They say you should never meet your heroes, but no one believes them until they kill your lover by practically running through her. The Boys, a sitcom adapted from the Dynamite Entertainment comic of the same name, premiered on Amazon Prime Video in 2019. For its dark take on superhero culture, the show has earned a lot of praise from the audience.
Consider a world in which superheroes exist and are controlled by wicked businesses. It is the corporation that manufactures and prepares crimes for the heroes to solve, as well as profiting off their image. The Boys’ superheroes not only combat the evil guys, but they also feature in their own films. The show is very different from the comics, but it does borrow heavily from them.
On the program, several of the characters have had redemption arcs, but their comic equivalents stay evil. What they both have in common is a diverse cast of individuals with depth, complexity, and realism. The majority of the characters are parodies of well-known heroes from the DC and Marvel universes.
The baddies hide behind their superhero costumes in this universe, and the good folks are labeled criminals. The Boys delves into dark comedy in a way that has never been done before. Speaking of characters, today we will look at 12 Anti-Heroes from the show and comics who have gone over and beyond to do heinous atrocities. There are a lot of spoilers in this video from seasons one and two.
Stormfront
Speaking of anti-heroes who have done unspeakable deeds, Stormfront probably surpasses Homelander in this regard, considering how long she has lived. She is a Nazi who went around killing people belonging to minority races. But Vought had to do what they do best, they rebranded her as Stormfront into a super with a voice and capitalized on it.
She quickly became a crowd favorite and used her influence to encourage more people to use compound V and turn into superheroes. You would have thought that as a Nazi she only hates the humans who don’t belong to the purified Aryan race but her hatred also extends to the people without superpowers.
She wanted to create an army of blonde-haired blue-eyed superheroes who would join the battle against ‘white genocide.’ She believes this threat to be true and tries to teach Homelander’s son Ryan about the people who want to take him down because of the color of his skin.
A certain former president would definitely approve of her message but her Nazi past doesn’t bode well with the citizens once the boys leak it to the press. While most of the other members of the seven have a side that gives them the possibility of redemption, Stormfront seems to grow only more hateful over time.
Once she was married to Frederick Vought and she was also one of the first successful test subjects of Compound V. The immortality that she gained as a superhero, also made her a witness to the aging and death of everyone she has ever loved.
After she is fried and dismembered by mini Homelander, she was mumbling in German about the good times she has spent with her family and the specific memory of her daughter eating an apple for the first time. Despite being a despicable character most of the time, she did genuinely love her daughter and husband. If we were to make a list of some of the bad things she has done other than being a Nazi, it would go something like this: committed hate crimes against minority races when she was known as Liberty, she killed Kenji, attacked Kimiko, manipulated her followers, propagated genocide, and tried to kill Becca in front of her son.
It was not a wise decision to attack Becca in front of Ryan as he is the first natural-born supe and has the same powers as his father. But she probably misjudged the intensity of those rays because of how Homelander lasers her … bits. Even though Vought has kept her in a secured location, for now, we are eagerly waiting for her return in season 3.
Homelander
If Superman was born on earth and brought up in a lab, and somewhere along the way decided to become evil, he would be similar to what Homelander is. Speaking of being raised in a lab, one might feel compelled to compare the experience with Eleven from Stranger Things. Both of them have powers and were experimented on and observed by scientists.
But Eleven did manage to get away from there and found friends who taught her to distinguish right from wrong. Homelander’s whole past was fabricated. He never grew up with his family or went to a regular school. Growing up he always felt like a lab rat displayed in a zoo and he would feel anxious around the people gathered to observe him.
Never having received the comfort of being loved by a mother, he would often seek that out from his relationship with Madelyn. He thought of her as a mother and a lover. After he learned that she hid the truth about him having a son, he killed her.
And whenever he missed her afterward, he would call on Doppelganger to take her form and re-create past scenarios and indulge in activities one shouldn’t engage in with their mother figures. And that doesn’t even top the list of the messed-up things he has done. While the public worships Homelander as the perfect superhero, Billy Butcher sees him for the vile being he truly is. Once he was a fan of the seven, but his opinion changed after the night Homelander forced himself on his wife. When she disappeared after a few days, Butcher blamed Vought and Homelander for her disappearance and thought they had killed her.
Adding to the list of twisted things Homelander has done, he leaked Compound V to a group of terrorists without the knowledge of Madelyn. He created a group of Supervillains he could take down to convince the government to allow superheroes in the National Defence.
He willingly let a plane crash and let the passengers die when he could have saved them. He was extremely possessive of Queen Meave while they dated and his actions made her fear him to the extent that she felt compelled to keep her relationship a secret. After he learned of it, he outed her to the media to promote an inclusive image of the Seven.
He practically bullied Ashley into being his puppet and that’s probably the least dangerous thing he has done. After he learned about Ryan, he did as he wished instead of respecting Becca’s wishes.
He had not only pushed Ryan off a roof while teaching him how to fly, but he also did everything he could to turn him against his mother. Despite being the worst of them all, he wants to be worshipped by the public. He keeps his image clean as he doesn’t want the people to stop loving him.
Soldier Boy
From the trailer of season 3, we know that Jensen Ackles will be joining the cast as Soldier Boy. We are yet to see if the character will be strikingly similar to their naive comic book counterpart or significant changes will be made to the character. Stan Edgar had mentioned how Soldier Boy had killed hordes of Germans in the world war back in season 2 and there were other instances that mention his presence.
In the comic books, he is a dim-witted parodied version of Captain America and there are lots of similarities in their appearance including their shield. Just like Steve Rogers, his abilities as a soldier were enhanced as an experiment during the war. He wasn’t prone to aging.
Over the years, two other superheroes have lived under the identity of Soldier Boy, but Vought branded him as a single immortal individual. The current version of Soldier Boy is so inferior to his predecessors that he pees his pants when confronted by heroes more powerful than himself. He mumbles the names of the states whenever he’s involved in a fight.
Currently, he’s the leader of Payback, but he constantly gets manipulated and used by other superheroes. Just like most of the supes, he wants to join the Seven someday and Homelander promises him a spot in the squad in exchange for sleeping together. He is a coward as well as a people pleaser.
He has killed a lot of people just to impress Homelander. Even though he was skilled in battle, he got his nose bitten off by Billy Butcher. But judging by the trailer, the character is going to be portrayed much differently on screen. The groundwork for the character will probably be based on the original Soldier Boy.
And instead of having a naive new member join the team, Soldier Boy is probably going to be just as twisted and cunning as Stormfront and Homelander. What are your theories on how similar or different Soldier Boy is going to be than his comic book counterpart?
Black Noir
Black Noir is what you get after combining Batman and Deadpool, minus the latter’s talkative nature. Is he a single person, or is he multiple people posing as one? You never know as his height and weight frequently change. He’s a deathly ninja assassin who can be brought down by Almond Joy or any other tree nut. He’s the only member of the seven who hasn’t disappointed Homelander under any circumstances and has always followed his orders.
He is bullet-proof and fire-resistant but his face did seem to have some burn marks when Queen Meave uncovered his mask to shove Almond Joy down his throat. When he’s not fighting bad guys and beheading sure terrorists, he spends that time stalking the boys and kidnapping those who are a threat to Vought. He’s the deadliest member of the seven and has shown a sensitive side on occasions.
Not much is known about his past other than the fact that he trained to be a ninja. He was one of the many supes hurt by the secret of Compound V as they were under the impression of being born with superpowers. He’s one of the only people to have fought Kimiko and come out alive.
He had left after she appeared to be dead but she was fine, thanks to her regenerative powers. Whenever he has committed a crime it has been either in the interest of Vought or Homelander. He kidnapped Starlight and her mother when he got to know she was rebelling against the seven by mingling with the boys.
When he went to take down Naqib, he killed almost everyone except the child. Even though most of them were terrorists, the innocence of the lady he killed was unclear. He would have killed Butcher if he wasn’t ordered to step down. He was last seen while being taken down by his tree nut allergy after Queen Meave stepped in to save Starlight from his attack. For now, we will wait for him to recover and hope to see more of his piano playing skills in season 3.
Queen Maeve
If Wonder Woman didn’t grow up in Amazon and was brought up by an abusive parent who exploits their children to make money, she would be Queen Meave. Despite having a rough childhood, she was full of hope and wanted to make a difference when she had first joined the seven.
But over the years she lost herself to the system and turned a blind eye to the exploits of the other members. She even broke the rules and fabricated the truth while fighting criminals with Homelander. The two had dated for a while and for a long time she was the only person he could trust.
Initially, she was cold towards Starlight and her advice to her would be to toughen up and not show her vulnerable side to others. As she got to know Starlight better, she got reminded of her younger self and the values she stood for. For a long time, she didn’t take a stand against her coworkers thinking she was doing it to protect the people she loves.
After seeing Homelander letting the plane crash, instead of saving the passengers, she started to reevaluate her decision. She started distancing herself from the person she loved, fearing Homelander’s insecurity. She slowly began to take a stand and defend Starlight whenever she was under attack.
Slowly, Queen Meave began to evolve into an Anti-Villain in a world filled with Anti-heroes. She hasn’t done as many horrible things as others on the list but she did end up hurting those close to her.
She often found herself attacking her co-workers like Black Noir and Stormfront to help Starlight. Most people wouldn’t dare to blackmail Homelander with the video of the plane crash but this girl does get it done.
A-Train
A-Train is basically Flash on steroids. His running through Hughie’s girlfriend transpired the events of the series. As if killing an innocent citizen for standing off the curb was not enough, he went ahead and killed his long-term secret girlfriend Popclaw as well. A-Train was the most insecure member of the Seven.
The only way for him to continue being part of the seven was by being the fastest man alive on the planet. But Shockwave was a threat to his position as they had the same powers.
A-Train continued to abuse compound-V to enhance his abilities on the track but it did cause him to have severe side effects. Without his A-Train uniform, he was just a regular person who gets racially profiled while trying to shop. He did have a hard time growing up in the hood and his struggles always got whitewashed by Vought by a more appealing story, probably written by the marketing guys.
His backstories do explain his compound V abuse but they are no excuse for slashing through someone’s girlfriend and then forgetting about it. He was so wrapped in his own insecurities that he didn’t care about the grief he had caused Hughie. He never gave him a sincere apology but went ahead and kidnapped his father and tried to pin the blame for Popclaw’s death on Hughie!
He did get kicked off the Seven by Homelander but regained his position after helping the boys get Intel on Stormfront’s Nazi past. You would have thought that he might have become a better person after getting his arse beaten by Starlight and having that heart attack.
But the only reason he helped the boys take down Stormfront was that he knew he couldn’t be a part of the team as long as she was pulling the strings. These days he’s busy dropping his rap albums and hopefully not running through people on the streets.
Lamplighter
Lamplighter’s retirement paved the way for Starlight to join as his replacement in the Seven. He received his powers as a baby from the use of Compound V. As his ability is to manipulate fire, as a child he might have been similar to the baby from the Incredibles. Mallory has held a grudge against him for crisping her grandchildren to death. Back when he was a member of the Seven, he was close to Homelander.
Just like the rest of them, he liked to abuse his power and enjoyed watching others burn. As a child, he had burned down his house, but instead of getting concerned, his father was amused by his abilities. The CIA has had their eyes on Vought for a while, but when Mallory came across footage of the Lamplighter doing not so heroic stuff she tried to blackmail him into spying on the seven.
He thought the only way to get out of that mess was by killing Mallory so he went to her house to do so. Unaware that it was her grandchildren who were sleeping on her bed, he set them on fire. But by the time he realized his mistake, the children were almost dead. His guilt was probably one of the factors behind his retirement but Vought wasn’t done with him yet.
They drafted him at Sage Grove Mental Institution where he quietly helped Vought burn the evidence of all the horrible things they do and nurse after the supes they were experimenting on. He finds an unpredictable ally in the boys after they had broken into the mental hospital and accidentally freed a psycho super who could explode people and bend metal with her mind.
The bad blood between him and the boys fades a bit after they learn of all the events that unfolded the night he burned the children. His only regret was being on the sidelines and not being the hero who swoops in and saves the day and he gets the chance to do so while Hughie goes to rescue Starlight.
On seeing his statue being removed by Starlight he gets overwhelmed as it was his wish to die by its side. As it was no longer possible you would think that he should reconsider the way he wants to die. But before one can complete that thought, he incinerates himself and goes up in flames.
Other than helping Vought hide evidence of their crime, he did enjoy watching adult parodies of the seven members and compared himself to the guy who watches the action but doesn’t get any of it. His appearance on the show was quite brief but he did play a significant role in turning the tables in favor of the boys.
The Deep
The Deep is the perverted version of Aquaman. He cares more about aquatic animals than his colleagues and other humans. He has made multiple attempts at rescuing sea creatures from supermarkets and amusement parks, but he always ended up getting them accidentally killed. Not everyone would steal a dolphin and carry it in the back of his truck, without water or seatbelt while taking it to the ocean.
Only if he cared as much about women as he did about the dolphins, he wouldn’t have been fired from the seven because of the sexual harassment accusations against him. He presented himself as the second in command to Starlight and asked her for carnal favors when in reality the dolphins took him more seriously than his team members.
He was so unimportant that he was only called to help with crises involving water bodies. All Vought wanted from him was to take pretty dives at the ocean and impress the viewers on social media as a dolphin is supposed to at a water show.
He has more chemistry with the sea creatures than he does with the girl he married at the request of the church of the collective. While he does try to pass off as an important guy with a charming persona, he is very insecure about his appearance, especially his gills.
Homelander’s disgust over the way they appear hasn’t helped him with his insecurities. He has been trying really hard to get reinstated into the seven by reforming his image and following the crazy rules of the church. But he doesn’t seem to realize that getting terrible oral jobs from his wife doesn’t count as repentance over all the bad things he has done. He is still as shallow as the time when he had first met Starlight. He responded to the church based on what he thought they wanted him to say.
One moment he referred to Eagle as a friend but changed his tune when Alistair referred to him as a toxic personality.
He doesn’t stand up to them or voice his honest opinion until he finds out that only A-Team is rejoining the seven. The Deep might not get called back to the seven for a while but we do know that post his dramatic exit from the church he’s going to protest against the Fresca addict until the public learns about how and what blew his mind.
Billy Butcher
When the supes get out of line, it is up to Butcher and the boys to bring them to justice. The supes may be more powerful than them but it doesn’t stop the boys from coming up with creative ideas to kill them, and no one knows it better than Translucent. Billy Butcher is a cynical and closed-off character who swears every time he opens his mouth.
He is a former British Intelligence Agent who went rogue after his wife went missing and he blamed Homelander for ruining their life. He can’t stand the supes and despises Vought for constantly covering up their crimes. There’s one thing he knows better than how to take down the supes, and it’s keeping tabs on what the spice girls are up to.
Only a diabolical c-word like him would think of using a super baby with laser vision as a gun to take down the enemies. He had started lurking around Hughie to use him to spy on Vought.
He admired him as he was one of the only people refusing to accept compensation from Vought to stay silent about a crime committed by one of the supes. He saved Hughie from Translucent and captured the supe to conduct experiments on him. He brought in Frenchie and Mother’s Milk to reunite in their fight against Vought.
He has pissed off so many people over the years that almost no one seems happy to see him after he turns up at their doorstep. He hates supes as much as Stormfront hates normal humans.
He finds it hard to trust Kimiko and Starlight fearing their betrayal. For a long time he believed that Homelander had killed Becca and Vought had covered it up. And that fueled his hatred against the organization and the will to bring it down. Homelander later revealed to him that his wife was still alive and had given birth to Homelander’s son. Vought had kept this a secret even from Homelander.
Because of his hatred towards the supe, Billy had trouble seeing Ryan as a normal kid and was afraid that one day he might turn out to be like his father. He wanted to take Becca with him and leave the kid behind but he couldn’t do so knowing how much the child meant to his wife.
If not for the word given to his wife, he probably would’ve thought of killing Ryan and blaming him for killing his mother. Knowing that neither he nor Homelander would be the ideal father figure for the child, he handed him over to Mallory and gave him the fatherly advice to not be a c-word. At his core, Butcher is a good guy who does a lot of bad things in the name of delivering justice.
Blarney Cock
Blarney Cock is yet to make an appearance in the tv show and his character is just as whacky and screwed up as the other anti-heroes in the show. We don’t get a lot of teenage icons who steal painkillers from children’s hospitals and have a hamster living in their bunghole.
Popclaw and A-Train weren’t the only junkies from Teenage Kix, Blarney is known to pop the pills too. He and his teammates share an intimate bond, quite literally. He was in an orgy with his teammates when the character was introduced for the first time.
Not everyone has the honor of getting accidentally killed by Hughie when their group is in a fight with the boys. After his death, Hughie took pity on the poor hamster and took him under his care.
But that wasn’t the end of this Blarney Cock as he was resurrected. Usually, when people want their pet back, they don’t break into someone’s house. But not much courtesy can be expected from a guy who has a friend named Whack Job.
As expected, his encounter didn’t end well and this time he was killed again, but not by accident. To prevent the chances of another resurrection, his body was incinerated. Someone who keeps his pet up in his bunghole and steals drugs from sick children deserves to be called a messed-up villain.
John Godolkin
If you thought Homelander is the worst, wait till you hear about John Godolkin. His character hasn’t appeared on the show yet, but the readers of the comic know how vile he is. He has a lot of similarities with Professor X, including a house called G-Men mansion but his intentions aren’t to help the children in need. While Homelander saw his lover as his mother figure, John is quite the opposite.
He seeks a similar kind of relationship with the kids he abducted over the years. He would refer to them as his children but there was nothing fatherly about the way he treated them.
He knew they wouldn’t be loyal to him out of love, so he controlled them with fear. It wasn’t easy for his children to escape from the hell hole or expose his exploits as they resulted in a painful death and resurrection. He would target runaway kids and orphans and bring them to the G-mansion.
But it wasn’t the reason that got him killed. Stillwell and Godolkin had different opinions about building a new Pre-Wiz. Since he had now become a threat to business, Stillwell ordered Vought American to kill him as well as the G-men.
There’s nothing sad about the death of someone like John Godolkin, but the G-men definitely deserved a better life than the one they had under his wings. If he wasn’t put down, he definitely would have continued to abduct children, inject them with compound V, and exploit them for his needs. He also would have continued to send G-men after the Boys, until all of them were killed.
Kenji Miyashiro
When the footage of a sure terrorist flipping over a boat reaches the boys, Kimiko recognizes the culprit. Kimiko and Kenji had no other option but to join the Shining Light Liberation Army, even if they didn’t agree with their ideals. Seeing their parents get killed was too much for Kimiko to bear and since then she never uttered a word.
Surrounded by the people who made their lives unbearable, the siblings began to look after one another and came up with secret sign language. Kimiko had managed to escape them after reaching the U.S.A but her brother was left behind. After spotting him on the video, Kimiko reached out and reunited with him.
The siblings had a lot to catch up on. It looked like a happy reunion scene until Kimiko realized that her brother had been turned and he had started to believe in the mission of The Shining Light Liberation Army. Kimiko wasn’t happy to know that her brother had turned into a terrorist and to prevent him from continuing on that path, she lets the boys capture him.
Both of the siblings had been injected with compound V by the army and trained to become super soldiers. We all know that Kimiko is nearly impossible to defeat in a battle and her brother was no exception. He also had telekinetic powers that helped him manipulate matter.
While being held captive at Mallory’s, he used his powers to use a can of energy drink to set himself free. Don’t you hate it when you take a boat for a ride but the police arrive in a helicopter and put you under arrest for using a stolen boat?
Kenji thought of using this opportunity to attack Butcher, but what are siblings for if they don’t stop you from attacking a diabolical maniac and crashing a helicopter underwater? Speaking of water, the Deep appeared with his aquatic friends and chased the boys into one of his whale friends.
The seven arrive to fight the super terrorist and the criminals are spotted with him. Kenji attacked Homelander to save Hughie from getting killed and tried to escape once again. It’s nearly impossible to run away when members of the seven, as well as your super sister, when are chasing after you.
But he halts and goes back to save his sister from Stormfront. The former nazi already harbored hatred against the two for not belonging to the superior Aryan race and took the opportunity to kill Kenji in front of his sister. As Kimiko’s brother, he was an endearing character, but as a soldier, for the Shining Light Liberation Army, he has killed a lot of people.