Okay, let us remind you of two things before you attack us with pitchforks over the title of this video: First of all, this is merely a YouTube video about a TV programme, and secondly, Homelander’s present fan base would definitely do that. Put the darn fork down, think it over, and let us talk about how Homelander is not really all that bad, but rather a byproduct of his surroundings.
Because the Amazon TV programme does not identify all Supes as “corrupt degenerates,” as Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s original material essentially does. Eric Kripke’s adaptation of The Boys skirts the dangerous line of accidently making a homicidal madman likable by giving his characters a lot more depth as opposed to strictly adhering to the source material.
The best illustration of this is A-Train, who has done so much that if you are not disturbed by the fact that you kind of like him now despite everything he has done, then something is wrong with you.
Funny enough, Homelander can also be compared to it in certain respects. It is intriguing to observe how he got there, even though he is a vicious man-child whose only goal in life appears to be to have everyone admire him. The adage “product of his environment” applies to Homelander in many ways, even to the reflection in the mirror.
How precisely is that, though? Why does it actually matter, then? These 7 reasons why Homelander is not pure evil – examined – are what we will respond to in this video. This is your spoiler alert if you have not seen the Season 3 finale since there will be A LOT of them.
Prior to explaining further, we have a rather minor request.
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He was raised with a nuke aimed at him at all times
Starting off our list with a particularly vile example of Vought’s pseudo-parenting, which, while not proven in any way in the show, is one of the more disputed aspects of Homelander’s upbringing from the comics. Because at least one person was physically involved there and she met the same death as Becca Butcher, Homelander’s conception and upbringing in Ennis’ account were vastly different from what Vogelbaum had told him about them in the show.
Instead of making Homelander in a lab, Vogelbaum’s researchers implanted genetic material from Stormfront, a fictional character, into the womb of a woman who passed away while giving birth to Homelander because, instead of crying when he was delivered, Homelander activated his laser beams, accidentally shooting his mother and the doctors there in the room while this happened.
Because of such a horrific birth, Vought decided that they will raise their subject under strict supervision; and their idea of strict supervision meant that they would keep an honest-to-god nuke aimed at the kid at all times if he showed signs of going rogue/mental. Eventually, they created Black Noir as a contingency because simply nuking Homelander would create a web of complexities that would leave Vought in more trouble than he would have with his own actions.
Of course, they didn’t anticipate Noir going rogue instead, but we all know how that ends; check out our The Boys Comics Finale Explored video if you want to know more. But here’s the thing, even if Noir hadn’t gotten the job done, it is stated very clearly that a nuke would; the only thing stopping the latter option from being implemented is the apocalyptic winter that would follow in its wake.
And there is precedent for radioactivity being an effective counter for Compound V in the TV series; just look at anything Soldier Boy does after being set loose in season 3 episode 4. In fact, his first move was to blast Kimiko with his chest beam which, instead of disintegrating her on the spot, ended up frying the Compound V out of her system.
A similar thing happened to Queen Maeve (pronounce: May-vuh) in the finale, where she survived a radioactive blast from Soldier Boy at point-blank range and managed to get her normal life back. Of course, there are multiple heroes who died because of his radioactive chest beam as well, but that’s probably a power scaling thing, as Kimiko, Maeve and Homelander are some of the most physically-enduring Supes in the series.
So it’s possible that a nuke could effectively neutralize Homelander in the series as well, and there is some evidence for this even though Madelyn Stillwell claimed that they had thrown everything at him and nothing seemed to work. When Homelander visits Vogelbaum in season 1, he’s told a horrifying story about the birth of his own son Ryan.
Of course, we later find out that it was all a lie because both Ryan and his mother Becca were discovered alive, but here’s the thing; the details of that story ran parallel to the birth of Black Noir’s offspring from the comics, and we think it might actually be the story of Homelander’s birth instead. Because 1) it was too detailed and 2) Vogelbaum had clearly been keeping too many secrets from him because while he did let slip that Becca was alive, he didn’t tell Homelander Soldier Boy was his father, and he had his head popped open before he could even get to that.
So it is possible that Homelander was raised with a nuke in the TV show as well, we just haven’t heard about it. It would add another layer of analogous connection between him and his biological father, as Soldier Boy was also subjected to radiation torture during his time as a Soviet lab rat. And that kind of an upbringing is sure to leave you a little bit on edge as you continue to live your life day in and day out.
Because if you know you might die in the most-horrific way known to mankind for “stepping out of line”, you too might go crazy working for the same people for decades on end. Vought chose to treat Homie like a weapon, and chose to guard that weapon with yet another weapon. If they’d only treated him like a human being, he might not have turned out this way, because…
He grew up without a family and developed a flawed moral compass as a result
Now, this isn’t to say that a family would have guaranteed that he would turn out to be a good person; just look at Butcher’s backstory if you need any more confirmation on that fact. But it is generally agreed that the one thing that Homelander truly craves is a familial connection, and that is something he has never received since his birth because Vought needed him to be the strongest man alive, and he was just a boy back then.
But here’s the thing; making a person the “strongest alive” is more of a mindset than a quantifiable process, and strength isn’t merely physical; it is also mental and emotional. Homelander managed to become the physically-strongest Supe in the history of mankind, but his mental state can be compared to that of a rebellious adolescent, and his emotional state to that of an attachment-deprived toddler.
Because all his life, all he really ever wanted was love, and as we’ve stated already, he was only given disdain or praise, both in lieu of his awesome strength. He had no real relationships throughout his formative years, and that has clearly left him unable to form one as an adult. This is where we want to bring up Superman because long-time comic book fans will know just how important the Kents were to his progression as a character.
Superman is an alien who came to deeply appreciate human beings despite their fragility because of the values instilled within him by his “parents”. In fact, even Superman admits that without Jonathon and Martha Kent, he doesn’t know what would become of him, and indeed many of his evil counterparts begin going evil when they fall out of touch with the humanity that the Kents’ love had germinated within him.
It’s widely accepted that is Supes had grown up without a parent, he would’ve probably gone on a rampage and tried to conquer planet Earth; kinda like Goku, minus the tail. Now, contrast that with Homelander’s story, and you can see why this lack of parental guidance eventually broke his mind and spirit. Homelander was starved for a mother’s love and a father’s warmth all his life.
In fact, on one occasion, he killed a female doctor by hugging her too tight, because he had come to view her as a motherly figure and wanted to feel the love that came with it. His Oedipus Complex is a clear manifestation of this deprivation of a motherly figure in his life, which allowed Stillwell and later Stormfront to manipulate him; and there’s a chance that the latter may be his actual mom, and that just raises all kinds of taboo questions in our mind that we’re going to figure out by ourselves.
But here’s the thing, in the absence of a real parental figure, Homelander created his own worldview by picking up whatever he saw from the Vought scientists, plus the thousands of hours of mental programming they subjected him to, in order to become the “perfect product”. Of course, if they’d have actually given him a family to grow up with and to know real love, then a LOT of his casualties could have been avoided, and while that is not a guarantee, it is a highly likely possibility, which was all but squandered by our next entry.
He was subjected to horrific experiments and constant propaganda as a child
So, you guys remember what the series told us about the experiments that the Russians conducted on Soldier Boy, and what it did to his psyche, right? I mean, are you telling us that you wouldn’t be traumatized if someone unloaded an entire clip of an AK-47 in your mouth? Thank you for not saying that, because then you would be the real psycho dear viewer, and we can only handle one psychopath at a time.
But speaking of psychopaths, and continuing on the tangent of upbringing, Homelander was subjected to multiple, brutal, downright inhumane experiments as a child to test Vogelbaum’s theory of having finally created the “strongest man alive”. That mantle used to lie with Soldier Boy before Homelander, and though he couldn’t shoot lasers with his eyes or fly, S.B. was powerful enough to withstand 40 years of Russian torture, which would have likely killed any other Supe in less than half a decade.
He survived through mutilation attempts, radiation poisoning, constantly being doused with Novichok- the world’s most dangerous nerve agent- and he even came out of that ordeal sporting a new superpower that legitimately scaled on the Geiger Counter; though that is absolutely the worst metric to associate with any human, if you know what it measures. Soldier Boy was betrayed and sold out in 1984; when Homelander would have been roughly 3 years old.
And Dr. Vogelbaum saw it fit to subject this literal toddler to horrors worse than what his biological father would face with the Ivans. Because at least Soldier Boy can categorize his problems as PTSD and work through them if he ever wanted to, but with Homelander, it’s yet another formative issue.
Imagine creating a being and then continuing to experiment on them whilst practically brain-washing them into becoming Jesus Christ Come Again for America; what you have just made is not a saviour, it is a potentially world-ending explosive that can spontaneously combust at any given moment if it isn’t kept placated at all times. Homelander was subjected to far worse torture as a child; Vogelbaum admitted that he needed John to be the strongest man alive and not a sweet child, so he “went to work on him” which is basically Boys code for torture.
Homelander could have processed all of this a bit better had they just explained things to him honestly, but Vought being Vought, chose to pump lies into his characterization to the point that his very existence became tied into his identity as a Supe. Homelander would spend countless hours watching propaganda films and documentaries whose purpose was to mould him into the image Vought wanted for him.
That’s how he became a huge fan of Soldier Boy in the first place. But all this brain-washing and mission-giving and physical and mental abuse broke Homie emotionally; to the point that he created an entirely separate personality to “get through the bad room” growing up.
Vought wanted him to be a Christ-loving, patriotism-toting, money-printing machine and did everything they could to ensure they got what they wanted; but they completely failed to take into account the fact that Homelander himself might have things he wishes for from life, and that’s really what makes his descent into madness not entirely his own fault.
Homelander was interested in Teddy Roosevelt, Davy Crockett and even being a real hero himself early on
Surprisingly enough, the most amount of information we get about Homelander’s childhood is in a conversation between Butcher and Dr. Vogelbaum, and the picture that the latter paints is of a wistful young kid who actually had admirable dreams. Towards the conclusion of Season 2, Butcher realises that if he wants to get Vought into a right pickle, he’s going to have to hit them where they live and make the hit public.
So, he decides to intimidate Vogelbaum into testifying against Vought by threatening his entire family, but not before he gleans out some vital information about his arch-enemy. When Butcher enters Vogelbaum’s mansion, he doesn’t enquire about dirt on Vought, the doctor himself, or even ask him how he could do what he did to Becca.
Instead, he asks Jonah about Homelander’s childhood, and the couple of sentences that we do get from the former Vought CSO paint a very, very different image of Homie in front of our eyes. Vogelbaum reveals that Homelander used to be a rather wistful and sweet young man who liked stories about Teddy Roosevelt and Davy Crockett, loved the idea of the woods, and wanted to truly manifest his own destiny.
This is significant because unlike the propaganda that he would be force fed on a regular basis, Roosevelt and Crockett represent a particularly heroic aspect of American history. Crockett is an American folk hero, renowned for being relatively liberal-minded in the 19th century and for helping Texas “gain its freedom” from Mexico in a historic “last stand” that saw him perish amidst a crowd of corpses of his own making.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, is as charismatic and popular as American Presidents can get, with his own personal history being extended to mythic proportions thanks to his cowboy persona and larger-than-life dealings even within the arena of politics. Both men represent truly American ideals in modern society, and so it’s equally horrific that Homelander seems to have veered way off-path from his own ideals in the current times.
His love for the woods continues to endure, as we can see from his clandestine sex-cabin in the woods, but what really takes the cake is the fact that Homelander didn’t even want to be a superhero in the first place. After admitting that John was a sweet boy when he was 5 or 6 years old, Jonah reminds Butcher what he needed him to be, which also necessitated him going to work on the poor, young boy.
He follows this up by letting us know that Homie didn’t even want it but he kept at it anyway for Vought-related concerns. Still, it seems like a semblance of this true heroism did find its way into Homelander’s youth because when he joined The Seven, his initial goal was always to become the greatest hero of all-time. We see evidence of this in the season finale of The Boys Presents: Diabolical, where Homelander is sent to stop a robbery at a chemical plant.
He arrives at the scene and actually makes an effort to neutralize lookouts and disarm the terrorists instead of straight-up lasering them to death because, in the end, he wanted to save the hostages and thereby the day. But his programmed rage kicks in when he fails to realise the limits of his own power, and he ends up massacring everyone and blowing the whole plant up before covering up the entire ordeal with the PR spin of the decade.
So we can see that Homelander’s innate desire was to be a savior-type figure who led Americans to the newest frontier of human existence; but because of the toxic, self-serving and torturous environment he was raised in, he ended up becoming the exact anti-thesis of what he believed to be his own destiny.
Homelander used to think of Vogelbaum as his father
Ironically enough, what could have prevented Homie from turning into the murderous sycophant that he is today is Dr. Jonah Vogelbaum simply acknowledging his emotions and reciprocating them on a human level. See, Homelander’s name in the TV show is John Vogelbaum, and there’s a reason for that beyond the mere fact that Vogelbaum created him in a test tube.
That reason is that for the major chunk of his formative years, Homelander viewed Jonah as his own father. During that brief, two-sentence origin story that Jonah gave to Butcher practically at gunpoint, he also brought up the fact that as a kid, Homelander would “cuddle up to him”. Now, this can mean several things of course. Maybe John’s Supe-proof cell was a bit too cold and he needed the old doctor’s body heat to maintain his own temperature. Maybe John wanted to drink some milk.
Or maybe, just maybe, John saw Jonah as his father figure. We have already seen that he used to think of female doctors as his mother, and he even accidentally crushed one of them with a hug when he was feeling super depressed as a child. But his interaction with male characters who hold a position of authority in his life is far more subservient than the one he shares with his Oedipal women.
Madelyn Stillwell pushed her luck too far with Homelander and got her skull lasered for it. Stormfront would have most-certainly died had she not practically ridden his ego. But even after learning that Vogelbaum lied to him about Becca and his son- the same thing that he killed Madelyn for- Homelander didn’t kill his creator. Sure, he left him paralysed from the waist-down, but Vogelbaum was still alive after having lied to Homelander to his face.
And the same goes for Stan Edgar, who never really cared for Homie either way as long as he was making them money, but who always thought of him as a man-child that was constantly trying to impress daddy; that daddy being Edgar himself. And you can see that Stan the Man is clearly right when he deduces that everything Homelander was doing was in an effort to gain his respect, because the reaction Homelander gives him when he is called bad product, he looks like a child who just got disowned by their father for being too naughty.
This theme of Homelander not killing the people he considers to be father figures could have actually been a helpful thing for him if either Vogelbaum or Edgar had taken into account what Homie really wanted; which was parental affection and approval. Instead, they treated him like a test subject and an object respectively, and that ended up breaking him down even more and allowing his psyche to give in to psychosis.
If any one of his dads had taken the time to lecture their son once on the symbol of hope they needed him to become, we’re sure Homie would have tried his best to live up to it. But alas, money and power hold more importance in the world of The Boys than things like love, and so Homelander turned into the loveless wreck he is today; all because Vogelbaum didn’t take on the role of a parent in addition to being Homelander’s chief handler. Had he just treated John like a human being instead of a product, maybe Homie wouldn’t become as terrible as he is today.
His desire to start a family with Maeve, Stormfront and later Soldier Boy remains his only redeeming quality
If Vogelbaum had created a family environment for Homelander from the beginning, Vought wouldn’t have to contend with his madness today; a fact even he acknowledges despite having had a direct hand in making Homie the monster he is. And while John has been able to let go of most of the other things that made him human over the years- morality, dreaming about the wild frontier, manifesting his own destiny and whatnot- the one thing he could never let go of was his urge to be a part of a family.
And this is something we see in EVERY relationship he has on the show, and we’re not just talking about the ladies, either. When he was told that he would be getting his own team, Homelander thought he was going to be able to experience what a family feels like for the first time; and then he got his team, and was thoroughly disappointed with their self-serving ways, which is quite hypocritical if you ask us but well, each to their own we guess.
When he started dating Maeve, his end goal was always to start a nesting family of Supes with the only person he thought he could be lonely with; that came crashing down when Maeve revealed her true feelings towards him to his face. Even his tryst with Madelyn was a sickening attempt at getting himself a somewhat functional family, though we have to admit that the way Homie looked at Teddy, we were concerned he might kill the baby instead of continuing the sibling rivalry he had with him.
And when Homelander met Stormfront, we lost our absolute crap because can you imagine just how big of a threat any potential children they had would pose to the world? Not to mention that the only reason he even sought out Becca and Ryan in the first place was because he was being lied to about his own damn family. And to take things one step further, Eric Kripke actually teased Homie getting his dream fulfilled before pulling the rug out from underneath him in the season 3 finale when Soldier Boy assaults him and Ryan instead of joining them and becoming a true family.
Homelander is constantly denied a piece of human emotion that is very basic and foundational, and most of the time it is his fault, but it isn’t either, because the way he treats people is what he’s been taught by Vought since birth. If Homelander actually got a family, he wouldn’t be swell at handling them initially, sure, but eventually, he might just become a great family man; and nowhere is this more evident than his interactions with Ryan.
Homelander’s love for Ryan is genuine and their father-son relationship is his only remaining human quality
If you’ve seen The Boys, then you’ll know that literally the only person John Homelander has been truthful with is his son Ryan. We’re going to let you figure out the racial superiority implications of the same, but on a basic, human level, we have to say that the biggest reason why we think Homelander isn’t purely evil but a product of his environment instead is the fact that he treats his son Ryan like an actual human being; which is ironic because they’re both the most powerful Supes of their respective generations.
But that is precisely why Homelander empathizes with Ryan because, at their core, they face the same social issues and Homie knows what those issues can turn his son into. When he first drops by Becca’s home unannounced, everyone is rightfully terrified of him, and Homelander tucking Ryan into bed whilst casually introducing a god complex to his psyche is one of the more disturbing things we’ve seen on TV, but the conversation he has with Becca after it is interesting.
Because while you’d assume that Homelander wanting to stay with them was because of some malicious plan he has for them, it was actually the opposite. Homelander genuinely wanted to spend time with his son and even went on to point out the essential mistakes in Becca’s parenting style; and accurately, might we add, because when Ryan encountered a massive crowd for the first time in his life, he had a panic attack and Homelander immediately flew his son out of there.
He has been open and vulnerable with Ryan on multiple occasions, even surprising him by telling him that yes, Homelander cries. John told Ryan the story of the first time he encountered a crowd, and how Vought’s people later found him bawling his eyes out at the I-95, much like the experience Ryan himself had at Planet Vought.
So we can see that even though his relationship with his own son is self-serving- I mean, he did push Ryan off a roof to “activate his powers” without a worry in the world- he does genuinely care for Ryan, and that makes him the last human connection Homelander has left in this world.
When Ryan kills Stormfront with his laser eyes, Homie doesn’t zone in on him, he zones in on Butcher, and he even forgives Ryan for killing Stormfront; though calling it an accident isn’t the kind of thing he should be teaching his own son, but hey, we’re not here to judge his parenting! We’re here to tell you that no matter how terrible a parent Homelander might be, there are whole truths in what he says about Ryan’s future to Becca because, well, he has experienced it himself and he doesn’t want that life for his son.
And the most baffling thing is that the season finale shows us, Ryan, actively choosing to be Homelander’s son, which is the kind of reciprocation Homie has craved his entire life and might just be the catalyst for an eventual face-turn for the guy; but this being The Boys, we’re sure Eric Kripke will find a way to humanize Homie, even more, when Ryan inevitably turns on his evil father.
So let’s enjoy this twisted father-son dynamic while we can, shall we? Because when Ryan leaves him again- and he will- Homelander will truly become the pure evil that we already know he is, because Ryan is the last piece of his humanity, and when even that is taken from him, all that remains will be evil.
Marvelous Verdict
And that’s a wrap! We just want to re-iterate that this video in no way endorses or tries to white-wash Homelander’s character; in fact, quite the opposite. It’s meant to show you that this self-proclaimed god is the weakest human of all of his super-powered brethren, and draw your attention to the fact that, at least in the show, it isn’t entirely his fault that he is the way he is. Heck, show Homelander doesn’t drink or do drugs, both of which his comic book counterpart indulges in regularly.
Homelander’s favourite drug, you ask? Cocaine cut with human adrenaline. Not our words, the words of OD the Supe’s Dealer. But even that literally sobering detail is a part of the persona that Vought carefully constructed for him. This entire list was an attempt at showing you how the strongest man on Earth was robbed of his agency early on, and how that has put the entire world at great peril.
Because if Vogelbaum had just treated John more like a son than a test subject, perhaps Homelander wouldn’t be the poster boy of alt-right movements today. But that ship set sail a long time ago, and all that remains for us to do is observe the consequences.
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Thanks, everyone