Pretty much every form of entertainment that has a fanbase is going to have some people in it who dearly love one thing for all the wrong reasons.
You might realise when talking to fellow fans that while you both like something, when you watch it, you just aren’t seeing the same thing, even if it ought to be quite blatant that there are some characters you should not champion.
The Boys is really not subtle about certain characters being bad guys, and especially not when it comes to Antony Starr’s Homelander.
With the stars and stripes on his back and decorative eagles on his shoulders, this all-American superman is a deranged monster who kills a heck of a lot of people, and he’s very clear that he sees normal humans as ‘f**king mudpeople’ who don’t really matter beyond their capacity to give him the love and attention he craves.
The Prime Video show, based on a graphic novel series of the same name, is really not pulling any punches about how much of a monster Homelander is.
You can feel sorry that Homelander got put in a furnace as a kid and still think he’s a psycho who needs to go down. (Prime Video)
So, naturally, there’s some fans of The Boys who think he’s unironically great.
There have been some scenes sprinkled around the show which might make you feel sorry for him, given that The Boys makes it clear he never really got a childhood ,but has to pretend he was raised by a normal family and not in a lab.
Then, season four showed just what some of that lab-rat life was like, as it was revealed that he was incinerated, tortured, and put through an absolute wringer of s**t in his youth.
It’s entirely possible to watch The Boys and think Homelander never really had a chance at a normal life, and still realise he’s a deranged fascist with the power of a god.
At least in his universe, many of the fans acknowledge that if he was pitted against other versions of Superman (and Sportacus from Lazy Town), they’d wipe the floor with him.
Homelander, pictured murdering someone in broad daylight. Clearly not a good guy, despite what some viewers think. (Prime Video)
However, for those who genuinely think Homelander is great, Antony Starr has said ‘you are f**ked up’.
Today (25 October) is Starr’s birthday, and do you know what Homelander did on his birthday? Made someone jump off a building.
Speaking at the For The Love Of SciFi convention in Manchester, England last year, Starr addressed the idolisation that some viewers who still haven’t figured out The Boys is making fun of them have for Homelander.
He said: “I think a lot of people missed the point, a lot of people on the right side of especially American politics didn’t quite get what the character was representing, who and what.
“There’s something quite funny to that ’cause it means they’re dumb as a bag of hammers but I think that’s one of the things about the character.
“We’ve tried to make it a little bit more complicated that just a villain and it somehow works. The weird thing is that I get lots of people coming saying they love Homelander, it’s like ‘you’re f**ked up’.”
