No show perfects the intersection of quality and debauchery quite like The Boys; with three seasons completed and a fourth on the way – to say nothing of the numerous spin-offs – it’s all but safe to say that Eric Kripke’s gnarly superhero drama won’t be running out of steam any time soon, although we can’t say the same for fake blood.
If there’s anything The Boys does better than dressing superheroes up with narcissism and depravity, it’s political satire; indeed, anyone who somehow manages to miss the scathing lampooning of white nationalism, racism, and the heinous emergence of far-right politics in general is exactly as detached from reality as the real-world peddlers of these things want them to be.
As it turns out, those exact people wound up watching The Boys in droves, completely unaware that Homelander – the show’s morally twisted, ticking time bomb of a villain – was, in fact, a villain. So, you can imagine the response that came out of The Boys going the extra mile to show us that Homelander, who’s effectively Donald Trump with Superman’s powers, was the bad guy.
Even Homelander himself can’t help but scoff at the people who somehow thought he was one of the show’s good guys; in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Antony Starr was dumbfounded by the amount of people who revealed themselves as Homelander stans, suggesting that those people completely missed the point of the show.
“There’s a very strange thing that’s happened with the character, though he is clearly not a good guy. A lot of people have glommed onto him. There’s a weird element out there that actually kind of idolize him. I’ve seen some s— on Twitter and I’m like, ‘Wait, What? You are missing the point entirely!’”
In fairness, Starr’s portrayal of the character is perhaps one of the most enrapturing amongst today’s ongoing shows, so we’d understand being drawn to such a captivating, if spine-chilling, performance. But, if you reacted with any degree of surprise upon learning that Homelander is a villain, you might want to brush up on your media literacy, and probably your moral compass, too.
The Boys is available to stream on Prime Video.
