Characters / The Boys (2019): Homelander

The Boys (2019) Main Character Index
The Boys | Supes (The Seven, [Homelander, Starlight, Stormfront], Soldier Boy) | Vought International | Godolkin University | Others

The Homelander / John

"The only man in the sky is me."

Portrayed by: Antony Starr

"I'm the Homelander. And I can do whatever the FUCK I want."

The leader of the Seven and the most powerful superhero in the world. Though he presents himself as an All-American Face, in reality he's anything but.

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#-F

• 0% Approval Rating: Compared to the comics, where it was shown that while fearful of his power, a good chunk of the Supes were actually downright chummy with Homelander, whereas in the series, only their fear of him is here, with the only person who actually seemed to like and give him genuine companionship was Stormfront.
• Abusive Parents:
  • He throws his son off the roof, hoping to jumpstart the kid's powers. Somewhat downplayed in that he never tries that kind of a stunt again, and genuinely cares about his kid as far as he can show.
  • Soldier Boy himself also counts too, when it's revealed to the two of them that he is Homelander's father. Despite an initial reprieve between the two, once Homelander shows his Hidden Depths and cries sincerely over meeting his father again, Soldier Boy is disgusted by his weakness and attempts to kill him for being a disappointment.
  • Growing up in a lab, his only parental figures were doctors like Vogelbaum and executives like Stillwell, who are entirely to blame for how Homelander turned out. The doctors treated him like a product to be tested, subjecting him to horrific experiments and tests pretty much since the day he was born, while Stillwell, the only person resembling a mother figure in his life, spent years grooming him, not just to become the "world's greatest hero", but also to become her future lover.
  • There is also the unsettling implication that Stillwell and Homelander's sexual relationship may have started at some point during Homelander's childhood, which makes even more sense considering the absolutely bizarre mother-son dynamic the two also have.
• The Ace: Zigzagged. Except for maybe Soldier Boy, he's unambiguously the most powerful and beloved Supe on the planet, and he's constantly shown to be very cunning and charismatic in the fields of persuasion, deception, and manipulation. However, his mental instability and laziness causes him to act irrationally (The Boys: Diabolical shows him completely fail a hostage rescue mission and accidentally murder everyone in the process; he also dooms the Flight 37 passengers to a horrible demise), and he has an utter lack of understanding for how humans normally behave. Additionally, he has very little combat experience and struggles with relatively weaker opponents who are nonetheless better fighters than he is (like Black Noir, Maeve, or Temp-V Butcher). [[spoiler:Though at the end of Season 3, he's shown accomplishing almost everything he's ever wanted. His fans love his violent nature, and he's earned the trust of his son again.
• Accidental Murder: The Boys: Diabolical reveals that his first murder was this. Trying to disarm an eco-terrorist pointing a gun at a hostage, he tries heating up the gun with his heat vision to force him to drop it. In a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, this caused the gun to explode, practically decapitating the hostage, and destroying the terrorist's hand, at which point the terrorists and even the hostages start deriding him as a monster. It escalated from there. He also accidentally kills a child in Africa when dealing with a Supervillain.
• Action Dad: It turns out at the end of Season 1 that Homelander has a son with Becca.
• Actor Allusion: In Banshee, Antony's character was nicknamed Soldier Boy. Comes Season 3 of The Boys, and Soldier Boy is an actual character who is also Homelander's biological father.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: ZigZagged.
  • Played straight in regards to his backstory. While Homelander was Raised in a Lab in both versions, the comic books play it for absurdity and don't touch on it much overall outside of flashbacks. Here Homelander's backstory is very much Played for Drama, and its effect on him is continuously explored. The Boys: Diabolical also shows that he genuinely desired to be a legitimate hero when he was younger, but his first mission ended in disaster, which combined with Stilwell's manipulation of him caused him to give in to the worst side of himself.
  • Averted in regards to Black Noir. In the comics, Homelander was gaslit by Black Noir (there a clone of Homelander created to Kill and Replace him if he went rogue) into believing himself to be a sadistic rampaging psychopath, which led to him committing the crimes he actually did commit. And when Homelander discovers the truth, he is genuinely traumatized and remorseful. Given the differences between Show!Black Noir and his comics counterpart, this plotline is dead in the water.
• Adaptational Intelligence: While Homelander was still a selfish, self-absorbed asshole in the original comics, it was also alongside his confidence issues and lack of real planning skills. This Homelander is more proactive, smarter, and worst/best of all, more creative — one of the weaknesses of the comics version is that he was incapable of being anything but a blunt instrument, whereas here he has long-term plans. He manages to achieve what comics Vought never did: get superheroes involved in national defense. Furthermore, Homelander in the comics was so temperamental and rage prone that he was very barely able to keep his true nature from boiling over the thin surface. This Homelander is actually smart enough to put on a convincing affable façade. A notably evident case of this is that, during the Flight 37 disaster, he shoots down the tactic that his comics counterpart tried. Season 2 shows this intelligence boost to be downplayed, as his narcissism blinds him to the long-term issues his plans create because he'd rather get the results he wants faster and leave the details to the side.
• Adaptational Name Change: Unlike his comic counterpart, he's only referred to as John, with his last name (if he even has one) being unknown.
  • A minor example, but the comics version is more frequently referred to as "the Homelander" unlike the Amazon version who is usually (but not exclusively) referred to simply as "Homelander".
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Slightly. While he is casually racist, he doesn't use racial slurs (unlike his comic book counterpart, who notably dropped the N-bomb on a handful of occasions; although epithets are fair game). He also isn't the one who coerces Starlight into a sex act against her will, although raping Becca Butcher is fair game. Some of his comic counterpart's more over-the-top actions are similarly cut out of the show (such as the "literally eats babies" thing, though that was never actually him in the comics either).
• Adaptational Sexuality: His comic book counterpart didn't mind pulling casting couches on male or female superheroes who wanted to join The Seven. This version of Homelander is straight, if mostly guided by a Darwinist Desire.
• Adaptational Slimness: In the comics, he has a traditional Heroic Build completed with a Lantern Jaw of Justice, and towers above most characters in height. Here, he's portrayed with his actor's angular jawline and is surprisingly thin, which is hidden behind the Fake Muscles padding of his costume. He's also two inches shorter than Butcher, Hughie, and even A-Train.^note Antony Starr is 5'11 while Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, and Jessie T. Usher are 6'1.
• Adaptational Villainy: Though no saint, his comic counterpart has a rather tragic reason for becoming as messed up as he is. Specifically, he's driven mad by pictures of atrocities he never committed, causing him to believe that he's subconsciously a monster and there is no sense trying to be good. As it turns out, all of those crimes were actually committed by his identical clone, Black Noir, who did this to drive Homelander mad so he could put him down. Upon finding out the truth, Homelander has a massive Heel Realization and flies into a blind rage attacking Black Noir, thereby redeeming himself. In the show, Black Noir's new backstory makes this aspect of Homelander impossible to adapt.
• Aesop Amnesia: Homelander has a habit of realizing how unhealthily dependent he is on the approval of the population and mentally doubling down on obtaining it.
• Affably Evil:
  • Downplayed, but sometime after his failed attempt at teaching him how to fly, Homelander starts to act much more like a father towards his son, to the point where he is genuine about teaching Ryan how to use his powers and that he cares for him. While it doesn't take away his own psychopathic and murderous impulses as well as his intent to groom the boy to his liking, it's the only time up to that point where Homelander actually tries to be approachable for once.
  • He's also more genuinely respectful and commending towards Black Noir, seeing him as the only member he could consider helpful and adequate without having underlying condescending thoughts. He really doesn't take it well when he realized that Black Noir knew about Homelander's parentage via Soldier Boy.
• Allegorical Character: Homelander embodies the dark underbelly of America by voicing its most controversial standpoints, i.e. the America First policy, hypermasculinity, religious fundamentalism, reproductive rights, and the war on terror. His name is based on Homeland Security, and he even wears a cape in the style of the American flag with eagle imagery on his costume, and while he is picky enough to curl up his cape when he sits so as not to sit on the American flag, it becomes drenched in the blood of his victims on more than one occasion.
• Almighty Janitor: World's Strongest Man and still kept under Stan Edgar's boot.
• The All-American Boy: Vought's propaganda paints him as having been raised as such, but it's all bullshit as he was Raised in a Lab.
• Amazon Chaser: His relationship with Queen Maeve existed solely for this reason, and was marketed as a selling point by Vought. Then, Homelander became attracted to Stormfront after it was clear she can take a lot of punishment and both start to have rough sex, so much that it ends up destroying her apartment.
• Angry Animalistic Growl: Homelander devolves into this by the end of his fight against Soldier Boy, Butcher, and Hughie.
• Angry White Man: He enters this territory in Season 3, going on a televised rant about feeling persecuted for his strength and superiority after somebody heckles him about his past relationship with Stormfront. Ashley notes that this rant caused his popularity with white men in the Rust Belt to spike. It's portrayed as part of his downward spiral and a symbol of his descent into an even bigger Entitled Bastard with an even bigger God complex, with Starlight spooked by it to the point that she tries to convince Supersonic (who's Latino) not to accept the invitation to join the Seven out of fear that Homelander would hurt him (and boy did he).
• Animal Motif: Eagles. He has eagles as epaulettes, woven into the blue cloth of his uniform, and as a belt buckle. The Eagle is aloof, proud, and looks down upon the world, much like how Homelander sees everyone as inferior to him. This was to invoke his patriotism as the All-American hero, but it also relates to Vought's Nazi origins by representing The Reichsadler. The eagles could also be something he inherited from his father Soldier Boy.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Billy Butcher. Homelander raped Butcher's wife before she mysteriously went missing. For Homelander's part, he didn't even remember who Butcher was for the longest time, and even after finding out about Butcher he treats him and his threats like a joke. However, after Butcher took Ryan from him in the Season 2 finale, the feeling is finally mutual. In Season 3, he visits Billy in his apartment and challenges him to a fight to the death. They finally do fight in "Herogasm" and, to Homelander's surprise, Billy is able to match him blow for blow and heat vision for heat vision thanks to taking V24.
  • To Starlight as of Season 3. After Homelander gets pushed too far by everyone, he decides to take complete control of The Seven and Vought. In the process, he basically takes over every part of Annie's life. First, he forces her to let The Deep (her rapist) back into The Seven, then he forces her into being his public girlfriend, then once he catches wind of her and Maeve's coup, he kills her friend Supersonic and warns her that if she doesn't toe the line, he'll do the same to Hughie. It's safe to say that Annie now hates him as Butcher does.
• Armor-Piercing Response: He has a few of these.
  The Deep: I've always tried to help sir.
  Homelander: You mean like when you ran away from Herogasm? Or maybe when you fucked an octopus?
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He is the most powerful person in the Seven and the leader.
• Attention Whore: Homelander lives to bask in the attention the masses give him in an attempt to make up for the loving childhood he never had. When Stormfront steals the spotlight for killing a Supe terrorist in Season 2, he's absolutely livid and spends her entire speech giving her a Death Glare. He's such an Attention Whore, in fact, that it's how Butcher ultimately survives a direct confrontation with him in the Season 2 finale; even with Butcher in a position where Homelander could easily kill him and steal back Ryan, the very threat of Maeve exposing him and thus losing all of his adoring fans is enough to completely pacify him.
• Ax-Crazy: Barely-controlled rage and utter contempt for everyone he sees as weak—which is basically everybody. He's very violent and loves murdering people whenever he's not being watched. He only gets worse as the series goes on becoming more unhinged and violent towards other people.
• Badass Cape: It even has the American flag motif embedded on it, mainly to represent and embody the US.
• The Bad Guy Wins: By the end of Season 3, Homelander pretty much got everything he could have asked for–he's ousted Stan Edgar and became the new leader of Vought, he has the Vice Presidential Candidate and one of the few Supes who could pose a threat to him in his corner, he has his son Ryan back who is now falling in with his philosophy, and he no longer has to fear what the public thinks of him because he's built up such a Cult of Personality that they'll love him even when he literally kills someone in broad daylight.
• Bastard Bastard: His biological father is Soldier Boy, who never even knew the egg donor who gave birth to him.
• Bait the Dog: In the first episode, we're told that he's one of the few superheroes who aren't horrible, and he genuinely seems like a Nice Guy based on his first interactions with Starlight. Then the episode ends with him destroying a private airplane of a mayor who threatened to blackmail Vought mid-flight, with his family on board, in order to protect the company's secrets... And he gets worse from there.
• Beam-O-War: Has a heat vision clash with Butcher in "Herogasm". Soldier Boy interrupted the struggle before any victor could emerge.
• The Beard: Possibly. He and Maeve used to date, but whether Maeve had any genuine romantic interest, she did it to improve her brand (on her own or at Vought's "suggestion"), or to appear straight is open for debate. She had at least one relationship with a woman, and is later confirmed to be bisexual.
• Becoming the Mask: He admits he used to have a secret identity a long, long time ago, but gave it up. Vogelbaum was the only person who still referred to him by his "real" name, John. After his death in Season 2, no one is left that remembers Homelander before he became a living corporate product.
• Beneath the Mask: Tries to look like a Nice Guy and born leader full of confidence. He is actually a sadistic bully who craves affection and worries a lot about being perceived as a fraud or weak.
• Berserk Button:
  • His Security Blanket. Someone moving it around without his permission sets him off.
  • A bigger one is lying to him. Don't insinuate that he's incapable of handling bad news with maturity, even though he's a Psychopathic Manchild.
  • He doesn't care for being reminded about how much he depends on the praise and attention of others or, really, how much he needs people in general. He looks set to immolate Stormfront on the spot when she labels his need to appeal to every demographic group as pathetic.
  • Any disrespect or affront to his ego, not showing him the respect he feels owed, not being intimidated by him and generally not treating him like he's God's gift to the world will also cause Homelander to devolve into barely surpressed rage.
• Be Yourself: Deconstructed. In Season 3, Homelander snaps at his own birthday party, where he tells the world that he is fed up with being a product, he is done being apologetic for having powers, and is peeved with saying others are the real heroes when he is the one with powers and doing the dirty job. And the people react positively to his speech, making Homelander realize that he could have been himself from the very beginning and not Vought's puppet. So yeah, he is going to be himself from now on, because the people also embrace his godhood in a way. Seeing how being himself means "being a Psychopathic Manchild with a god complex". In the Season 3 finale, Homelander outright murders a civilain in public in front of hundreds of his supporters and instead of being hated for it, they cheer for him and applaud him for it, ensuring that Homelander will continue to embrace his true psychopathic self knowing it doesn't matter. He'll be loved regardless.
• Beware the Superman: While most Supes and a majority of the Seven are subject to this, Homelander is easily the most notorious and oppressive one. It's not just that he has so much power that hardly anyone could physically stand up to him, but he's disturbingly demented, manipulative, vainglorious and callous towards everyone around him and very willing to use violence to deal with his problems, which only further adds to the amount of fear he inspires.
• Big Bad: Homelander is the overall main antagonist of the series as the leader of the Seven and the one responsible for a majority of the show's atrocities, from Becca's rape to the Supe terrorists. Many of the other villains—Madelyn Stillwell, Stan Edgar, and Stormfront—try to use him to further their own goals, but he always eclipses them, whether by merely outliving them or actively working against them to rise in power at Vought.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: In Season 2 he forms an alliance with one of the new members of the Seven, Stormfront, a Nazi white supremacist and the former wife of Frederick Vought who seeks to use him as the figurehead of a superhuman uprising.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Season 3 sees him engineer a coup to take control of Vought in all but name, forcing Butcher to ally with the unstable Soldier Boy (also his biological father) to stand a chance of finally killing him.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Downplayed. While he's certainly physically intimidating, his lack of foresight combined with his childishness means he can be effortlessly manipulated by others, such as Stan Edgar and Stormfront, and the very threat of Maeve ruining his credibility is enough to cow him into submission. Season 3 sees this Double Subverted; Homelander takes over Vought after having enough of being manipulated, but his incompetence at running the company and inability to deal with an actual threat like Soldier Boy still ends up coming back to bite him.
• Bigot with a Crush: He's openly disdainful of non-Supes behind closed doors, but he speaks very fondly over his "encounter" with Becca. That said, Becca makes it clear that whatever happened between them was non-consensual.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Homelander maintains a smiling, friendly All-American persona in public, but he's anything but. Best exemplified when he meets Blindspot and gives the handicapped hero an affable welcome, then casually murders him horribly out of nowhere to prove a point.
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: To think that Homelander became a villain only after what happened in "One Plus One Equals Two", when he was a young adult. He accidentally killed all the hostages because he mistook Black Noir as someone sent to kill him thanks to Stilwell feeding his paranoia. By the end of the episode he is covered in everyone's blood.
• Blood Is the New Black: Homelander spends most of the Season 2 finale covered in blood from head-to-toe and remains this way until the end of the conflict between The Boys and Stormfront.
• Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: A Deconstruction. Homelander always considered Stan Edgar his father figure and secretly wanted his attention, a thing Stan himself points out, but Stan is a ruthless business man and considers Homelander just a bad product. Soldier Boy's father was emotionally abusive toward his own son and always considered him weakling, even after becoming a Supe, and then, Soldier Boy himself becomes abusive toward Homelander and calls him weak and pathetic for showing emotional vulnerability and genuinely wanting to form a family with him and Ryan. There is also Butcher who yells at Ryan for killing Becca, even if his intention was to Break His Heart to Save Him out of fear that he may negatively influence Ryan. But John breaks the cycle by making Ryan feel wanted and loved for the way he is. His speech to Ryan about how he will always be there for Ryan and love him no matter what is a good message for any child to hear, if only it weren't for the "there are no consequences for God-like being like us'' subtext.
• Bright Is Not Good: Appears to be a Primary-Color Champion, with a blue costume, red and white cape, and gold decorations, but is in fact a dangerous, unstable psychopath.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Homelander, his mommy issues and sociopathic behavior aside, is shown to be a cunning strategist and manipulator, far more so than his comic book counterpart. He's also the most powerful Supe on the planet, but he is shown to be quite lazy and callous with how he stops criminals when there aren't cameras rolling, almost exclusively using his Eye Beams to deal with his enemies. His laziness with his eye beam usage is what would end up causing the Flight 37 disaster to play out like it does, carelessly destroying the plane's control panel while killing the terrorist, when he could have easily gotten up close and killed him with his super strength. It's shown that he can control his eye beams with precision, even using them to heat up his food so there's no excuse that he can't control himself. Similarly, a later attempt to give himself a cheap and easy boost in approval ratings by eliminating a Supe terrorist backfires when his usual resort to Eye Beams accidentally kills a bystander — which ends up being recorded and uploaded to the web.
  • Season 3 shows that he is a capable combatant too if he pushed enough by a real threat. He fought Soldier Boy, Billy and Hughie and had the upper hand until they overpowered him together, and even then, he managed to escape. He also easily ousts Edgar out of the company and get a mole in the White House thanks to a couple of well placed threats and as he told Starlight he could destroy the United States by hitting key infrastructures fast and hard enough no one could mount a defense before he is done with his onslaught if he has nothing to lose from it.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • While he and Stormfront managed to mostly turn it around, a lot of the public felt this way about him after he was caught on camera killing an Innocent Bystander while fighting a supe terrorist. There was even a crowd of people protesting him at the Seven Tower.
  • He is also this to Starlight, although in a more downplayed way. While she wasn't as big a fan of him as she was of Queen Maeve and The Deep, she at the very least respected him. By the midpoint of Season 2, she spends every waking moment at Seven Tower terrified he'll kill her. Subverted for Hughie, who had already become disillusioned by the Seven and superheroes as a whole before learning how bad Homelander really is.
• The Bully: Behind his Physical God status, he's pretty much a grown-up bully that revels in the fear and suffering of others and is impotent in the face of those he can't intimidate or kill. He ramps it up hard in Season 3.
  • After Edgar makes Annie co-captain he takes it out on A-Train, fat-shaming him and then threatening him when he replies fuck you under his breath.
  • After finding out Stormfront killed herself, he forces a suicidal young woman he was supposed to rescue to kill herself even after she changes her mind.
  • He re-recruits the Deep as a power move on Annie, then forces her to pretend to be his (Homelander's) girlfriend.
  • He welcomes the Deep back by having a seafood dinner and then forces him to eat his friend Timothy (an octopus) alive, knowing full well Deep can hear the octopus talk and beg for mercy.
• But I Can't Be Pregnant!: Everyone including Homelander himself thought he was infertile, so it was unprecedented when it turned out he impregnated Becca.
• The Caligula: Homelander bullies and threatens everyone, and is completely ineffectual in leading Vought. It doesn't help that he takes over when his mental stability is at its lowest.
• Can't Take Criticism: Homelander is obsessed with how popular he is and reacts poorly to criticism, justified or not.
• The Cape: Is a straight Superman Substitute, and at first even Butcher admits that he's the only hero who seems to be the real deal. As expected from the premise, Homelander turns out to be one of the most conniving of the supers, in conjunction with being a Flying Brick, having an All-American Face and the leader of The Seven he is casually able to switch between charmingly dorky and sadistic in an instant. Starlight, as a Wide-Eyed Idealist and up-and-comer, is more of a traditional example.
• Cape Snag: Soldier Boy mocks Homelander's cape before their fight, and backs up his criticism by grabbing an airborne Homelander with it before slamming him into the ground.
• Captain Geographic: Wears a suit of red and blue, a cape modeled after the American flag, and has gold pauldrons shaped like bald eagles. They don't call him Homelander for nothing.
• Captain Patriotic: He appears like this, the leader of the team wearing an American flag as a cape. Subverted in that privately he doesn't seem to really care about America at all. Double Subverted with his more exploitative nature of it; America is what's getting Supes involved in the military, and he mockingly states that "camel-jockeys" will recite his name in "perfect American."
• Cartwright Curse: This being Homelander, his relationships with his "love interests" are expected to be twisted.
  • He has a sexual relationship with Stillwell, full of subtext. She ends up killed by him for lying about the existence of his son.
  • Then Homelander has another relationship with Stormfront, and for the first time he is genuinely happy and in love. She doesn't die, but still ends up fried alive by his own son, and eventually commits suicide by biting out her own tongue. Homelander is genuinely heartbroken over her fate.
  • And finally Becca Butcher, whom he abused and gave birth to his son, Ryan. She dies being accidentally wounded by Ryan, after he tried to save her from Stormfront.
  • And lately he added Queen Maeve to the list too. Nobody knows what Homelander did to her.
    • Subverted only with Starlight because he wants to torment her.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Deconstructed. The casual way he reacts to violence and disaster isn't to show how cool or level-headed he is, but how little he takes the situation seriously. Best seen during the plane crash, where he reacts to the destroyed control panel and the fact everyone on board will die horribly the way the usual snarky superhero would.
• Character Catchphrase: "You guys are the real heroes", or some variation of it. The majority of his appearances with a crowd of people has him dropping this line at least once, even when a situation is completely against his favor. It becomes apparent very quickly that this is blatantly an empty feelgood platitude fabricated by Vought for as a PR tool for easy positive reactions, and it's one he himself does not believe. Him casting it away on his televised birthday meltdown, saying it was always bullshit and that he's the real hero, not them, is symbolic of him being done with the façade and that he's refusing to be a Slave to PR any longer. His other catchphrase that he genuinely believes in and begins to use more often is at the top of the page.
• Character Tics: Whenever he's pissed off, he clenches and unclenches his jaw.
• Cold Ham: Anytime Anthony Starr appears on screen. One moment he'll be quiet and reserved, and the next moment he'll blow up. Regardless, anything and everything he does is full of ham, and it's glorious.
• Comical Overreacting: Homelander goes ballistic and nearly lasers A-Train over a simple “Fuck you”. Made even funnier by the fact that despite A-Train saying it barely loud enough for even the audience to hear, Homelander hears it just fine because of his super hearing.
• Composite Character:
  • In the comic, several of his actions (such as raping Butcher's wife) and his Big Bad status were actually held by Black Noir (his clone who gaslighted him into becoming a psychopath). For the show, said villainous actions were transferred to Homelander himself, and Black Noir isn't even a clone of him this time around.
  • His obsession with breast milk harkens to the comic's version of MM.
• Conditioned to Be Weak: Homelander is the central antagonist of the series and the driving force behind Butcher's hatred of superhumans. Homelander was raised to be a living product of Vought through isolation and scientific experiments. As a result, he craves external validation and cannot afford to look weak, something Vought exploits because they know how dangerous Homelander is and his utter disregard for human life. As the series progresses, Homelander is blackmailed by Starlight with video footage of him abandoning a passenger plane and threatening to kill everyone onboard. However, Homelander calls her bluff and says that if she uploads it, they've lost their leash on him and he can go on a rampage without anyone to stop him. He even takes over Vought and finds comfort in his demographic of white males, who unconditionally support him despite killing a Starlight protestor in front of them.
  Homelander: I don't make mistakes. I'm not "just like the rest of you." I'm stronger. I'm smarter. I'm better. I am better. I'm not some weak-kneed fucking crybaby that goes around fucking apologizing all the time. And why the fuck would you want me to be? All my life, people have tried to control me. My whole life. Rich people, powerful people have tried to muzzle me, cancel me, keep me impotent and obedient, like I'm a fucking puppet. You know what? It worked. Because I allowed it to work. And guess what? If they can control me, then you can bet your ass they can control you. They already do. You just don't realize it. I'm done. I am done apologizing. I am done being persecuted for my strength. You people should be thanking Christ that I am who and what I am because you need me. You need me to save you. You do. I am the only one who possibly can. You're not the real heroes. I'm the real hero. I'm the real hero.
• Control Freak: Homelander in his eyes always knows best. He chafes at the talking points Vought gives him and insists on running his own agenda, purposely installing Ashley as the new puppet manager of the Seven so he will have complete control over the group. This extends to his personal relationships, as he treats others as his personal toys who exist solely to conform to his beliefs and give him love rather than actual people with their own personalities. When he slowly starts losing things to control in Season 2, he enters a massive, prolonged Villainous Breakdown.
• Cornered Rattlesnake: Being the strongest being alive with a giant corporation heralding him as the greatest thing in the world homelander is not good when confronted by people that dislikes him or might threaten him physically. However his ego and trauma from his lonely background are strong enough that if pushed too far he will stop cowering and lash out with all he has.First seen when he dares Starlight to release her blackmail material and again when he chose to fight Soldier Boy after identifying him, because while he doesn't want to fight someone near his level if the public knows Soldier Boy is back Vought will go under from the scandal. When close to losing, Homelander starts snarling and take off with all his might to escape.
• Corrupted Character Copy: He’s a blatant Superman Substitute, but with a very dark twist. Homelander emphasizes why it was so important for Clark Kent to grow up on a farm with loving parents who could teach him the value of humanity, humility, and compassion. Otherwise, you get a nigh-indestructible, mentally disturbed Psychopathic Manchild with no sense of responsibility or impulse control.
• The Corrupter: He becomes this to his son, Ryan, at the end of Season 3, beginning to mould the boy into his sidekick.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Homelander always had an intense stare, but it's even worse in Season 3, which opens with his doing interviews about Stormfront and creepily staring at the camera like he is about to snap.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Homelander adopts a cross-shape with his arms outstretched after giving a Rousing Speech at EXPO Believe. He even comes down to the people to touch him, symbolizing his messianic status.
• Cruelty by Feet: By the end of Season 1, the audience already knows that Homelander is likely a sociopath and narcissist, but what reveals him to be a sadist is him slowly crushing a helpless terrorist's skull under his foot for kicks. He smiles at the results.
  • After boxing Blindspot's ears so hard that it causes his ears to gush blood, Homelander shows how little he cares about the young supe's excruciating pain by casually stepping over him as if he isn't there while reprimanding Ashley for even considering "a cripple" as a new member of the Seven.
  • In "Herogasm", Homelander kills a shrunken and severely burnt Termite by squashing him under his heel on his way inside the mansion. While it may appear like an Accidental Murder at first, the fact that Homelander has super hearing implies that he could hear Termite's cries for help.
• Cruel Mercy: He saves Billy from killing himself in a suicide attack so he can reveal not only is Becca still alive, but she's been raising his hated enemy's son all along and never told him about it.
• Curb-Stomp Cushion: As the series continues, it's apparent that while he is very much powerful, he's not outright unkillable or invincible: when he actually fights those who serve as a physical match to him, he has a poor track record, having lost to Butcher, Soldier Boy, and Hughie, and coming to a draw against Maeve. In both cases, he retreated from the fights due to either not wanting to die/lose his powers or due to other extenuating circumstances.
• Dark Messiah:
  • Initially serves as this to Stormfront, who viewed him as a The Chosen One to lead her army of Aryan supes to take over the world.
  • In Season 3, Homelander steps completely into the territory of seeing himself as a literal god. He considers himself the only god in the sky, and compares himself to Jesus. By Episode 3, Homelander is finally fed up with being threatened by Starlight and Maeve, and being a Slave to PR. He snaps during his birthday party and tells the entire world he was never their equal and that they should be thankful he is there to watch over them. The people's answer is positive, not different from cultists.
• Dark and Troubled Past: The Boys: Diabolical digs a little more into Homelander's childhood and reveals that as a kid, he was heavily experimented on by Vought and was always treated like a guinea pig and not a being with emotions. He was cut open, forced to put his hand into an oven, thrown into an aquarium to test his resistance, and subjected to a brutal Training from Hell repeatedly.
• Deadpan Snarker: Homelander was always sharp-tongued, but usually preferred to be amicable for his public persona. By Season 3, pissed off by everything, roasting others to the point of bullying is his only way of communication.
  Homelander: [to Ashley] Is your idiot brain getting fucked by stupid?
• Desperately Craves Affection: As a result of being a labrat and lacking any loving figure his whole life, John is a hero only because of his pathological need for praise and adoration. In his head, he is a god, and like any god, he is to be glorified, adored, and loved unconditionally.
• Destructo-Nookie: He and Stormfront end up doing this as part of their physically violent foreplay.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • While he is capable of making intelligent choices, a lot of his decision-making throughout the first season is plagued by him seeking short term solutions to problems without considering the potential long-term consequences, either due to him only wanting immediate emotional gratification or simply not bothering to think it through. The fallout from these decisions begin to pile up in the second season.
  • Killing Stillwell while she was being held hostage was not a well thought-out solution, nor finding a suitable replacement. Homelander was mad that she lied to him about his baby dying, and manipulating him. It turns out the main reason he had his good reputation was that Stillwell was putting out fires before they became a problem, ensuring he could remain the poster boy for Supes. When he "hires" Ashley to take her place and makes it clear that Ashley is just a puppet, his reputation starts taking a nosedive as the world catches glimpses of his true nature.
  • Outing Maeve during an interview was a miscalculation. As Maeve put it to Elena, she was willing to do anything to keep him from hurting Elena, but that act of spite and pettiness set the ball rolling to convince Elena that Maeve was complicit in Flight 37's disastrous crash, leading to their break up. After hitting a funk, Maeve realized that she actually had nothing to lose, what with being estranged from her family and not really having friends. She gained the willpower to ally with the Boys and blackmail Homelander.
  • Ousting Stan Edgar as head of Vought definitely qualifies. Homelander may be popular and charismatic but he has absolutely no idea how to actually run a business, let alone one as massive as Vought, and the other board members are so terrified of his instability that they are afraid to speak up or question his rule.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: When he tries to apologize for accidentally killing a civilian on video, leading to accusations of being a war criminal, he tries to downplay it and retain sympathy by making reference to this being the cost of war. His wording however makes the crowd (who were already there in protest of him) realise that he just admitted this has happened before and start actively declaring him a monster.
• Dirty Coward:
  • Shows hints of this in Season 3 when Soldier Boy reappears. He's visibly nervous after watching the News footage of him destroying a building and killing 19 people, and when Starlight points out that Vought needs to move to find and apprehend him, Homelander fobs off the responsibility on her while using his position as CEO to avoid doing it himself, implying that the idea of fighting someone potentially as powerful as him frightens him.
  • Subverted in the end, as he decides to go and confront Soldier Boy after talking to himself in the mirror. He doesn't immediately flee, even when the fight turns three on one. Sure enough, when they fight and Soldier Boy and Butcher prove themselves to be almost as tough as he, and getting slammed to the ground by them and Hughie, Homelander's response is to run away in terror.
• Disneyland Dad: During his short tenure of trying to be a father, Homelander and Stormfront take Ryan to a Vought-licensed amusement park in an effort to entertain and cheer the boy up. Unfortunately, they didn't expect the fact that large crowds and loud noises would cause great discomfort for the boy, forcing Homelander to take his son elsewhere.
• Disproportionate Retribution: It's hinted that his rape of Becca stemmed from Billy, at a Christmas party at Vought HQ, pointing out that Becca was basically doing his work for him on a Twitter account, as well as muttering some jokes at his expense to Becca.
• Double Take: At least twice.
  • The first is when Stormfront is espousing her Nazi views to Ryan, claiming that minorities are planning a "white genocide". Even Homelander finds this idea so absurd that can't help but make a confounded face.
  • In Season 3, during his fight with Butcher and Soldier Boy, Hughie, hopped up on temporary Compound V, suddenly teleports into the room to join the fight. Homelander's face quickly turns to one of sheer confusion, but not because Hughie suddenly has superpowers; it's because he just dropped into the middle of a fight completely naked.
• The Dragon: Whilst he does act as a leader of The Seven, he is ultimately used by Vought and Stan Edgar to carry out their ideologies and orders.
• Dragon-in-Chief: He's used as The Leader of The Seven by Vought and Stillwell, but Homelander is the most dangerous part of the organization and his butting heads with upper management hint they don't have him as reined in as they believe. He proves this true in the first season's finale when he personally kills Stillwell to take matters into his own hands. Stan Edgar briefly manages to rein him in, much to his displeasure, but he eventually ousts him from Vought and takes over the company himself.
• The Dreaded: Except for Butcher, Edgar, and Soldier Boy, everyone is scared of Homelander. Even Starlight, while able to stand up for herself and be confident towards the other members of the Seven, is scared silent almost any time Homelander scolds her. However, Maeve, Annie, and Hughie all become a lot less scared of him when they realize he's a manchild at heart and isn't as invulnerable as they once thought. Fans have admitted to having nightmares about Homelander after watching the show.
• Due to the Dead: Even after killing Black Noir, Homelander, in a rant towards Ashley, The Deep, and A-Train, states that he mattered to the team more than any other member simply because he was the only member who stuck by Homelander's side without any ulterior motive. Until Soldier Boy showed and he knew of him being Homelander's father, of course.
• Entitled to Have You: He believes that he and Queen Maeve belong together because they are both powerful, take-charge supes superior to the unwashed masses and seems confused as to why they broke up, unaware that she finds his sociopathic tendencies off-putting. While both are willing to work professionally out in public, she becomes fully disillusioned with him when he allows everyone on Flight 37 to die and then remorselessly capitalizes on it.
  • It's implied that this was his rationale for raping Becca. Given that she worked for Vought, and that Homelander was basically her boss, it's suggested that in his twisted logic, he was "entitled" to do as he wished with his subordinate. Given Homelander's both carried on sexual relationships with other people at Vought, and brutalized several others, it's not a stretch.
• Establishing Character Moment: Homelander is introduced casually murdering a pair of robbers despite the lack of threat they pose to him, using his Eye Beams to melt one guy's machine gun and causing him horrific pain before throwing another guy about twenty to forty feet in the air to land on a car. And then he dons his friendly mask for his public image's sake.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He takes Stormfront's suicide as an act of personal betrayal, especially since it was on his birthday. He is also genuinely hurt that Black Noir would abandon him right after Homelander personally confided in him. When Noir admits he knew he had a father alive the whole time Homelander starts crying.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • In a rather twisted sense, he did love Stormfront and Ryan, his son. However, with Ryan, it bordered on a platonic Yandere-like sense, as he murdered Vought employees when he found out that they were working with Butcher in taking Ryan away from him. He also claims to genuinely love Maeve, but whatever extent to which this is true clearly comes from an Entitled to Have You mentality.
  • He genuinely likes and appreciates Black Noir and considers him a friend. Homelander does kill Noir when he finds out he'd been keeping Soldier Boy being his father from him, but he's clearly heartbroken about it and still speaks of Noir respectfully afterwards.
  • Subverted with Stillwell. While Butcher and Mallory believed Stillwell was the only one Homelander had any affection for, Homelander murders her himself after Butcher takes her hostage, having found out that she lied to him about Becca miscarrying his son. That said, he appears to be at least a little anguished by the decision, and forces Doppelganger to masquerade as Stillwell after her death to play out his disturbing sexual fantasies about her.
  • He initially holds sincere affection when confronted with the fact that Soldier Boy is his father, opening up to another human being (aside from his son) in earnest. However, when Soldier Boy attempts to kill him for being a disappointment and critically injuries Ryan, all bets are off.
  • He seems to have had a genuine fondness for Maeve, as he repeatedly asked her to back down during their final fight and told her that he didn't want to hurt her. He only stopped holding back once her blows started to draw blood.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Played With in his association with Stormfront, a literal Nazi. He's a monster who has a very America-First mindset and a Social Darwinist, but he's shown to be uncomfortable by Stormfront's overt Nazi and white supremacist attitudes. It's later revealed that it's not that he doesn't support these ideas - he's frequently shown himself to be an immensely racist bigot (e.g. not allowing a blind person or a Muslim into the Seven) - it's that he doesn't need or want a "master race" since he sees himself as a master race. With that said, he does distance himself from her ideologies even behind closed doors and it's made clear he's very uncomfortable with her trying to instill these beliefs into his son Ryan. It can be safe to assume that Homelander Hates Everyone Equally and therefore would find her racial supremacy baffling, which is backed up by the fact he shows non-Supes like Billy Butcher or Stan Edgar respect and has loathing for Supes even within his group. He also has a close friendship with Black Noir, who is a mute and facially deformed black man. Even after killing Noir, he genuinely mourns his death and cries after realizing Noir had never told him about Soldier Boy both being alive and his father.
  • Homelander also does not appear to regard the natural social hierarchy as being determined by race but between Supes and normal humans. Homelander commends Victoria Neuman (played by an actress of Lebanese descent) for "choosing her own kind" by siding with Homelander over Stan Edgar. He genuinely regarded Black Noir as his closest friend, openly telling the Deep and A-Train that Noir was worth more than them (and Ashley) combined. Homelander also greatly respects (and even somewhat fears) Stan Edgar, while Stormfront dismisses Edgar simply because of his race, to Homelander's irritation. Homelander uses racist terms and exhibits the xenophobic tendencies of an extreme nationalist, but racial distinctions are much less important to him than the distinction between Supe and human.
  • Subverted in his treatment of Maeve in Season 3. He scoffs at the idea of raping her... but still plans to harvest her eggs to create perfect super babies.
  • After daydreaming about massacring a crowd protesting his accidental murder of an African child, he appears to be somewhat upset at the prospect of doing so. Although he isn't disgusted at the idea, he doesn't appear to take pleasure from violence he views as unnecessary (although he could be upset at the idea of being alone without adoration).
  • Upon being told by Vogelbaum that his child, the result of raping Becca Butcher, drowned in its mother's blood, he seems genuinely shocked and saddened by this. Not to mention, he condemns Vogelbaum for treating him like a "lab rat" growing up. Furthermore, he is angered upon learning that his son Ryan is being kept in isolation because he doesn't want him to go through the same childhood he had.
  • In the Season 3 finale, after killing a protester for throwing a bottle at Ryan, even Homelander seems a bit weirded out at first at how fast his fans start cheering him, though he quickly buys into it.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Justified. Not having been raised in a familial environment and being starved for affection, he believes that his son is going to immediately love him and side against the mother who's been raising him his entire life.
  • He even responds to Billy Butcher defending Ryan because he made a promise to Becca, despite his personal feelings with confused weeping and maniacal laughter. General decency and any senses of morality and duty literally do not compute to him.
  • This is also what destroys his possible relationship with Ryan. Homelander sincerely loves him, if in a very twisted way, and honestly believes that raising Ryan to be like himself is good and can't fathom why Ryan wouldn't want that. He learns from this in Season 3, finally winning Ryan over to his side by being an actually decent parent.
• Evil Hero: Homelander is a hero to the public and a sadistic psychopath privately with an additional flavor of craving for attention from the public.
• Evil Is Hammy: He tends to play up his megalomaniacal tendencies for the camera or large crowds while posturing himself as a populist tyrant in the making. However, most of the time, he's more reserved, if unhinged.
• Evil Is Petty: Goes in hand with his Psychopathic Manchild nature. When he finds out Maeve is both bisexual and never really loved him, he relentlessly mocks her sexuality and outs her without her consent on live television as a form of revenge. This is also one of his greatest faults. He has no greater goal in life other than to get people to keep loving him. This makes him both short-sighted because he lacks any sort of long-term planning skills, and very easy to manipulate by controlling the flow of narcissistic supply he receives.
• Eye Beams: Homelander has red ones. He demonstrates fine control on several occasions (such as targeting a robber's machine gun and melting it, or burning someone's eyes out without obliterating their entire head), but his most common use of them in combat is an indiscriminate blast or sweep, causing collateral damage that could easily be avoided if he weren't so arrogantly careless.
• Face–Heel Turn: It's revealed through flashbacks, as well as the episode of Diabolical about him that Homelander genuinely wanted to be a hero, but was broken by a lifetime of horrible experiments, and had his worldview completely shattered when after his first mission goes horribly awry, only for Vought to clean up his mess, leading him to the realization that he, aside from being the most powerful being in the world, had complete freedom to do exactly whatever he wanted, no matter how horrible, with zero consequences.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Out of all of the Seven, Homelander's image is easily the cleanest. He has no bad habits that have made it out to the public, is well-liked for his approachable, patriotic attitude, and is conventionally handsome. Behind closed doors, however, he quickly reveals himself to be the worst among them, being a complete sociopath with a twisted fixation on Stillwell, an encouraged God Complex, a completely fabricated "farm-boy" backstory and a massively high body count with zero remorse for any of it.
• Fake Muscles: Homelander's costume gives him the appearance of a broad-shouldered Heroic Build you'd expect from a Superman expy. He's actually quite thin when seen without the extra padding. It makes sense when you consider that all his strength comes from his powers and it's unlikely he's ever actually exercised a day in his life.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Despite being promoted as the world greatest hero by Vought, he's a selfish and unstable Psychopathic Manchild.
• Fallen Hero: The Boys: Diabolical shows that once upon a time, he genuinely desired to be an actual hero like Superman. But after the catastrophe that his initial attempt went, alongside Black Noir and Stilwell's interference... not anymore.
• Fantastic Racism: While he is casually racist in the traditional sense as well, he's more of a Supe vs. Non-Supe variety racist than anything else. He outright tells his son Ryan in Season 2 that they're Gods standing above the rest of humanity and he's generally dismissive of anybody without powers behind closed doors.
• Farm Boy: Parodied. In order to convincibly sell the idea of Supes in the military to the American people, Vought manufactured a fake past about Homelander being a humble all-American farm boy in his childhood. Homelander is brought to a house he never seen before where he had to make up a story about his inexistent grandparents and parents, and the childhood he never had for a reality show about the Seven.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Homelander was able to achieve his goal of getting Supes into the military and he and Stormfront rallied the American people against a common enemy. However, Homelander is not a diplomat, he's simply a narcissistic, psychopathic manchild whose ego outstripped his charisma. When people stop praising him, he begins to lose his psychological grip, which throws his supporters deeper into disillusionment. He also spends so much time playing to Stormfront's base (i.e., paranoid racists), that it narrows his base considerably, and he has to distance himself from her when her Nazi origins come out, alienating anyone racist enough to still be willing to support her while he faces an uphill battle to re-endear himself to his less hateful former supporters.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride.
  • Homelander was groomed from birth to be the "All-American Hero" when, in reality, he's an apex predator with a cocktail of psychological issues from his upbringing in a lab. He treats everyone as the omega to his alpha, kills criminals without arresting them and hurts anyone without hesitation.
  • The very existence of Billy Butcher is what intrigues him: it's firmly established that, for the first time ever, someone he's been "protecting" has decided to fight back, an obvious possibility due to the way he treats others behind closed doors. As such, he decides to do absolutely nothing about it and opts to just "play" with Butcher so he can break him emotionally before killing him. By the end of Season 2, Homelander may start dropping all pretenses of amicability since Maeve and The Boys have shattered his sense of superiority and have permanently destroyed his idea of a family (Stormfront is dead, Rebecca Butcher is dead, and Ryan wants nothing more to do with him and has gone into hiding).
  • Judging by the use of his powers, he mostly relies on his laser eyes and strength than any actual combat technique, as he uses his powers quickly and haphazardly without considering collateral damage. Homelander cares so little for other people that he uses his powers without hesitation and without regards for public safety because he believes that, as the apex predator, nobody can or will stop him.
  • Homelander wants to be idolized by ordinary humans and supes as a literal god to validate his sense of superiority. As such, he developed an obsession with his public image. This was exploited by Stan Edgar and Queen Maeve, as while Homelander could easily kill them, doing so would destroy his image as an infallible and benevolent god.
• Faux Affably Evil: He might seem like a hero at first, but the true Homelander is a manipulative, condescending, and mercurial psychopath who is also frequently sadistic and cruel. That said, he does a pretty good job of appearing as the exact opposite when in public as his superhero persona, always making a show of being guileless and idealistic and saying exactly what his audience wants to hear, which itself just points back to his disturbing capacity to use and manipulate others and his complete lack of concern for anyone other than himself.
• Fetish: Based on his interactions with Stillwell, he appears to have one for breast-feeding and mommy play. Season 2 downright has him excitedly drinking a leftover bottle of her breast milk and having Doppelganger impersonate Stillwell while giving him glasses of milk. Though by mid-season, he may have gotten over his fetish for Stillwell at least, if him killing Doppelganger and obsessing over Stormfront is anything to go by.
  • Aside from that, it's clear that like Stormfront, he's a sexual sadist. This is best shown with his rape of Becca, and Stormfront and him torturing a petty crook to death as foreplay.
• Flying Brick: A default feature for someone who is meant to be a villainous allegory for Superman.
• Foil:
  • To William Butcher. Both violent, emotionally damaged men raised by abusive father figures, both have racist views against their opposing species, and of course, they are mortal enemies. The difference is that Butcher learns to keep his flaws in check, becoming more tolerant of Supes such as Kimiko and Starlight, and genuinely cares for his teammates. Meanwhile, Homelander indulges in his most toxic traits with no intention of changing unless it personally benefits him. He has no compassion for his teammates or anyone who doesn't stroke his ego, and he condescendingly views humans as inferior beings because they do not have powers. Tellingly, by the midpoint of Season 3, all of Homelander's allies have abandoned him, while Hughie refuses to leave Butcher even when the latter asks him to, precisely because Butcher tried to rein himself in for Hughie's sake. Homelander also ended up adopting the toxic and violent behavior of his father Soldier Boy, just like Billy did with his Dad.
  • To his son, Ryan, being raised in a way that's cut off from the outside world — although Ryan is a bit different in that he has a healthy relationship with his mother. It's likely that in spite of being a sociopath, he has genuine empathy for his son for living through what he perceives as similar conditions to his own troubled upbringing.
  • To Hughie Campbell. Hughie is not physically tough, but is kind and compassionate at heart and hard-working. Homelander is literally the strongest man on the planet but is lazy, selfish, egotistical, and cruel. Interestingly, both have zero combat experience, but one compensates with his intelligence during battle and the other mostly uses brute force. Both are also treated and referred to as children despite being adults, but while Hughie is an innocent example of someone who has yet to fully mature and find himself, Homelander is a disturbing example of what happens when a spoiled brat is given ultimate power to bully whoever he wants. Both also yearn for a mother that was absent during their childhood.
• For the Evulz: Him raping Becca Butcher. As horrible as he is, rape isn't really something Homelander indulges in, meaning there's really no discernible reason for him to have done it other than he could.
• Forgot About His Powers: Homelander forgets about his Super-Hearing at opportune times for some characters. He somehow doesn't hear Hughie mention to Starlight that he messaged her despite being shown hearing Maeve talking to Helena on the phone for example.
• Freudian Excuse: Despite the official story being that he was raised in rural America with a loving family similar to Clark Kent, Homelander actually turns out to have been raised without affection in a lab, explaining his psychological issues. His visit to Vogelbaum ends with him nearly in tears, revealing just how deep in pain he still is from his terrible childhood. The Boys: Diabolical also reveals that his first and only attempt at legitimate heroism ended catastrophically, with the incident immediately covered up by Black Noir to absolve Homelander of all responsibility, instilling in him his entitled and careless personality.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Even after learning about his past from Vogelbaum, the Boys don't show Homelander any sympathy, as he's still a rapist, murderer, and a Super Supremacist. Even Vogelbaum, who regrets how he treated Homelander, still thinks his former experiment is a monster.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: If The Deep is disliked by everyone in The Seven, Homelander is despised and feared. Even Black Noir, whom Homelander ironically had a genuine respect and appreciation for, had no qualms hanging him out to dry when the threat of Soldier Boy looms over both of them. The closest thing he has to someone genuinely loving him for who he is was Stormfront and even then she commits suicide when she realizes that he will never conform to her Nazi ideals.
• Friendless Background: Being raised in a lab his whole life may have something to do with Homelander's incapability to have healthy relationships.

G-L

• Genius Bruiser: What's scary about Homelander is that he not only is obscenely strong, he's also very, very smart. He's aware of pop culture, is an eloquent speaker, knows politics and government infrastructure, and is a very shrewd planner and manipulator. While the titular group initially assumes he's just Dumb Muscle, he's actually quite able to keep up with them in their Xanatos Speed Chess by manipulating his public persona and various employees at Vought. The only ones able to put him in his place are those who have irrefutable blackmail, and even that doesn't work for long.
• Give Me a Reason: In Season 3, he gives a bone-chilling speech to Starlight about what he will do if she publishes the video of him leaving the passengers of Flight 37 to die.
  Homelander: Go ahead. Release it. Let's light this candle, huh? I mean, sure, I'll lose everything, but then, I'll have nothing to lose. First, I'll take out the nerve centers — the White House, the Pentagon — then any domestic defense capabilities, and then critical infrastructure — like cellular, internet, that kind of thing. And then, well, I think then I'll just wipe New York off the fucking map - for fun. I'll even throw in Des Moines and that little cousin-fucker hick town that Maeve's from — 'cause why not? See Starlight, I'd prefer to be loved. I would. But if you take that away from me... Well, being feared is a one okie doke by me. So, go ahead, partner. Do it!
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Has his heat vision, which makes his eyes glow red when he uses it or just charges it up, and he's not above invoking Red Eyes, Take Warning when he wants to intimidate someone.
• A God Am I: In Season 2, Homelander outright says this of himself and his son. Season 3 has Homelander explicitly declare that there's no God up there in the sky, only him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While he doesn’t have any direct involvement in Gen V until Season 1’s finale, his decision to leave everyone on Flight 37 for dead leads to Indira Shetty’s Start of Darkness since her husband and daughter were on that plane. This resulted in her experimenting on the Supes in her school in order to create a virus that would wipe out their kind, thus making Homelander indirectly responsible for the entire plot of the show.
• Greed: He's violently possessive towards anything and anyone he declares his property, as is shown in his interactions with Queen Maeve, Madelyn, Ryan and lately, Starlight since he forced her to be his new girlfriend. In Season 3, he tells her, that from now on, she will be his dutiful girlfriend who will worship him.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Any attempts to get close to Queen Maeve are met with brutal slaughter at Homelander's hands, as one Hollywood producer learned the hard way. It's why Maeve doesn't want Elena involved.
• The Grunting Orgasm: Homelander snarls like an animal while having sex with Stormfront even before having an orgasm. Probably because is the first time he has had enjoyable sex with someone.
• Guest Fighter: Appears as an Operator in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II during a limited time event and will be joining Mortal Kombat 1 as part of Kombat Pack 1.
• Handicapped Badass: For a given matter of being handicapped, Homelander is severely emotionally imbalanced due to his cold and cruel upbringing with repressed mental trauma that can resurface in the form of a homicidal rage if he were to suffer enough mental and psychological duress. That being said, he handles it well for the most part so long as he continues to be showered with praise and respect and being a Superman Substitute.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Very much subverted. At the start of the series, he's widely regarded as perfect, with no flaws and no vices. But as time goes on it becomes more and more clear that he's anything but and is easily the most sadistic of The Seven.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: He's prone to lashing out with a lot of cussing when things do not go his way and is generally cruel, cold, violent, sadistic, impatient, and intolerant.
• Hates Everyone Equally: At best, he treats people as an asset to his goals; at worst, he'll kill, cripple and maim anyone at the smallest provocation. In Homelander's eyes, he's the apex predator who can do whatever he wants, and nobody can stop him. He mocks and outs Queen Maeve's relationship and participates in homophobic movements, he believes Blindspot and A-Train are liabilities to The Seven because of their physical conditions and he severely wounds Blindspot just so he can prove his point about Blindspot's disability, he carelessly uses his powers without thinking of public safety, he does not care for religion because of his God Complex, he wants to raise Ryan so he wouldn't grow up to be a "little girl" by living only with his mother, and he would have killed Starlight for not following his orders without considering how it may affect Vought's reputation with the feminist movement. His prejudice is more towards humanity itself rather than any particular race or ethnicity, as he believes supes are inherently superior compared to non-superpowered humans.
• Heartbroken Badass: Homelander is genuinely distressed seeing his lover burned to death, and he barely keeps himself from crying.
• The Heavy: Vought in the first two seasons is the true overriding threat The Boys are aiming to take down, but Homelander is the most physically imposing and deadly enemy. Practically every major conflict can be traced back to him, from Butcher's crusade against Supes, to the Flight 37 crash, to the Supe terrorists, to Butcher's alliance with Soldier Boy. He ultimately upstages his remaining superiors in the company, fully coming into his own as the Big Bad.
• Hero Killer: He killed Blindspot and Supersonic, who are both, unlike him, genuine heroes and good people.
• Hero with an F in Good: This doesn't apply to the megalomaniac he currently is, but, as revealed in The Boys: Diabolical, he started his superhero career genuinely wanting to help people. Unfortunately, because of his isolated upbringing, he was stuck with a very bad case of Does Not Know His Own Strength that completely derailed his first mission and caused the very people he was trying to save to turn on him. After Black Noir absolved him of all responsibility, he just gave up on being a legitimate superhero.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He's quite good at detective work, and it's he who figures out the Boys' plot against him and their personal motives.
  • Homelander also has a romantic side, which is shown when he brought flowers for Stormfront. He also is shown feeling regret for killing Stillwell.
  • Despite having a god complex and being a malignant narcissist, he seems to enjoy being dominated sexually (which likely is tied to his Oedipus Complex).
  • Believe it or not, there was a time when Homelander genuinely wanted to be the kind of hero he only pretends to be, but a combination of his bad upbringing, his first mission being a disaster, and escaping responsibility for his mistakes set him down the path that led him to be the monster he is now.
  • He genuinely loves his son Ryan and wants to give him the childhood he never had. He even puts himself in potential harms way to check on him after Soldier Boy knocks Ryan unconscious.
  • He shows genuine respect for Soldier Boy, calling him the "hero of heroes." Just before the Herogasm fight, Homelander even tells Soldier Boy that he was his "hero" growing up and that he watched all of his films hundreds of times over. When Soldier Boy reveals to him that they are father and son, Homelander emotionally opens up to him and expresses his desire for them to have a loving relationship. This doesn't go well.
  • Even after killing Black Noir, he still expresses the respect he had for him, claiming Noir was worth more than Ashley, the Deep, and A-Train "put together". He also is clearly distressed and feels betrayed when Noir reveals he always knew Soldier Boy was Homelander's father.
• Hiding Behind Religion: Homelander is an ordained minister and makes a big deal of saying he's doing God's work. It's pretty clear that he just finds this a useful belief to invoke, however.
• Hollywood Atheist: In "The Only Man in the Sky" Homelander reveals he doesn't actually believe in God (although a part of his public image is supposedly being a devout Christian and minister) while "talking down" a suicidal young woman, saying it's only him up there in the sky. This is right before he makes her jump, instead of saving her and of course he'd long been established as a murderous, hypocritical asshole.
• Horrifying the Horror: He manages to put the fear of God into Madelyn Stillwell, a sociopathic and machiavellian businesswoman. However, Soldier Boy is this to him. The fact that Soldier Boy can permanently render a Supe powerless and is one of the two people on the planet that can beat him in a one-on-one fight (other than Maeve) is a MASSIVE threat to his ego.
• Hypocrite: What good narcissist would he be if he didn't have double standards?
  • He's jealously possessive of Maeve and refuses to let her get close to anyone else. This doesn't stop him from trying to put the moves on Stillwell at the same time, and later Becca after he murders Stillwell.
  • He rejects Blindspot as a potential candidate for the Seven because he's a "cripple" while making an understandable reason for him being a potential liability if his hearing were to be compromised (though he didn't have to rupture the kid's eardrums to make a point, which would've either kill him or leave him in a Fate Worse than Death). However, Homelander has deeply ingrained and repressed mental trauma from his "upbringing" that left him severely emotionally imbalanced, with a possible Split Personality as revealed in Season 3. Furthermore, the Prime series and The Boys: Diabolical show that sufficient mental duress can bring him into a dissociative homicidal rage. All of these, are something that's clearly not something you want to have, especially when left unchecked, in high-stress situations that involve people's lives at stake.
  • He rejects Stormfront's desire for an Aryan master race of supers on the grounds that he sees himself as a master race. Then he turns right around and kidnaps Maeve with the intention of stealing her eggs for him to fertilize and create superbabies with.
  • In Season 3 he criticizes A-Train for killing another Supe, one of his kind, in cold blood. This coming from the guy who killed the African Supervillain, Supersonic, Termite, Black Noir, and ordered A-Train to kill Kimiko and Popclaw. A-Train notices the hypocrisy but decides not to say anything.
  • He also harshly criticizes the Deep for his bestiality despite the fact that he once milked a cow in a very…suggestive manner.
• Icy Blue Eyes: It reflects his cruel personality.
• I Just Want to Be Loved:
  • He is completely and utterly dependent on the adulation of the masses. He obsessively follows how well he polls, like he is trying to actually use it to quantify how much he is loved. While Stormfront is happily talking about how soon they won't have to deal with premieres, screaming fans etc., his expression becomes more introverted as he seems to realize he doesn't want to lose any of it. Maeve is able to rein him in before he can kill Butcher by threatening to show everyone that he let a plane crash out of apathy. Long-term this would have given Homelander the freedom he wants to be the tyrannical bastard he wishes he could be, but Maeve points out that nobody would love him, at which point Homelander spaces out.
  • By Season 3, he's taken a page or two from Machiavelli and learned to compromise on his need for love. While he'd rather be loved and worshipped as the public's Superman, if the push comes to shove then he will settle for fear and rule as their Darkseid. He even tells himself during his Mirror Monologue that his dependence on love is a sign of his humanity and therefore a weakness that he needs to "cut out" so he can truly be a god.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: During a bank robbery, Homelander, instead of simply apprehending the robber, chooses to thrust his fist into his torso, gruesomely gutting him and sadistically reassuring him as the robber bleeds to death.
• Implied Death Threat: He loves giving these under the disguise of empty platitudes.
• Incest Subtext: He seems to possess an odd psychological lust towards his somewhat mother-figure Stillwell, something that she notices and exploits. He watches her pump breast milk using his x-ray vision and becomes irritable whenever her infant son is around, with breast-feeding and mommy-play as a Fetish. This doesn't keep him from killing her, though.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: Sports an absolutely massive yet also incredibly fragile ego and it's heavily implied his need for admiration is a way of making up for the love he never got as a kid.
• Informed Ability: In the pilot episode, it's suggested that he's the only superhero to have completely good intentions, and that he's so pure that he never ever swears. Obviously, the former isn't true, as revealed at the end of the same episode. There appears to have been a creative change in the approach to the character once the series was picked up in full, as there are several scenes of him using harsh profanity in public, and not simply in an O.O.C. Is Serious Business way.
• Insistent Terminology: Not Super Terrorists, Super Villains. It tends to make them more marketable.
• Insufferable Genius: Downplayed; Homelander is far from being a genius, but he can actually be very cunning and he knows how to read people very well, something that he's very much aware of. When Starlight attempts to blackmail him over the Flight 37 video, he proceeds to shut down her plan by explaining exactly how he’d go about wiping out humanity. And it’s clear that he’s thought it through down to the most precise detail. He even manages to outsmart Stan Edgar in Season 3, who's the ultimate chessmaster of the show. Despite all this though, he's been outplotted several times throughout the show by various characters. He's also not as intelligent as he thinks he is. This is best shown when he takes over Vought, and then realizes that he has no idea how to actually run a business, let alone a massive corporation. He doesn't even know what EBITDA margins are.
  Homelander: I’m stronger, I’m smarter…I’m better! I AM BETTER!”

• Invincible Villain: Played straight in Season 1, when nothing the Boys could possibly do would damage him, not even threatening his supposed Morality Chain Madelyn Stillwell, who herself was unable to keep him in check and scared to death of his whims. But come Season 2, he's casually dismissed by Stan Edgar, has his leadership questioned by Stormfront, is trapped by Kenji (albeit temporarily) under a pile of rubble, and finally blackmailed into submission by Queen Maeve. In the end he's back at being Vought's puppet and reduced to masturbating in the top of the tower claiming he can do "whatever the fuck he wants". He really can't. Then comes Season 3, where after losing Ryan, his lover Stormfront's suicide, and the stress from his ongoing Humiliation Conga, without anything to truly anchor his already fragile ego to reality... he made his return. Even the plane video can do nothing at this point. However, it's also been decisively established that he's not as invincible as everyone (including himself) thought, as he can indeed be hurt by exceptionally strong supes such as Queen Maeve and Soldier Boy, as well as the highly empowered Billy Butcher under the effects of Temp-V.
• Ironic Echo: Before he kills Stillwell, he claims that as Homelander, he can do "whatever the fuck he want[s]" with an unhinged, terrifying certainty. At the end of Season 2, a string of failures and losses have led to him jerking off in public above a city while repeatedly saying he can do whatever he wants, only this time it's utterly pathetic.
• It's All About Me:
  • Homelander cares more about his popularity and reputation than he does about actually trying to help people and benefiting for the greater cause.
    Maeve: You've managed to make this about yourself in less than 20 seconds flat.
  • Even his relationship with his son boils down to this. Despite genuinely loving him, he clearly sees Ryan as an extension of himself and more as a piece of property than an individual. Homelander doesn't give a damn about the boy's needs if they don't align with what Homelander wants.
  • When he learns that the bedridden Stormfront has committed suicide by biting off her own tongue and bleeding out, Homelander is devastated, but less because a human being has died, and more because she did it on his birthday; if anything, he seems more insulted than anguished.
• Jerkass: Exaggerated; it's quite astounding how much of a dick this man is capable of being. He's one of, if not, THE most evil character in the series. He's even mean to HIMSELF when he's talking to himself in the mirror.
• Jerkass at Your Discretion: It's something of a Running Gag how he gives praise to regular people only to badmouth them as soon as they can't hear him.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • In Season 2, Homelander unceremoniously kicks A-Train off the team for being too slow. While cruel, Homelander is quite right that, between his dependence on Compound V and damaged heart, A-Train is neither the fastest man in the world, nor fit to be a superhero.
  • While he definitely didn't need to destroy the kid's eardrums to prove his point, Homelander is not wrong when pointing out that despite Blindspot's super-hearing compensating for his blindness, if you take away his hearing, Blindspot is pretty much reduced to any other blind cripple.
  • While his idea of parenting isn't exactly better, he's not wrong that the way Vought and Becca are raising Ryan is highly damaging. He recognises that the way the kid is being raised the same as how he himself was raised, and merely adding a mother figure and a fake neighbourhood does little to mitigate the lack of social development or real world experience. While Ryan's situation is still far better than how he was raised (and Becca is trying her best to keep Ryan from turning out anything like him), they were setting themselves up for a repeated experience when the time came to introduce Ryan to the outside world.
  • In Season 3, while he's obviously venting his misplaced anger at A-Train, he's not exactly wrong when calling out on A-Train's original eating habits since he's not running as much as he used to and is gaining a noticeable gut.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After spending much of Season 1 and 2 getting away with mass murder, Compound V distribution, and making life a living hell for the Boys and fellow supes, Homelander gets hits hard with karma in the finale. Queen Maeve, whom he outed as a lesbian against her will, blackmails Homelander with footage of his involvement in Flight 37 disaster. Unwilling to lose the public's love for him, Homelander is forced to give into her demands that he stop harassing his female colleagues, give up custody of his son Ryan to Billy Butcher and reinstate Starlight into The Seven. Ultimately, Homelander is forced to abandon his tyrannical ambitions and is reduced to a mere pawn at mercy of Vought.
  • Not anymore in Season 3, he straight up tells Starlight that she's got nothing on him. If he ever loses the love of the people because of the Flight 37 incident, he will have nothing left to lose, and will go on a murder rampage. By the end of Season 3, he succeeds in what he was trying to do in Season 2. Get Ryan completely on his side.
• Kick the Dog: Frequently and habitually, to the point that anyone interacting with him immediately becomes sympathetic even unlikable and previously unsympathetic fellow dog-kickers like Stilwell, Ashley, A-Train, and the Deep.
  • Nothing in the show illustrates this trope more than being partly responsible for the Flight 37 crash and him not bothering to save anybody in order to preserve his image and kickstart his war idea later on.
  • His past rape of Becca also counts, as he's notably otherwise never shown doing anything like that. Why he decided to rape a woman that day is still unknown (assuming that it wasn't to get back at her husband for insulting him).
  • When Ashley presents Blindspot as a new addition to the Seven, Homelander acts accommodating to the impressionable Supe at first, then promptly bursts his eardrums to show how useless his power is and says that he doesn't want a "cripple" on the team. Then, to make it worse, he berates Ashley, walks right over Blindspot while he's writhing in a pool of his own blood to get close to her face and states that he decides who joins The Seven, not her.
  • He forces a depressed woman to jump off a building in Season 3 because he was in a bad mood at the time.
  • Manages to do this to the Deep of all people by forcing him to eat his pet octopus Timothy alive (keep in mind he knows that the Deep can hear Timothy begging him not to do this).
• Knight of Cerebus: While Homelander is capable of being darkly humorous at times, it should be noted that he is the most evil member of The Seven. Anytime he does show up, there is a very good chance that something terrible is going to break out, especially if there's a moral, innocent or defenseless bystander around him and if he's sufficiently pissed off.
• Knight Templar Parent: When a detractor of Homelander throws a water bottle at Ryan, he risks his entire reputation by lasering his detractors face. His followers, however, eat this up.
• Kubrick Stare: Whenever Homelander gets angry or wants to intimidate someone, his Death Glare is always shot from a superior angle to amplify the madness of the character, while the eyes are always the focus of the camera.
• Kryptonite Factor: Averted according to Stillwell. Despite being designed as an evil allegory of Superman, he's stated to not have any weakness whatsoever. Stillwell has claimed that they've thrown everything they could at him and that he's survived it all.
• Lack of Empathy: He cares for no one else besides himself. When Translucent goes missing, he doesn't care about the man's plight, but rather the indirect challenge to his own authority.
• Large Ham: Practically his job to ham it up, but Homelander takes it to a whole new level and Anthony Starr steals pretty much every scene he's in.
• Laughably Evil: Downplayed. While his crimes, mental instability, and sadism are all played dead seriously, his constant Jerkass behavior and petty childishness is sometimes Played for Laughs.
• Laughing Mad: Homelander breaks out into hauntingly deranged laughter at the end of Season 2, and dear God, it is TRULY terrifying!
• Lazy Bum: He prefers to take shortcuts and get things done quickly, without taking much thought. Despite being the most powerful super of world, Homelander uses his heat vision to take down his enemies with disastrous consequences: his laziness with his eye beam usage is what would end up causing the Flight 37 disaster to play out like it does, carelessly destroying the planes control panel while killing the terrorist, and when he accidentally killed a innocent civilian during the task in Africa.
• The Leader: Homelander leads and is the mascot of "The Seven," Vought's premier Super Team.
• Lean and Mean: Underneath his muscle-padded suit, he's incredibly slender as shown when Doppelgänger shapeshifts as him while wearing lingerie and when he's watching his angry speech on TV while naked. And mean? Look at 85% of the tropes in here.
• Leave No Witnesses: He was initially sent to Flight 37 in an effort to stop terrorists from asserting control over the plane. When he destroys the controls with his Laser Beams (intentional or not), Homelander opts to abandon the plane and leave the passengers to die, much to Queen Maeve's distress and shock. The passengers rush forward to beg for his help, leading to Homelander firing up his laser eyes and threatening to "laser every fucking one" of them, before departing the plane with a dismayed Maeve. The primary reason for letting the passengers die was because they potentially would have been able to slander Homelander's reputation, though he also develops an idea from the incident to send superheroes to the military.
• Lightning Bruiser: Being an expy of Superman, this is a given. He is the strongest hero Vought has to offer and can fly from one area to another within seconds.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Horrifyingly, he actually comes across as the more sympathetic party in comparison to Stormfront. While Homelander is a murderous Super Supremacist who treats all regular humans like dirt as soon as he's off-camera, he at least isn't as, shall we say, selective in his contempt as Stormfront, who is seriously guilty of both Fantastic Racism and regular racism. He gets into a romantic affair with her all the same, but does express discomfort when he actually sees her espousing her more private beliefs.
• Limited Wardrobe: He's only seen outside his superhero costume once. Other than that, he is always wearing it, no matter what.
• Like Father, Like Son: He's a violent bully and Control Freak just like his biological father, Soldier Boy, to the point that it drove members of his team to conspire against him. Also, like Soldier Boy, he hears from a redhead ex-girlfriend that she never loved him and always hated his guts.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: He actually considered Black Noir a good friend. Soldier Boy, on the other hand, hated Black Noir for trying to make something of himself and is even the reason why Black Noir is horribly scarred and mute in the first place. Unfortunately, the friendship fizzles out in Season 3 after Black Noir abandons him during his time of need. However, Homelander likes Noir so much that he forgave Noir when Noir returned, but Homelander tearfully ends up killing him in the season finale when Homelander learns that Noir had kept secret the truth of Homelander's parentage. And coinciding with a twisted version of Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting, Homelander also unconditionally loves his son Ryan and despite being a terrible parent would never think to kill him for showing defiance. This is in contrast to Soldier Boy, who tries to strangle Homelander to death for the simple act of crying about how badly he wants a family.
• Likes Older Women:
  • His fixation on Stillwell is somewhat derived from her being an older woman with a maternal air and, as a lab rat baby, he has serious mommy issues that she exploits. Their first sexual scene is him staring through the wall at her pumping her breastmilk. Their second has her unbuttoning her blouse and symbolically breastfeeding him with her finger with his head in her lap. Then they fuck and she compliments him on being her good boy and how she's proud of him.
  • He also starts a sexual relationship with Stormfront, and though he doesn't realize it at first, she's old enough to be his grandmother, and is the widow of Frederick Vought, but when he finds out, it definitely makes him more interested than he was already.
• Living Emotional Crutch: While Homelander is dependent on receiving love from everyone around him, he goes through life always searching for someone he can attach himself to and unconditionally feed him love. In Season 1, it's Stillwell, but after he murders her, he goes through a variety of potential replacements including his son, Becca, Doppelganger, Maeve, and the rest of the Seven before settling on Stormfront. Stormfront is well aware of his need for someone to depend on and exploits it to put him under her control by tarnishing his reputation and then forcing him to turn to her to restore it.
• Living Lie Detector: It's deconstructed, since Homelander functions like a real life polygraph, meaning he doesn't actually detect the lies themselves but rather the signs of stress people feel when they lie, like increased heartbeat and adrenaline. This misleads him more often than not, like when he assumes Starlight is lying to him but really she's just scared shitless of him, and anyone can get away with lying to his face as long as they have Nerves of Steel as Frenchie, Stillwell, and Vogelbaum demonstrate.
• Logical Weakness:
  • Homelander has super-hearing, so loud high-pitched noises will cause him pain, even if they're some distance away. The Boys use a pile of speakers against Homelander, but that was only effective as a distraction as Homelander was not particularly inconvenienced. It's a much more effective weapon against Ryan, either because his hearing is superior or he has less experience with his senses.
  • Due to being so much more powerful than basically everybody else in the world, he has no real idea how to handle himself in a fight where he actually needs to, well, fight. Any serious resistance throws him for a loop, and he finds it hard to adjust to unexpected changes in combat, like the new superpowers of Butcher and Hughie.
• Lonely at the Top: In "Proper Preparation and Planning", he tells his son Ryan that he hates the fact that he's the only superior being, since it makes him feel "isolated and alone". Even then, he hates feeling that way because he sees it as a weakness.
• Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Homelander might be a Physical God, but he still only lasts a whopping 45 seconds from insertion to ejaculation with Stillwell, much to his embarrassment.
• Love Hungry: One of his biggest issues, being that he was raised in a lab with nobody to really "care" for him, he quickly latches on to people who give him affection, and even allows him to show his softer sides, such as when he got a bouquet of roses for Stormfront, or taking Ryan away from the crowds, when it was overwhelming him but, he latches on hard when they do, making him insecure or jealous when it seems that said object of affection is snubbing him, such as him burning down his trailer when Stormfront was genuinely held up at Sage Grove instead of being "20 minutes", something that wasn't her fault.
• Love Is a Weakness: Despite his cravings for adoration and love, he secretly believes this is actively hindering him and he needs to learn to live without love in order to be "pure" and "clean".
• Luke, I Am Your Father: He learns that he is Soldier Boy's biological son, having been engineered from his sperm sample.
• Lust: Considering he works for Vought, Homelander would do anything to garner as much popularity and praise as possible. He's also got the more colloquial sexual version, with a strong desire for Stillwell (and prior to this, Rebecca Butcher) both of whom he eventually manages to have sex with (or rape, in the latter's case).
• Lying to Protect Your Feelings: He's on the receiving end regarding Becca's fate and the existence of their son. Homelander is pissed off by the condescension displayed towards him and kills Stillwell for it. It turns out it's not just to protect his feelings, but so Homelander won't corrupt his son into becoming just like him.

M-R

• Machiavelli Was Wrong: When he gets tired of Starlight's threats of using her blackmail on him, Homelander reveals he's fully ready to prove this trope is averted. He would much rather prefer having the people's love and approval, but if he truly loses that, he has no problem remaining "king of the hill" that is Earth by fear, which he'll enforce by going on a destructive rampage through America to show he's not kidding.
  "I'd prefer to be loved. I would. But if you take that away from me...well, being feared is A-1-okey-doke by me."
• Made of Indestructium: Bullets couldn't do crap against him. Neither did Billy blowing up Stillwell's residence. Stillwell claims everything possible in the world has already been thrown at him, and he's still alive. Season 3 reveals that it is possible to damage him, as he is left with a lasting bruise on his face after being briefly triple-teamed by Soldier Boy and super-empowered Butcher and Hughie. Appropriately enough, this means the only thing that has been shown to do any damage to Homelander is other Supes who are at least near his own Super Weight.
• Madness Mantra: "I can do whatever I want."
• Make an Example of Them: He kills Alex, just to put Annie in her place, and threatens her that if she doesn't comply, the next one will be Hughie.
• The Man in the Mirror Talks Back: In 'Herogasm', Homelander's reflection talks to Homelander in the mirror, hinting at a Split Personality that he may have developed in his childhood or just simply how fractured his mind has become.
• Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Implied to be part of his attraction to Stormfront, one of the very few people capable of withstanding his powers. He is cautious at first then they let loose on one another during their Destructo-Nookie scene, after which he is completely infatuated with her.
• Mask of Sanity: He has a reputation as clean, friendly, and religious hero in public, but beneath that is a murderous narcissist with temper problems.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Part of his Villainous Breakdown. Unable to comprehend his son being taken away from him and being further restricted by Queen Maeve via her footage of the Flight 37 disaster and Stormfront controversy, Homelander spends his last appearance in Season 2 masturbating on top of a building, maniacally ranting on how he can do "whatever the fuck he wants".
• Meaningful Name:
  • His moniker is probably meant to evoke "Homeland Security" with all the post-War on Terror and Patriot Act implications. Underscored when he performs an unlawful search on a truck with the explanation "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear," and his eagerness to get involved in foreign conflicts.
  • His 'human' name is John, a name that was often worn by emperors, kings and saints, befitting Homelander's status as the most powerful supe and his God Complex. There is also the fact that he often 'baptized' people, just like John the Baptist once did. As for the meaning of the name, it is 'God is gracious'; and Homelander is more or less a murderous Physical God who fakes being the ultimate force of good.
  • To the public, Homelander is an ultra-masculine, fiercely patriotic hero. His name is John, just like John Wayne, an actor best known for playing the same type of hero.
  • "John" carries a number of negative implications too. For example John Doe (the go-to placeholder name for a unidentified male corpse), touching on Homelander's identity issues. Also, a john is slang for a prostitute's client, possibly referencing his tendency to get involved with...less-than-ideal women, such as Madelyn Stillwell and Stormfront.
• Men Don't Cry: A core part of his toxic masculinity mindset. He claims in the Season 2 finale that the last time he cried was when he was a little boy, but now he's a grown man so he's above such things. A mere few hours later after this, the loss of his lover and son drives him to tears.
• Mirror Character: Is been always hinted through the show that Butcher and Homelander have similarities, but their usual arcs also made them different from each other, until Season 3, where Eric Kripke, confirms for 'Herogasm' breakdown that: "Homelander and Butcher are really like two sides of the same coin. Um, they have very similar arcs, you know in Episodes 1 and 2, you know, they both feel like aggrieved and their steam kettles are boiling and then they both finally explode in their own ways. And, in many ways, they are like the two poles of the show, you know. It's sorta like we talk about them sometimes as Superman likes Luther or Holmes/Moriarty like they're like the two centers of gravity. So, in their obsession with each other it's sort of inevitable that they start to kind of take on, you know, some of each other's traits".
• Missing Mom: In the first episode, it's implied that him staring at Madelyn pumping milk is Power Perversion Potential, but "Good for the Soul" reveals he has severe mommy issues that she's aware of and more than happy to use to control him. She unbuttons her blouse, has him put his head in her lap, and mimes nursing by letting him suck her fingers.
• Morality Pet: His son Ryan is probably the only other person he actually cares about and in the Season 3 finale when he looked ready to fry the Boys, Butcher in particular, Ryan convinces him to leave instead.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: He's rarely seen outside of his costume, but when he is, it turns out he's actually quite thin. This actually makes sense since he's had no reason to work out his entire life since he's already strong enough to throw vehicles around like toys. Even if he wanted to, he'd have to lift something comparable to a couple semi-trucks to challenge himself. This is also a clever way to incorporate the fact that Antony Starr has padding in his suit to make him fit the superhero build into the show. It would make sense that Vought would give him muscle inserts since he is basically the company mascot.
• My Greatest Failure: Dr. Vogelbaum thinks of Homelander as this for him, saying he should have raised him with affection, not like a test subject in his lab, so that he might have been different. The normally snappy Homelander has no response to it, indicating it hit him quite deep.
• Narcissist: Perfectly ticks every box on the list. He has absolutely no empathy or respect for anyone, yet he is defined by his massive ego, and is dependent on the narcissistic supply provided by everyone around him. Any time someone disrupts this precious ego stroking, he flies into a narcissistic rage that can only be calmed down by soothing his wounded pride. He also fits both the overt and covert definitions of narcissism as while his ego is genuine, it's also very fragile and meant to cover up the lack of true love he never received as a child, and there are implications that he's full of self-loathing very deep down.
• Nice Guy: The Season 1 finale of The Boys: Diabolical reveals he really was like Superman, once. Nowadays, despite PR appearances, he's far from it.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Sometimes he bullies people too hard, making them hit a point where they have nothing to lose. Nothing to lose means they have no fear. No fear means he's impotent against them as he can't bring himself to harm someone who truly isn't scared of him. He did this with Queen Maeve and he needed help from Black Noir to attack her.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Homelander takes sick pleasure out of both witnessing and committing sadistic acts of violence, and even appears to get off on it at times. His slow murder of a Syrian terrorist in the Season 1 finale is a good example of this.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Homelander is certainly the strongest of his kind and feared by everyone who knows him but he's never really been challenged before or met an opponent who poses a threat to him.
  • He's intrigued by Billy Butcher because the man hates him so much that he not afraid of him and he was initially intimidated by Stormfront because she was more popular than him and had a way of manipulating others. Homelander repeatedly points out that there is nobody stronger than him and the only thing keeping him on a leash is public admiration and Vought.
  • This is best shown when he fights Soldier Boy and Butcher, Homelander tries to cut the fight short by using his eye beams on Butcher as his first attack but gets upset when he realizes that Butcher has taken V-24 to level the playing field, causing Homelander to call him out for "cheating". When he's beaten into submission and restrained by Butcher, Hughie, and Soldier Boy, Homelander frantically frees himself and flies away. As a result of his pride, Homelander never actually took a fight seriously and never developed a strategy beyond using his eye beams and a single punch to end fights because he always believed himself to be an apex predator. Rather than train himself to be better, learn his limitations and vulnerabilities, or learn from his mistakes at Herogasm, Homelander instead tries to use Maeve to sire offspring to ensure his successor is stronger than him and he uses Ryan as a meatshield to deter Soldier Boy by appealing to pity, not expecting Soldier Boy to be ruthless enough to end his own bloodline out of shame for what Homelander's become in his absence.
• No-Sell: Butcher's bomb in Season 1 and Kenji bringing a whole ceiling down on his head in Season 2 seems to have done nothing to him as he is later shown unscathed.
• Not His Sled: Unlike the comics, he really did rape Becca, instead of it being done by Black Noir, who was gaslighting him.
• Not So Invincible After All: In Season 3, everyone learns that he is the World's Strongest Man for a reason, but he's not so far above them that there's no hope of victory. It turns out that his abilities have been massively hyped up beyond their actual scope in-universe, which is nothing new for Vought. Soldier Boy leaves him with a black eye, and Maeve destroys his left ear by jamming a metal straw into it. Maeve also bloodies him with her regular punches despite herself not being strong enough to lift a bus (she broke her arm trying to pull one up from a precipice).
• Not So Similar: Like Starlight, Homelander is annoyed and angered over the fact the Seven can't do more and are basically playing expensive cops and robbers. Unlike Starlight, who feels like this for genuinely altruistic and heroic reasons, Homelander feels like this approach is limiting his worldwide options as an Attention Whore.
• No Social Skills: While he's really good at projecting a falsified image of himself, he's not as good when having to actually express himself. This is shown with Ryan, who is the only person that Homelander tries to be nice and comforting with, where Homelander stutters and takes a number of pauses in his talks whenever he's teaching or opening up to his son. It's also shown with Black Noir where Homelander genuinely confides in seeing him as a friend privately and he expresses it with awkward body language and pauses on what he wants to say to him.
• Oh, Crap!: He's a walking OC moment generator. People who know what a monster he actually is are usually terrified in his presence. If he's paying attention to you and he's not motivated to play the hero, there's nothing he wouldn't do to you.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Upon watching a news broadcast of the revived Soldier Boy accidentally going nuclear in the middle of a Manhattan street, Homelander is visibly afraid for the first time of another person that he completely loses focus of the conversation happening around him and struggles to recompose himself after.
  • For the first time in his life, he genuinely thanks Starlight for coming and supporting him for a show, when everybody else is gone. Even Starlight is shocked by his gesture.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He promises to Starlight he will destroy New York, her and Maeve's native towns in the event that his involvement in the Flight 37 crash is exposed to the public
• One-Man Army: Takes out a cell of Middle Eastern Terrorists all by himself while the armed forces watch on from outside the building.
• Only One Name: His non-supe name lacks a surname.
• Papa Wolf: At the end of the third season finale when a heckler throws a can at Ryan in the crowd of people, Homelander pulls his son behind him protectively before lasering the offender to death, very well possibly risking his status in a crowd of people.
  • He abandons all love he had for Soldier Boy being his father the moment Soldier Boy attempts to murder Ryan for reflexively attacking him to protect Homelander.
• Paper Tiger: While far from a weakling, his strength and especially invulnerability turn out to be massively exaggerated in-universe. The Boys were of the opinion that they'd need to find a super-weapon to be capable of damaging him and Maeve is incredulous that he could be killed by anything short of a nuclear weapon. While he is exceptionally resilient against anything civilians like them could reasonably get their hands on (like small arms and improvised explosives), the season reveals it's not really that hard to hurt him. It's just that his durability hadn't really been tested. Punches which (when they miss him) merely make fist-sized indents in concrete or dent thin metal sheets are able to bruise and bloody him, and it's shown that his skin can even be pierced by a metal straw with some super-strength behind it. Needless to say, even infantry-portable heavy weapons can do far, far worse than that.^note To just give one example: a cheap-ass RPG-7 PG-7VL warhead straight from the 1960s can penetrate over three feet of concrete or one and a half feet of rolled armor steel. In the climatic battle of Season 3, Maeve is able to hold her own against him and despite being clearly weaker she's able to inflict significant damage - despite saying earlier in the season that she could at best last one or two seconds against him. She's even visibly shocked (and giddy) the first time she makes him bleed. The same episode shows that she and a Temp V-empowered Butcher can very easily restrain him together and Soldier Boy can do so alone, making him little more than a deer in the headlights as the latter charges his blast.
• Parents as People: In one of their last moments, Homelander actually tries to be a relatable father to Ryan. Unfortunately, he is forced to use his made-up past with mixed results, though he does become emotional when he starts to explain how using his powers were difficult in an effort to bond with his son after Ryan had trouble using his heat vision and getting agitated by a large crowd and loud noise. Unfortunately for Homelander, it doesn't stick for long.
• Performance Anxiety: Whenever someone shows a genuine lack of fear of him, he can't bring himself to pummel them, laser them or kill them any of the other many ways he does someone he can intimidate. He can't even threaten them. Even when he managed to remove Stan Edgar from his position of power, Edgar was still able to belittle him and walk away without a scratch, leaving him to stew in his impotence. In Season 3, he could only talk to Butcher, who lost what little fear he had in the last season. He only killed Stilwell after she admitted she was terrified of him. When Maeve finally stands up, telling him she always hated and even pitied him, he can't bring himself to attack her and needs Black Noir to do it for him. For all his talk about preferring to be loved, he actually relishes being feared. He's completely dependent on it like oxygen.
• Person of Mass Destruction: To the point that Deputy Director Raynor doesn't want him prosecuted for his crimes, as he has the potential to kill "thousands" if he is angered.
• The Peter Principle: Homelander may be a great warrior and hero but he is terrible at thinking about how his actions affect others. He tries to sever ties with Vought, only to be reminded by Edgar that it would be a terrible idea since Vought has been protecting him from the consequences of his actions. When he tries to quell an anti-war movement, he fails and fantasizes about killing the crowd, only to snap back into reality and float away after calling them all "The real heroes". It's clear that "The real heroes" line is just a weightless statement that Vought taught him for PR purposes, as the crowd still hates him when he uses it. He has a mental breakdown from all the attention and starts a relationship with Stormfront, a Nazi who enables his worst actions. It then backfires horribly for him as Stormfront is outed as a Nazi and Homelander is forced to do cleanup so that the public doesn't turn against him.
  • When he ousts Edgar and takes over Vought, it's clear from the first few minutes he has no idea how to run a company, as he is completely blindsided by an accountant asking for EBITDA. Homelander has to threaten her to keep the rest of the accountants in line, but secretly wonders to himself if taking over the company was a bad idea all along.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He spares Starlight after she fails him because Maeve begged him not to.
  • He spares Teddy, Madelyn’s infant son, despite being shown to resent the infant.
  • He seems to genuinely care for Ryan, at least as far as a sociopathic personality can genuinely care for someone. At one point, he leaves a crowd of adoring fans just to help his son deal with an anxiety attack, and he later mercilessly slaughters the Vought strike team he believes had already taken him.
  • When he discovers that Soldier Boy is his biological father, Homelander goes out of his way to try to bring him to his side and genuinely opens up to him about his desire to be a family with him and Ryan.
  • Overall, he does have a soft spot for Maeve - despite capturing her when learning of her and Annie's attempted coup against him, he never actually hurts her, and during their fight in the Season 3 finale, he genuinely tells her that he doesn't want to fight or hurt her; it's only after she actually does some significant damage to him that he finally fights back.
• Photo Op with the Dog: An absolute master of this trope, Homelander very rarely breaks his image of the All-American Hero archetype when it comes to appearing in the media. But when the cameras aren't rolling on him, he doesn't hold back.
• Pitiful Worms: Refers to humans as "mud people" that should be worshipping him.
• Playing the Victim Card: By Season 3 he's gone full victim mode after his polls go down as a result of his association with Stormfront, with a fondness for the word "persecution." He outright compares himself to Jesus and Martin Luther King Jr. as to how one can give their whole lives in service of others and receive nothing but scorn in response. The comparisons fall flat since Jesus selflessly gave his life for others without expecting a reward, and Dr. King had legitimate grievances about how black people were treated in America while always making sure the civil rights movement was nonviolent. Homelander is just mad that people aren't automatically giving him love and are mad about him killing innocent civilians and knowingly jumping into bed with a Nazi.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Proves himself, predictably, to be the "inexperienced and ruthless" type as Vought CEO, with a heavy dose of Bad Boss. He initiates his first board meeting by having everyone introduce themselves to him, in a transparent attempt to hear some flattery about what a great new leader he'll be; Maureen, however, uses her opportunity to speak to ask an innocent and sincere question about how best to spin their EBITDA margins dipping slightly in the wake of the power transfer. Homelander — confronted with the fact that he has no idea what the hell he's doing, and furious that a non-powered woman knows even slightly more about business than he does — singles her out as wanting his job, and Ashley fires her to avoid him murdering the woman. He later lays off the head of the Crime Analytics Division, replaces her with The Deep, and fires everyone at Vought who's written tweets even mildly critical of himself.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He refers to Arabs as "camel jockeys", quips about Africans all being unable to afford food, maims/kills a Seven prospect who is blind because he doesn't want a "cripple" on his team, and refuses to let Silver Kincaid on the Seven simply because she's a Muslim. Additionally, Homelander's constant quips that Becca is raising Ryan to be a pussy or "like a girl" strongly indicate he's a misogynist, while he's taken part in anti-gay campaigns and upon finding out about Maeve's bisexuality, he outs her publicly to humiliate her. He still comes off as less bigoted than Stormfront, however, as he Hates Everyone Equally, he's just not above using racialized, gendered, and sexual identity-based insults, and notably feels uncomfortable with Stormfront's racist perspective even though he's willing to begrudgingly tolerate it for his own ends.
• Post-Rape Taunt: He claims to Billy that Becca enjoyed their "time" together so much that she orgasmed three times in as many hours together. His lack of sexual prowess puts the claim in doubt though. When he starts visiting Becca and Ryan, he's not subtle about verbally bullying her.
• Powerful and Helpless: This is how he ends Season 2. Maeve reveals she has footage of the Flight 37 incident and threatens to leak it if he doesn't do what she wants, which would destroy the public's adoration of him. In the end, he's trapped as a pawn of Vought. His final scene is him pathetically masturbating while claiming he can do "whatever the fuck he wants".
• Power Perversion Potential: He uses his X-Ray Vision to watch Stillwell pump breast milk.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Homelander is callously pragmatic and will immediately cut people out of his life and abandons others when it seems to be the most practical option.
  • He bars Blindspot from entering The Seven because he believes that Blindspot is too much a liability to fight. As demonstrated by Homelander, if Blindspot's eardrums are destroyed then he will be at a major disadvantage in the battlefield. He kicks A-Train out of The Seven because his drug use has weakened his bones and affected his heart, making him a liability as a hero of The Seven since he no longer has his superhuman endurance and stamina for the battlefield.
  • When confronted by a bunch of protesters against him for his war crimes, he has thoughts of massacring a group of protesters just to silence them, but decided to fly off and leave noting that this kind of move will cause bad publicity with Vought and himself.
  • Flight 37 is another example, as he immediately abandons all the passengers when he realizes that he can't rescue them without breaking the plane. To Homelander, they would have died either way and he needed to use the failed mission to get Supes into the military.
  • He somewhat plays along with Stormfront's Nazi ideology, despite not being a Nazi. While he is definitely a believer in a master race, that being the Supes, he couldn't care less about what color that "master race" would be. It's clear he does it for the sake of their relationship, and to keep her on his side, but he's also visibly annoyed when Stormfront starts talking about white supremacy.
  • Despite Butcher being his Arch-Enemy, he is willing to partner up with him for the time being to protect Ryan from Soldier Boy.
• Prefers Proper Names: He insists on calling Billy Butcher by his real first name, William.
• Pride: He suffers from deep Narcissistic Personality Disorder, seeing himself as a godly entity superior to the whole of humanity and any supe. His powers and sense of entitlement have led him to exhibit extreme megalomania, causing him to commit crimes against innocent people, including acts of rape and mass murder, out of the idea that he can do anything he wants because of who he is.
• Primary-Color Champion: Invoked by his choice of costume, with has blue, red, and yellow/gold colors, but is more an example of how Bright Is Not Good.
• Properly Paranoid:
  • He's the only one who takes Translucent's disappearance seriously, and correctly perceives it as the first step in a war against himself even though everyone else thinks it's just another case of It's All About Me.
  • Despite everyone brushing off Soldier Boy's return in New York, Homelander is terrified for the first time as he believes Soldier Boy is after him. "Herogasm" proves him correct.
  —Homelander: William Butcher and Soldier Boy. Of course. You are behind this. This whole thing. It really is all about me.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Comes through most clearly in his interactions with Stillwell. It's still made clear his actions are essentially those of an absolutely deranged schoolyard bully or an angry toddler who lashes out whenever doesn't get what he wants. The difference, however, is that this toddler is six feet even, immune to everything, can bench a jet liner, and shoot lasers from his eyes. Even Edgar describes him as such.
  • Garth Ennis himself seems to think of Homelander as this:
  Ennis: (describing Homelander) "It might help to think of the Homelander as having all the self-control of, let's say, a fourteen-year-old."
• Raised in a Lab: Homelander was raised in a lab throughout his childhood. The constant feeling of isolation he felt, and accidental murders of others played a key part in making him into what he is today.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: It is stated in the show that Homelander raped and killed Billy's wife Becca. Although her initial reaction to seeing Homelander in the Season 1 finale seemed to be normal and unfazed, she confirms it was indeed rape, and the experience left her so terrified she cut a deal with Vought and ran off with their son to get away from him.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eye beams are red when used, but he is also able to make his eyes glow red without actually doing any damage, which he does in between blasts or simply to intimidate. In any case, you do not want to get his attention when his eyes are glowing. And unlike Superman, he's much more liberal with their usage.
  • Later on, it's showed that his eyes uncontrollably start to glow red when he is extremely angry.
• Relative Button:
  • Do not remind him of Stormfront's death or insult her in his presence. He forces a suicidal woman to jump off a building after learning of Stormfront's suicide and when a man insults Stormfront on his birthday, Homelander looks like he was about to tear the poor stupid bastard limb from limb and proceeds to make a speech about how ungrateful the world is to have him.
  • One of his few redeeming features is that he genuinely craves and treasures genuine affection through blood ties, and keeping either his heritage or legacy secret from him will guarantee you a gruesome death, which Madelyn Stillwell by hiding his son's existence and Black Noir by hiding that Soldier Boy was his father learned the hard way.
• Reverse Arm-Fold: Homelander's default body position.
• Required Secondary Powers: Averted. Unlike Superman, Homelander needs leverage and support in order to be able to lift something big, even though he has Super-Strength. So when the plane he and Queen Maeve were trying to save is crashing, he tells Maeve that he can't push off from thin air, so that option is out.

S-Y

• Sadist: He gets a lot of enjoyment out of emotionally tormenting people around him. See how he treats Billy in general and Maeve after he finds out her true sexuality. The most notable example is his slow murder of a Syrian terrorist, where he first slices his legs off, and then instead of finishing him off quickly, slowly crushes his skull under his foot. And he does this all with a smile.
• Sanity Slippage: The death of Stormfront, the blackmail, and the constant control from Vought has started eroding Homelander's sanity and making him even more hostile and unpredictable. He attacks A-Train when the latter whispers "Fuck You" under his breath, he forces a woman to jump off a building, nearly tears a heckler limb from limb during his birthday, and threatens to destroy America when Starlight tries to remind him of her blackmail.
  • The revelation that Soldier Boy is alive, and the subsequent fight against him, Butcher and Hughie that goes downhill for Homelander does an even greater number to his already dwindling sanity, now that he finally has met opponents who can match him in strength and actually nearly killed him too in a three-on-one. The fact he degrades into animalistic snarls towards the latter half of the fight show how far from sane he is now.
• Satanic Archetype: As DEATH BATTLE! points out, Homelander is pretty much the closest thing to Lucifer on Earth. Like the most beautiful and powerful of God's Angels, Homelander is regarded as the most popular and powerful Supe alive. He has a massive ego, a god complex, represents all Seven Deadly Sins, especially Pride, and like a winged Angel, can fly, being especially notable as one of the few who can. As of Season 3, the phrase "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" applies to him all too well, as he takes over Vought despite slowly running it into the ground. He also settles for being feared rather than beloved, similar to Satan's fame through infamy, and when he starts to reveal his true self, he's delighted than many people actually react positively, all too similar to devil-worshippers.
• Secret Identity: While The Seven have generally given up on maintaining these, Homelander has an Inversion of this. Vought and marketing have him fake his childhood and go by the name "John," while he really operates as a superhero 24/7 and only answers to the name "Homelander".
• Security Blanket: Homelander freaks out when he sees a blanket in his fake childhood home. Turns out he was raised in a lab, where the blanket was his only comfort as a young child.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Homelander ingages in all seven sins during the course of the series:
  • Wrath: He's generally violent, impatient and intolerant, and is prone to throw temper tantrums when things don't go his way.
  • Pride: He is incredibly narcissistic, as he sees himself as a godly entity, superior to the whole of humanity and any supe. Thus leading him to the idea that he can do anything he wants because of who he is.
  • Sloth: Homelander has no real combat skills and depends completely on his superpowers. His laziness with his eye beam usage is what would end up causing the Flight 37 disaster, for example.
  • Greed: He's violently possessive towards anything and anyone he declares his property, as is shown in his interactions with Queen Maeve, Madelyn and Ryan.
  • Lust: Homelander is very fond about sex, as his relationships with Madelyn and Stormfront and his rape on Becca can show. He also masturbated on the roof of a skyscraper to raise his self-esteem, and has a fetish for breast-feeding and mommy play.
  • Envy: Homelander was very bitter about Madelyn's affection on her baby Teddy, due his Oedipus Complex, and treats Queen Maeve and his son Ryan more as pieces of property than individuals, disliking their relationships with others people outside of him.
  • Gluttony: He really likes milk...any kind. In fact, drinking some from a cow is enough to send him into a state of bliss he has to be startled out of.
• Shadow Archetype: To Billy Butcher — Homelander and Butcher share many traits (Hair-Trigger Temper, It's All About Me, and being Manipulative Bastards), but Butcher is far more grounded in reality due to actually having a decent family (for the most part) and friends that will call him out on his poor choices, while Homelander never had a stable environment growing up in a lab and is so powerful that anyone who tries to criticize him is quickled cowed into submission.
• Signature Move: His Eye Beams. If that doesn't work, he likes to gut his enemies with his fists.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Season 2 shows him being one towards his son; throwing him from a roof to awaken his powers. Becca is horrified once she finds an unconscious Ryan, no matter how much Homelander talks it off ("It was only a twenty foot fall!").
• Sketchy Successor: Given that both have a patriotic theme and are/were The Leader of their respetive teams, Homelander was intended to replace Soldier Boy as Vought's headliner hero.
• Slasher Smile: He sports one pretty much every time he smiles.
• Slave to PR: An extreme example. Homelander's ego is so dependent on his image and the adulation of the public that he can be manipulated by threatening it. A major turning point in Season 3 is the fact that he's reaching the point he'll settle for accepting the tarnishing of that beloved reputation and becoming feared rather than loved to get what he wants.
• Smarter Than You Look: Vought and the Boys often assume he's a dumb brute who just uses force and his extreme powers to handle every situation. While he is brutal, what makes him threatening is the fact that he's actually rather on the ball and is extremely good at thinking on the fly; he just has enough powers to not need his native wits a lot.
• The Sociopath: Homelander might seem to look like an ideal hero, but morally he is as far away as he can be for that. Aside from Stillwell, he has no close relationship with anybody, and the former ends with Homelander lasering her to death anyway. He also isn't sympathetic about the victims of Flight 37, deliberately decided not to save anyone in an attempt to avoid any of them damaging his reputation, and used the incident to instead spearhead superheroes being incorporated into the military, further enforcing that Homelander only cares about his own benefit. That, and he doesn't seem to be as patriotic as he and Vought have made him out to be.
  • Subverted in part in Season 2 where a substantial portion of his storyline is devoted to his sincere (albeit utterly warped) attempts to bond with his estranged son, Ryan. However, even while proving he is not a TOTAL psychopath, such scenes make clear his insanity and bloodthirstiness not only disqualify him as a parent but make him an outright danger to Ryan's well-being.
• Spanner in the Works: It turns out Edgar had a long-term plan to get Supes into national defense, all without having to risk Compound V being exposed. Homelander, Manchild that he is, screws up this plan by creating Supe Terrorists to make it happen quicker and practically exposing the formula to the government, and later the general public as a result. Unlike with most examples, Edgar does not let this slide and promptly puts Homelander in his place when he tries throwing his weight around against him.
• Speed Sex: Physical God he is, Sex God he is not. He lasts a whopping 45 seconds from insertion to ejaculation with Stillwell, much to his embarrassment. He does seem to do a lot better with Stormfront, though.
• Split Personality: Very heavily implied in Herogasm when he has a conversation with his own reflection, one where he's visibly on the defensive from the antagonistic and aggressive mirror. His reflection seems to confirm Homelander hasn't been the only occupant in his head for a while by mentioning when they were kids in "the bad room" and how he got them through it, constantly referring to himself as a separate entity and referring to them both with plural pronouns.
• The Spook: Marvin notes he has no public records about anything. It's because he was raised in a lab as an experiment.
• Spoiled Brat: Homelander was gifted with the power to be an apex predator and the mass approval from the public turned him into an egotistical psychopath with a god complex and an adolescent state of maturity. He's a spoilt manchild because he was given immense power at birth and his first killing spree covered up by Black Noir. Because of these factors, Homelander never needed to grow up or mentally mature because he could always do whatever he wanted and nobody is able to say no to him.
• The Starscream: While serving as The Dragon to Stillwell for the entire first season, he's notably frustrated with this position until he ultimately kills Stillwell in the finale. While he ends up put in his place by Stan Edgar, who has less tolerance for his arrogance and actions than Stillwell, he manages to succeed at this again in Season 3 by getting him kicked out of the company, replacing him with Ashley as his Puppet Queen CEO.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: Despite not being the Batman-knockoff, he is quite skilled at doing this.
• Stepford Smiler: The Unstable type. As the Vought-manufactured personification of American exceptionalism and its associated values, Homelander's public image embodies the purity, patriotism and all-embracing benevolence befitting of a nationally beloved superhero. In reality, he is an Ax-Crazy megalomaniac who expects unquestioned worship from those around him and sadistically abuses his powers at the expense of anyone unfortunate enough to cross his path.
• Story-Breaker Power: His Flight and Super-Speed abilities. He's been breaking the sound barrier in the skies since he was 8 years old, and possibly more importantly, his acceleration is incredibly fast. He doesn't need to build it up much, he can just go from 0 to 400+ m/s in a matter of seconds. As he points out to Starlight, it doesn't actually matter if he's invulnerable because his ability to just fly straight to important logistical centers, destroy them, and fly back out before anyone can respond can't really be effectively countered. When he starts losing a fight for the first time in his life to Soldier Boy and Butcher's tag-team, he simply flies away, and they're unable to follow him. It doesn't help that air-to-air ordnance precise enough to hit a supersonic human-sized target basically doesn't exist; the usual strategy for air-to-air weapons is to use fragmentation and blast waves from missiles detonated in close proximity. This is nowhere near as powerful as a direct hit from an anti-armor weapon, but since planes and helicopters are relatively fragile, it balances out. But this obviously wouldn't work on a Nigh-Invulnerable human-sized target like Homelander.
• Straight Edge Evil: Apparently alone among the Seven, he doesn't use his status to indulge in hedonistic pursuits. Unlike typical use of this trope, it does little to make him more appealing. As he's the most power-hungry and sociopathic of the Seven, it just emphasizes even more how remote from humanity he is. As well, while others merely engage in drugs and sex parties, he instead has disturbing sexual interest in Madelyn, and Queen Maeve in a Darwinist Desire kind of way, as well as Stormfront, and previously raped Becca Butcher.
• Sugary Malice: Homelander is a master of making innocent sounding comments incredibly threatening, to the point of doing it in almost every conversation he has with other characters.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: Invoked with his costume. However, he's far from the hero people believe him to be.
• Super-Strength: Homelander is not feared just for his Eye Beams, but also for his monstrous brutal strength. His finally showed how powerful his strikes can be while fighting Soldier Boy and Billy, who both are serious threats to him. Even then, when he was in the end overpowered by Soldier Boy, Butcher and Hughie, it took all three to even hold Homelander down, and he was still able to break free and escape.
• Super-Toughness: He's unaffected by light machine gun fire, industrial explosions, blows from most lesser superhumans, and having a bus dropped on him. It's to the point that the main plot of Season 3 is The Boys trying to find some way to kill him before he enters a full-blown Villainous Breakdown and goes on a rampage. During his fight with Soldier Boy, Billy, and Hughie in Season 3, Homelander is able to shrug off physical blows from all three men (with the former two in particular likely only being marginally weaker than himself) and keep going, as well as take direct hits from Billy's Eye Beams (which were shown in a Beam-O-War to be comparable to Homelander's own) and be surprised rather than actually hurt. In the aftermath of the battle, the only harm he suffers is a minor bruise, though this is enough to leave him seething in rage. By comparison, Butcher had a bloody mouth from Homelander's blows and Soldier Boy suffered bloodshot eyes from being strangled for a bit.
• Superior Successor: As shown in Season 3, he's one to Soldier Boy — And this is by design. Both are Nigh Invulnerable, and during their fight, it's shown Homelander has a slight edge on raw strength compared to Soldier Boy. And that's leaving out his flight and laser vision.
  • Ryan appears to be one to Homelander himself, seemingly possessing superior laser vision and, even as a child, he is able to knock Homelander down. Homelander even alludes to Ryan having the potential to be stronger than him when speaking to Maeve.
• Superpower Lottery: As a Superman-knockoff, Homelander has pretty much all the abilities his role model is known for — flight, invulnerability, super strength, super senses (hearing, X-ray vision, etc.), super speed, and the ability to shoot laser beams with his eyes. The advantage of having so many powers is on full display in Season 3, when Soldier Boy (with super strength nearly rivaling Homelander's), Butcher (with similar levels of super strength and laser eyes almost as powerful as Homelander's), and Hughie (with teleportation abilities) were able to temporarily restrain Homelander, but he was able to escape using his flying abilities.
• Super-Senses: He has super-hearing and super-smelling.
• Super-Speed: He claims to have broken the sound barrier when he was eight years old. In adulthood, the Boys' devices recorded him as flying over 1,100 mph/492+ m/s while looking for Translucent.
• Super Supremacist: When he's exceptionally annoyed with Starlight over thinking she's actively helping Hughie and The Boys, he tells her that "we're a different breed" and that she shouldn't be helping "these mud people," which is some straight-up Nazi phrasing. It's little wonder that he hooks up with Stormfront, an actual Nazi.
• Superman Substitute: His power set, color scheme, apparent patriotic image, and falsified American family paint him in a very unflattering depiction of this.
• Surrounded by Idiots: By Season 3, he's become fed up with how "fucking stupid" everyone around him are.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: He's spent his entire life as The Dreaded and a bully to most of everyone who's ever known his real personality. In Season 3, he ends up becoming terrified of Soldier Boy after the Herogasm fight.
• Team Dad: Deconstructed, he sees himself as one but has a warped view of parenthood due to never having a father of his own. Since he was raised in a laboratory with scientists who saw him as nothing more than a lab rat, he has no idea of how to provide that form of guidance and affection. When he meets Ryan, he plans to raise him as his successor and puts him through dangerous situations in order to push him into activating his powers.
• The Teetotaler: He doesn't drink or do drugs and is vocal about it.
• Token Evil Teammate: Played with. While the Seven do "good" as a matter of course and do save a lot of people, they are still managed by a shady corporation with extremely suspect motives, thus making them an "evil" force. However, even on a team of incredibly flawed, selfish and morally questionable characters, Homelander is unquestionably the worst, and his teammates are often shown to be outright fearful of him due to his sadism and unpredictability.
• Token Flyer: Homelander is shown to be the only Supe capable of flight in the Seven, and nobody else was shown being capable of flight in the show (aside from some unnamed background supes). There is Stormfront, but her case is rather Not Quite Flight and she cannot freely levitate like Homelander. The others who could fly and levitate are Nubian Prince and Nubia, shown in Episode 6 of The Boys: Diabolical, which is considered canon, but they don't appear at all in the main show. In the Season 3 finale, Ryan has finally inherited this ability from him. Starlight also starts hovering when she absorbs more energy than ever before.
• Tom the Dark Lord: An alternate take on his 'human' name is that it was chosen for sounding extremely ordinary. John has been used by many famed and powerful figures throughout history, but it's also a very common name, signifying how Vought and their scientists never viewed Homelander as anything more than a project and just gave him a simple moniker as an afterthought. It's to the point where he has no surname. It also may give him extra Everyman cred with the public.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Incredibly, considering how much of a massive jerkass he was from the start. In Season 1 he had a massive ego and was indifferent to the common man as anything other than a source of admiration for him to bask in, but he mostly kept a lid on his worst traits, mainly expressing them around people who already knew or wouldn't survive the next few minutes. Come Season 3 where between losing both his son and Stormfront, being forcibly humbled by Stan Edgar, and publicly eating crow for a year amid his floundering popularity, he's been pushed to the brink. As a result his charismatic veneer is barely holding together and he'll cruelly demean just about anyone with little to no cause, which can escalate to physical intimidation frighteningly quickly if even the slightest disrespect is shown, or even implied to him.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Has a real thing for milk. He's obsessed with Stillwell's breast milk and is seen sipping cow milk in several other scenes.
• Tragic Villain: Exaggerated. He had a completely isolated and loveless childhood and was treated like a science experiment for most of his formative years, which led to his twisted personality as an adult. "One Plus One" further shows that Homelander genuinely wanted to be a hero at the start of his career, but his mental instability, the abuse he suffered during his childhood, and Vought's influence corrupted him into a monster.
• Tranquil Fury: By Season 3, he seems to always be this when nothing goes his way.
• Troll: Homelander does have a sense of humour, and a very screwed, scary one.
  • Leaves Maeve behind and flies into the building while knowing that she can't fly, waits for her and only after proceeds to stop the attackers, and by that we mean punching a hole through their stomach and using Maeve as a bait to make it look the terrorists attacked first and they had not choice but to kill them.
  • Declares on TV, in front of the entire world that Maeve is a lesbian while knowing she is bisexual and gives her ridiculous lines to say in the Dawn of the Seven movie about being queer. Even Maeve asks him for how long is he gonna torture her.
  • Has a habit of sweet talking to the Deep, then giving him a Death Glare, while watching him mumbling about how sorry he is for screwing the things. In Season 3, he invites the Deep to a dinner and the menu he chooses is with sea animals. Then Homelander forces The Deep to eat Timothy the octopus if he wants to return to the Seven.
  • An how could he ever forget about Starlight? In Season 3, his idea of celebrating his birthday is to bring the Deep back and have her performing Happy Birthday to him, in bikini for the entire world to see. Several days later, he declares Starlight is his girlfriend out of thin air during the American Hero tv show.
• Trumplica: Homelander is a blond-haired conservative icon and pathological malignant narcissist who wraps himself in patriotic imagery while privately only caring about himself. He regularly attacks any media which is insufficiently worshipful of him. He demands unconditional loyalty from his supporters while offering no loyalty in return. He has a bottomless need for the love and adulation of his masses of followers even though he regards those same followers as rubes to be manipulated and exploited. He pays public lip service to religion and traditional values while showing no interest in those things in his private life. He has a variety of politically incorrect views and eagerly embraces the role of the Angry White Man, but is uncomfortable with outright Nazism except insofar as Nazis give him narcissistic supply. By Season 3, it could hardly be more obvious, with Homelander holding rallies and a QAnon Shaman lookalike being spotted among his supporters. He also quotes many of Trump's famous quotes verbatim and the writers themselves have commented that his Season 3 arc is primarily meant as a Take That! towards him.
• Übermensch: As far as Homelander is concerned, he is the master race, and nobody else can be what he is. He made his point very clear to Stormfront.
• Uncanny Valley: There is something distinctly off-putting and unnatural about Homelander, especially when he smiles. On paper, he's got the perfect, blinding white smile that any celebrity of his caliber would have, but his eyes are just devoid of any genuine emotion.
• The Unfought: For the most part, none of the protagonists ever get into a fight against Homelander, which makes perfect sense as if he did enter combat, Homelander could simply kill The Boys off without any effort. Rather than directly fight him, The Boys opt to outmaneuver Homelander in their goals and, if given the opportunity, take advantage of his psychological and emotional issues.
  • No longer the case as of Herogasm: with the help of Soldier Boy and V24, Butcher and Hughie finally confront Homelander physically and give him the fight of his life - while he's physically stronger than them, they're able to use numbers and teamwork to the point that they pin him down and almost finish him off with Soldier Boy's depowering beam, but he manages to escape at the last moment.
• Unholy Matrimony: He starts a relationship with Stormfront in "We Gotta Go Now."
• Unreliable Expositor: His Post-Rape Taunt is contradicted by his complete lack of sexual stamina. His blatant sadism makes it likely he was making it up just to hurt Billy as much as possible.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • Homelander shows few combat skills, mostly because he is so powerful that he has never been challenged in a fight. As a result, he tends to carelessly use his Heat Vision against opponents, which often causes significant collateral damage. This is later downplayed in his Super Hero Origin where it's shown in his flashbacks that he did have actual combat training as a child. He's just too lazy to use any of it. Even when he does use them though, they appear to be pretty basic fighting techniques.
  • In "Herogasm", we finally see Homelander have an actual fight against Soldier Boy, Butcher and Hughie. While he is clearly less skilled in hand-to-hand combat than Soldier Boy and Butcher, who were both experienced fighters before gaining powers, Homelander is still marginally stronger than both of them and equips himself surprisingly well. But the show makes clear that without his superior strength, Homelander would have easily lost against Soldier Boy; Despite his training, he has no actual experience fighting an opponent of equal or similar physical abilities, which forces him to flee when he fears that, three-on-one, he may actually lose to them.
  • In the finale, Queen Maeve is able to put him on the ropes during their fight due to her superior combat skills. She even manages to give him a nosebleed and puncture his left eardrum with a steel rod. However he was holding back, and he still managed to block, evade, and counter some of her attacks.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • In a rare example of self-infliction, it's his fault for Stormfront's suicide and his resulting Villainous Breakdown. While visiting her, he carelessly and thoughtlessly rejects the notion of leading an Aryan master race since he sees himself as the master race and leaves in a huff despite her silently pleading for him to come back. Then the next time he visits, he makes it all about himself again with no effort to apologize by talking about how it's his birthday and being insensitive about her inability to respond. Stormfront, who despite her crippling injuries was likely keeping herself going with the hopes of the both of them ruling together, probably felt that she had nothing left to live for with him rejecting her views, leading to her deciding to kill herself.
  • As revealed in Gen V, his decision not to save anyone on Flight 37 leads to the deaths of Indira Shetty's husband and daughter, prompting her to seek revenge by creating a virus designed to wipe out Supes.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero:
  • When Homelander goes to visit Vogelbaum to talk about his childhood, Vogelbaum admits that he was his biggest failed project. Vogelbaum explains that had he allowed Homelander to be raised in a home with a loving family, rather than isolated in a laboratory, he would have grown up with a sense of morality and empathy, rather than The Sociopath he is today.
  • When he finds out that Rebecca Butcher conceived their son, and they are both very much alive, it's heavily implied that by being raised in a stable home, the Vought Corporation is grooming the boy to become the All-Loving Hero his biological father can't be.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Vogelbaum describes him as "quite sweet" when he was five or six, even cuddling up to the doctor for old folk hero stories. His Origins Episode in The Boys: Diabolical reveals that this personality actually carried into his adult years, as he began his stint as a superhero genuinely wanting to help people. Unfortunately, his disastrous first mission and Black Noir absolving him of all responsibility would end up twisting him into a megalomaniacal monster.
• Villainous Crush: Has an unhealthy obsession with Queen Maeve.
• Villainous Friendship: With Black Noir. While part of this is the two wanting allies in each other, there are hints that Homelander sincerely likes and sees Black Noir as a friend. He regularly praises Noir as the most competent member of the Seven. Notably, even though Homelander hates "cripples", he shows no frustration or impatience with Noir's muteness. He's genuinely devastated when he learns that Black Noir has abandoned him after discovering that Soldier Boy is back, and breaks down crying when he confronts and kills Noir for hiding the truth of Homelander's parentage.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • While his abandonment of the passenger plane is cold-blooded and it is partly his fault that it is crashing, ^note the terrorist shot both pilots before he fried them, and while damaging the control panel rendered it inoperable, neither he nor Maeve knew how to fly a plane anyway, so it was going down regardless. Had he not intervened at all, the military was also going to blow the plane out of the sky, giving essentially the same result. he makes logical points to Maeve as to why he can't simply save it like you'd expect Superman to do, as there is no time to get everyone off and trying to manhandle the plane would send it head over heels or tear it apart. It doesn't justify refusing to save the few people that he could have plausibly gotten out, though. He also failed to realize that he could've subdued the terrorist in the cockpit without destroying the control panel. More likely though, he simply didn't care to try.
  • While Homelander's hostile takeover of Vought in Season 3 was little more than a ill-advised act of megalomania, his negative sentiment towards Vought and reasoning for the coup is understandable. Considering how Vought mistreated Homelander during his formative years, the higher-ups' manipulations of him as an adult and the way they were raising his son, it's easy to see why he is done playing games. Also, there is the fact that, despite all of Stan Edgar's claims, Vought is for all intents and purposes a superhero company, with pretty much most if not almost all their bottom line and prestige being dependent on the Seven and other supes.
• Villain Protagonist: Despite being the main antagonist, Homelander has his own separate Myth Arc and supporting characters, sizeable screen time, and his story often contrasts other main characters like Butcher, Hughie, and Annie.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Homelander spends most of Season 2 in a metaphorical pot of water slowly heating up until it's ready to boil and spill over the edge, as everything he holds dear begins slipping out of his grasp. Edgar takes back control over the corporate aspect of Vought and relegates him to mascot position, his son openly rejects him as his father after he goes too far in his abuse, and Stormfront begins stealing his leadership of the Seven and his popularity with the masses. It culminates in him killing Doppelganger for taking his form and declaring he doesn't need anyone.
  • He has a long drawn-out one in the Season 2 finale. Upon learning Vought conspired with Butcher to kidnap his son, Ryan, he massacres the Vought assault team sent to to abduct him in a rage. When he subsequently discovers to his horror that Ryan has immolated his lover, Stormfront, he swallows his fury long enough to beckon his son to return with him only to watch the boy walk over to his nemesis, Billy Butcher. Faced with this explicit sign of rejection, Homelander's composure shatters as he contorts his face into a sob then laughs maniacally. Declaring Ryan to be "his" regardless, he moves to reclaim him by force before Maeve halts his rampage by blackmailing him with footage from the Flight 37 incident. Forced to choose between his son and remaining a national icon, Homelander reluctantly lets Butcher go. Later on in the night, he is seen furiously masturbating on top of a building, madly proclaiming that he can do "whatever the fuck I want".
• Villain Respect: When Homelander and Butcher finally confront each other face to face, Homelander is both intrigued and impressed that (unlike literally everyone else in the series) Butcher isn't afraid of him, and in fact shows his unmeasurable hate in all its fury towards the most powerful being on the planet. A perfect example occurs in Season 3. Homelander has a habit of breaking into people's houses and living spaces in order to threaten them. Yet when he goes to visit Butcher, he politely asks to come in before engaging in a genuine conversation with him, showing an odd level of restraint for his nemesis. He believes that he and Butcher are one and the same, being a couple of angry, violent, and mentally disturbed men with dark pasts, used as puppets by higher authorities.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Zig Zagged. In Season 1, he's about as evil as the Red Skull but with the public persona of Superman. In Season 2, however, his very conservative presentation, eagerness to get involved in the military industrial complex, and brutal methods cause him to suffer severe backlash from anti-war and liberal groups. By the end of Season 3 while he's tarnished his reputation with the majority of the public, he has grown an increasingly large and loyal following on the far right that sees nothing wrong with him murdering a man.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: His cape is this.
• We Can Rule Together: He tries to encourage his father, Soldier Boy to join him and get revenge on Vought and the world for how they treated them. It doesn't work.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy:
  • Most of his actions in Season 1 including the creation of Super villains was done to help Stillwell and earn her approval. It ends once he gets fed up with her lying and kills her.
  • He has shades of this during his final confrontation with his father, Soldier Boy, in the Season 3 finale. He's all but begging for Soldier Boy to join him and be his father. Unfortunately, his hyper masculine father rejects him for crying before trying to kill him.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: The first thing Stormfront notices about Homelander are his intense blue eyes (probably because, along with his blond hair, they fit into her ideal of an Aryan).
• White Male Lead: Homelander's looks and position are used as a plot device in the show. He is the Villain Protagonist in a fairly diverse cast, and a blue-eyed blond man leading the most powerful, if dysfunctional, team of super-beings on the planet. In Season 2, Stormfront got interested in him for his Aryan looks and planned to make him the leader of an army of "Aryan ubermensch to their victory".
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Raised in a lab? Check. Denied affection and normal human contact from birth? Check. Develops into a homicidal maniac with no proper emotional development? Check.
• The Worf Effect: On the receiving end of this during Season 3. Soldier Boy, Butcher, and Hughie manage to almost depower and kill him and give him his first bruise at Herogasm. Soldier Boy later grabs Homelander by the face in the finale, and he's shown struggling to break his grip. Maeve also manages to make him bleed for the first time.
• World's Strongest Man: He's the greatest superhero in the world, and has a reputation for being unkillable. Madelyn Stillwell states "there isn't a weapon on Earth they haven't thrown at him that's worked". Whether this includes nuclear weapons or any kind of WMD isn't outright mentioned. It takes three Supes around his level to force him into retreat.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Homelander is intrigued by Butcher, as he is the only civilian to hate him entirely and not fear him at all. He reveals Rebecca Butcher's location to Billy just so he can mock him and he goes out of his way to single out Billy as much as he can.
    • By Season 3, Homelander and Butcher tolerate each other with them sharing their hatred of being told what to do, and Homelander expressing disappointment for bringing Soldier Boy into their battle to the death.
  • Homelander also repeatedly singles out Hughie, mentioning him several times as someone he's particularly excited to murder.
• Would Hit a Girl: Has no issue with physically threatening to kill Starlight once he starts to realize that she was working covert with The Boys. Prior to this, he killed Madelyn for lying to him and raped Becca.
• Would Hurt a Child: Homelander is perfectly willing to let a child die to achieve his objectives, and personally murders a child when he shoots down a plane. This is in sharp contrast to Billy, who is noticeably more gentle with children. He has no qualms physically and psychologically threatening his own son just to get him to activate his super powers.
• X-Ray Vision: He can see through everything except zinc.
• You're Not My Father:
  • He's on the receiving end of the trope by Ryan on two occasions. The first time was when he tried to teach his son how to fly by pushing him out of a roof and the second time was when he comes across Becca's corpse and Stormfront's incapacitated body and urging Ryan to come with him, only to end with Homelander's son staying with Butcher instead, much to his dismay.
  • Averted for now in Season 3 finale, as Homelander absolving him for killing Becca makes Ryan side with him.

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