merely toys for his amusement. He has shown a more humble and fragile side of himself. He now seems to know when to put his ego aside as shown in his conversation with Sister Sage, and admits he's smart enough to know when to listen and take advice.

Superhuman Strength: One of Homelander's primary abilities is his tremendous superhuman strength. He is stated to be the strongest man in the world according to Jonah Vogelbaum [4] and Stormfront. As a child, he broke a woman's spine by hugging her. [2] After he and Queen Maeve intercepted a robbery, he threw the first thief far away and high into the air. [6] He also easily pushed open a door blockaded by scaffolding with one hand and embedded his fist in a shooter's torso. Homelander casually knocked off the door of a pressurized plane, but he stated he was unable to carry the hijacked plane to safety, suggesting that he is unable to use his full strength in flight, requiring a solid surface to take full advantage of his power. [8] Another time he was unable to stop the full weight of a falling bus and concrete debris brought down on top of him when he was hovering during his encounter with Kenji Miyashiro, although he was distracted. [9] He was later able to throw a baseball from New York to Boston, having previously thrown a football into a small plane with so much force that an emergency landing was required, [5] threw another baseball high into the air, [10] and slapped Blindspot's head hard enough to burst his eardrums and cause excessive bleeding. [11] He crushed a terrorist under his foot. [12] Homelander easily overpowered Starlight [13]and Doppelganger, lifting the latter off the ground and snapping their neck with one hand. [13] He later contended with Stormfront and casually crushed a man's head in one hand. [5] In a fit of anger, he overpowered A-Train, and threatened to pull Billy Butcher apart limb by limb. He casually killed Termite by crushing him under his foot. While initially appearing evenly matched with Soldier Boy, Homelander eventually overpowered him with his raw strength, nearly killing him in the process before the intervention of Butcher. Homelander continued to exert his superior strength against the combined might of Soldier Boy and Butcher, and only through Hughie joining the fight were the three able to finally bring Homelander to the ground, pinning him down with considerable effort. Homelander, seeing what could be his first ever defeat, was able to break free, knocking back Soldier Boy, Butcher and Hughie, giving him enough time to retreat. [15] Homelander is also able to physically overpower Queen Maeve and gouged out her right eye. [16] He was able to easily rip apart Webweaver.