Fridge Brilliance

The show overall

Homelander's superhero attire looks nice, but might appear slightly thrown off by the giant American flag draped across his back. The majority of his outfit is dark blue, with the white (and to a lesser extent, the red) of the flag not exactly matching with the rest of his getup. What looks like a case of WTH, Costuming Department? might be an instance of Homelander shamelessly pandering to the American public by wearing the flag even though it doesn't match his overall look. It may have even been something he (or someone else) thought of after designing the attire minus the cape, hence the lack of matching.
- It's stated later Stillwell wanted a red cape but Homelander wanted the flag as a cape. He still thinks it's an excellent idea.
- It's also doubly ironic that Homelander is meant to be essentially America's mascot Supe and embody patriotism, but the US Code of Respect for the American flag highlights that wearing the flag as a piece of apparel is a form of disrespect towards it. While it's unlikely Homelander knows this (as most Americans don't) it certainly is fitting symbolism for what he actually is.
Supes can be considered a short form of superhero or supervillain, which fits the kind of people they really are.
Why is Homelander Lean and Mean if he’s one of the strongest supes at Vought? Because (and this is true for most of the supes in the show) he was born with super strength, meaning that he was likely always so strong that it would be difficult if not impossible to find weights heavy enough to induce hypertrophy.
Homelander's admission to Noir he uses his X-Ray Vision to look under his mask on a regular basis explains a lot of moments in hindsight, such as Homelander excluding Noir from the team when he calls them sloppy, or looking worried after taking a look at Noir's reaction to Soldier Boy's footage. Homelander is able to picks on his facial cues to understand how Noir is feeling.
The absolute majority of Supes are either severely troubled or downright evil individuals. Why? Several reasons, some of them obvious like the toxic influence of Vought and, as Butcher explains, plain fallible human nature. But there is another reason: How the Supes are made. Almost all Supes were children subjected to illegal injections of an illicit drug (Compound V), with the consent of their parents, who were presumably financially compensated. Then it hits you. A system like that is very likely selecting dysfunctional families since only desperate or uncaring parents would subject their children to an illegal and dangerous experiment like this. This is outright confirmed for some members of the Seven (Queen Maeve's dad is mentioned to be a gambling addict from a presumably poor town, while A-Train grew up without a father and spent most of his formative years in poverty on Chicago's South Side) and matches really well with the show's recurring theme of bad environments/paternal figures and how they affect people.
Homelander has an eagle motif, to symbolize how he's an all-American hero. The symbolism goes two different ways: Eagles are symbols of pride and power, showing how Homelander views himself as a God amongst men. However, in nature, eagles are predatory animals who are good hunters, symbolizing the hidden savagery Homelander keeps from the public.
- Probably coincidence, but Homelander's powers (sans the Eye Beams) also line up with a lot of the traits of an eagle. Eagles have excellent vision, and Homelander has X-Ray vision, as well as a lot of visual emphasis placed on his Creepy Blue Eyes. Eagles can fly, and Homelander is one of the few Supes capable of flight. Eagles are able to tear prey apart with their talons, and Homelander can rip someone in half with his bare hands.
- This eagle motif also in retrospect foreshadows that he's Soldier Boy's son, as Soldier Boy's costume also has eagle motifs.
Reed Richards Is Useless is an Enforced Trope in this universe. Vought essentially owns all supes since their birth (even if they don't realize it themselves) and they use them in whatever makes them more money only.
It’s fitting that the team is titled "The Seven". Not only are they composed of seven members, but a closer look at each member of the team (sans Starlight and Black Noir due to their altruism and mystery respectively) fit a sin motif related to one of the Seven Deadly Sins:
- Homelander is Pride and Lust. Homelander views himself as a god because of Vogelbaum's abuse and his over-powered abilities. He's overconfident to the point he refuses to think far ahead or listen to corporate orders, which backfire on him later. Homelander's ego completely hinges on how much the public loves him to constantly feed his sense of superiority, and he can easily be manipulated when he feels his pride is threatened. The Lust part comes from his Oedipus complex and need for sexual gratification when he’s frustrated; he started a sexual relationship with a Nazi because she praised him, and he raped an innocent woman that produced a bastard son.
- Queen Maeve is Sloth. Maeve once wanted to do good and help others, but was so worn down by her corporate orders and Homelander's abuse that she gave up. She never stands up for herself, resigns to her cynicism and rarely has the motivation to do the right thing unless someone else (Starlight) challenges her to fight back. Whenever Maeve deals with excessive pressure, she disappears into drugs and hedonism to run away and forget instead of facing her pain.
- A-Train is Greed. Growing up poor meant that money became A-Train's motivation for becoming a popular superhero credited as "The Fastest Man Alive". He'll do anything to maintain his fame to stay rich, even killing his girlfriend to appease Homelander or abuse Compound V to stay on top. Ironically A-Train never manages to keep his money and is constantly in debt due to wasting it on pointless purchases, and will fold like a coward if his finances are threatened.
- Similar to Homelander, Translucent is Lust combined with hints of Pride. He uses his invisibility power to peep on women in the bathrooms and changing rooms. He also believes he's invincible compared to regular humans like The Boys and constantly brags about it (until Hughie proves otherwise).
- Stormfront is Wrath. She hates everything that isn't white and/or isn't a Supe. She wants to unleash a Fourth Reich to commit race genocide and create a Supe army and takes out her sadistic tendencies on people who anger her: non-white, non-super-powered people. Her go-to solution always involves murder to take out her racism when no one is looking, and during her Villainous Breakdown she angrily blames everyone else for her own past catching up to her. Stormfront's wrath also became her undoing; attempting to murder Becca to take Ryan away from his own mother unleashed the young boy's laser eyes that fried the Nazi to a crisp while still keeping her alive.
- The Deep is Envy. He's driven by jealousy of other powerful Supes while he is a joke of a superhero, and desperately wants to be seen as better than he actually is. He sexually assaults women to feed his bruised ego, and never stop pitying himself over how angry he is being "just the fish guy". His jealousy of other's success and happiness combined with his natural stupidity allows him to easily be duped by the Church of the Collective or Homelander.

Season One

As damage control for his sexual assault, the Deep gets reassigned to Sandusky, Ohio, which shares the name of another infamous perpetrator of sexual assault who exploited his position in a powerful organization to commit his crimes.
The Littlest Cancer Patient is a huge fan of Translucent, rather than A-Train whose powers and marketing should generally appeal to the preteen boys' market that normally worships action heroes. The fact that Translucent actually is a father means he really is better at handling kids than A-Train would be.
Of course Butcher knows with certainty that Homelander doesn't drink, smoke, or philander. Homelander must have been the Supe he researched first and most extensively of all. There is even a hint of disgust when he says it, as if he wishes Homelander was easier to expose by engaging in common vices. His actual vices, which he keeps under so many wraps that no one knows, are much worse.
Popclaw's claws aren't the only thing she can pop out.
A-Train's reputation comes from his title as the Fastest Man Alive, IE the speed of his feet. Its probably not a coincidence that he has a fetish for getting his toes kissed.

Season Two

When she is introduced, Stormfront's name appears to be a reference to her lightning-themed powers, but when she kills Kenji and when it is revealed that she went by the name Liberty before she murdered an innocent black teenager over his race, it becomes clear her name is also a subtle reference to her status as a literal Nazi member. Stormfront is notably also the name of an infamous neo-Nazi website.
When Butcher takes on Black Noir, we’re shown that Noir has a body cam on his suit. This actually makes perfect sense for Noir, since he’s incapable of speaking and Vought needs some way of knowing what happens during his missions. Though it’s safe to assume that Vought always "forgets" about Noir's body cam every time he causes any sort of collateral damage.
With the inclusion of Supes in the army and the introduction of Stormfront, the show begins to portray Vought and The Seven as representing conservative, right-wing politics (which was already touched on in the first season, to a lesser extent). While this at first seems to just be Author Tract, it actually adds to the deconstructive element of the show; superheroes have long been debated about where they as a concept line up politics wise, with some people attributing their vigilantism, dedication to keeping the world as-is, individualistic nature, and power fantasy to be highly conservative, with both conservatives using this to 'claim' the superhero genre as belonging to them, and critics of the genre using it to complain about the messages superheroes spread^note. The show is basically taking this claim and both invoking and tossing it on it's head by showing what it would look like if superheroes were as right-wing as these claims say they are.
Stormfront previously being a member of the Church of the Collective may seem to be another odd part of her overall Mysterious Past, but keep in mind about how they operate. They recruit several Supes in the goal of making themselves appear better, convincing them to join when they've hit the lowest points in their careers and lives and offering to get them back into good graces with the public. With Stormfront's sorrow over having most of her close ones dead and facing several potential scandals during her time as Liberty, it's likely that she joined them during one of her many times of being moved around.
There’s one small hint that Victoria Neuman is the one who's been exploding peoples' heads before the reveal in episode 8. In the courtroom massacre, everyone whose heads explode is someone she's looking at.
Typical of the Deep to not enjoy the blowjobs he gets from his sham wife. He's more turned on by the idea of coercing women into giving him one.
We see many minorities in the cheering crowds at Stormfront and Homelander's fascist rally even though they're setting the stage for a violent cleansing of non-whites. The rhetoric that they're using has come to be called "dog whistles." It sounds harmless enough on the surface, but those who understand the racist undertones can hear the real message.
Why is Shockwave killed during the hearing even though he's a Vought asset? It's highly likely that he is personally loyal to Homelander after getting picked for the team. The last thing Edgar needs is another Supe backing Homelander up, so he has him killed at a perfect moment. Not only does he covertly eliminate a potential threat, but he also makes it look impossible for Vought to be behind the attack.
When Stormfront and Homelander are talking at the very beginning of 2x08 about Compound V getting released, the pair speak briefly about making sure "the right people get the doses". When Homelander asks what they're going to do about the wrong people, Stormfront only answers that "Fredrick [Vought] had a solution for everything". Cue the opening chords of Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young".
Stormfront tells Starlight she was Pippi Longstocking for Halloween every year, considering her the greatest superhero of all time. In the movies, Pippi's dad is given the title of "the King of the N***" by natives of a kingdom, subtly foreshadowing Stormfront's racism.
- Stormfront also asks Starlight if she knows who Pippi Longstocking is, and Starlight doesn't. Pippi Longstocking was first published in Sweden in 1945, so someone as young as Starlight might be unfamiliar with the character, but someone as old as Stormfront definitely would be. Granted, Stormfront would have been far too old to have dressed up as Pippi for Halloween as a child in 1945 (World War II started in the 1930s, and by that time she was already married to Frederick Vought), but it's not rocket science to guess that Starlight wouldn't know about the character, given the century-long age gap between the two women.
Stormfront's powers are often depicted as some form of electricity or thunderbolt. The SS symbol on an SS officer's uniform is often stylised as two S-shaped thunderbolts.
Becca's favorite movies are old dramas, like Terms of Endearment, or, namely, movies Homelander doesn't show up in for sure. Another way to keep Homelander and supes out of Ryan's head.
Stormfront has an undercut, which makes her look like she is a trendy Instagram person. Undercuts were popular from the 1920s to 1940s in Europe, actually giving away her age. For that reason, they're also popular amongst modern day neo-Naz... excuse me, the alt-right, giving away that she's a Nazi.
How could Maeve have tracked down Starlight and the Boys in the middle of nowhere with no hints to their location? While Starlight might have had her chip taken out, it's possible that Stormfront had one in too. On top of that Maeve likely knows about Homelander's cabin, and since he and Stormfront were seen as a couple, it would give Maeve a general idea of where the former was going.
- In the same episode, how is Starlight consistently able to use her powers against Stormfront in the middle of a field with no electronics around? It's a fight against Stormfront. Her opponent gives her all the power she needs.
Homelander's first love interest was someone he had a weird Oedipal Complex with. His second one was actually old enough to be his grandmother.
Placing Ryan into Grace Mallory's care wasn't just a move made in the spur of a moment. Since she's a grandmother, she has plenty of experience in raising children, even if it's only going to be temporary care.
There are many elements of Ryan's upbringing that show Vought attempting to shape Ryan into a true patriotic Cape, aside from the loving family.
- All of his clothes have elements of red, white, blue and some yellow, subliminally giving him an idea of what his superhero outfit should be.
- One of his homework assignments is memorizing all 50 states of the U.S., which become a Survival Mantra later into the episode. Slowly but surely, Vought is making him place much of his focus on America.
- The movies that Becca is said to love get watched thoroughly enough by Ryan to the point where he can recreate them in LEGO. This could be a case of Pastimes Providing Personality, as Dances with Wolves features a heroic U.S. Army lieutenant facing the expanding western frontier while The Blind Side tells the story of a boy tapping into his strengths to save the day.
  - It's mentioned by Vogelbaum that Homelander's own childhood involved learning concepts like Manifest Destiny, though through direct teaching. Watching these movies is subtly introducing Ryan to American history and a heroic mindset.
- It's possible that Becca is trying to avoid making the same mistakes Vought did with Homelander. Dances with Wolves and The Blind Side are both films that deal with white Americans interacting with people of color (the former involves a white Union soldier interacting with the Lakota tribe, while the latter is about a white woman caring for a young black man). Homelander is racist, bigoted and xenophobic, likely because he was given the goal to uphold American values, but was raised with little empathy for others and developed a superiority complex (Not to mention, the concept of "manifest destiny" has its own major flaws). While the films Ryan watches are somewhat old-fashioned, and The Blind Side is often critiqued for being corny and Anvilicious, both of those films demonstrate people of different races interacting in respectful ways that are easy for a kid to understand. In other words, Becca may be trying to avoid instilling Homelander's Patriotic Fervor and teach him to be more open to all kinds of people. This would also explain why Ryan tells Stormfront that he doesn't really hate anyone, because he was never taught to resent people who are different from him, Supe or otherwise.
  - Also according to Ryan, Becca considers "hate" to be a bad word. She likely doesn't want him growing up full of anger and spite like Homelander did. This does lend some hope that the type of person Ryan would hate when he gets old enough to use his powers would be abusive bigots, given that Stormfront is the first person Ryan ever truly hated enough to activate his laser vision.
Considering how Homelander and Stormfront both have traits of Captain America, it's no wonder they get into a relationship. Takes a super soldier fighting for their country to know a super soldier fighting for their country.
Stormfront is obviously an original-era Nazi, a group which not only hated Jews, but also homosexuals and non-white people, or basically anyone who didn't fit into the Aryan ideal with few exceptions. So it's somewhat fitting that she's defeated by being on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle dished out by a bisexual, an Asian woman, and a Christian who theoretically should have been on her side, and lastly gets mutilated by the child of the man whom she saw as the fruition of all of her bigoted beliefs.
Stormfront is introduced at first being from Portland, Oregon, a famously progressive city in the States and would seem fitting for someone with her trendy haircut and outspoken personality. However, it is also clever Foreshadowing for her secret Nazism that would go over the heads of most people unless they're familiar with the racist history of Oregon, the city's population being predomintantly white, and Portland becoming a hotspot in the late 2010s for gatherings of white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys.
While operating as Liberty, Stormfront's costume involved a red hood. Given that she was operating in America, she was likely taking inspiration from the Ku Klux Klan. Not only that, the first generation of the Ku Klux Klan took inspiration from Whitecapping, a violent vigilante movement of farmers in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Homelander destroying Blindspot's hearing may not have just been a jab at him for being disabled, but a bit deeper than that. The Boys: Diabolical shows that Homelander was once surprisingly idealistic and at one point really wanted to be the hero Vought groomed him to be, but eventually lost that enthusiasm due to his trauma and lack of empathy. Ultimately, Blindspot demonstrated a work ethic and heroic attitude that was similar to Homelander's old attitude, and Homelander destroying his hearing cemented in that the current Homelander rejects those old ideals as silly and unimportant.
- Part of it could have been based on envy as well. Based on what he says to Homelander and Ashley, it seems that Blindspot, despite his disability, has worked harder to be a part of the Seven than Homelander ever has towards anything in his entire life. Blindspot, as a (at least seemingly) good and hardworking person, is arguably someone who truly deserves to be in a position like the Seven, which makes it more tragic that he was brutalized by one of his heroes.
After Stormfront snaps Kimiko's neck, Frenchie, MM and Hughie start shooting her even though they know the bullets won't hurt her. It has the effect of directing her attention to them and giving Kimiko enough time to heal.
Stormfront's idea of using social media to sow social dissidence isn't unique to modern Alt-Right strategies, it originates from Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist of the Nazi party. Goebbels was famous for making several pro-Nazi films, such as "Hitler Youth Quex", and he commissioned "Ich klage an" (I Accuse), a 1941 Nazi German pro-euthanasia propaganda film.

Season Three

After being rendered disabled and bedridden, Stormfront commits suicide by biting off her own tongue and bleeding out. The reason why Stormfront committed suicide does connect to the Nazi ideas - Nazis were very fond of eugenics programs and would euthanize anyone they perceived as weak and disabled because they believed they were burdens to society and a waste of resources. Having learned that she will be bedridden for the rest of her life, Stormfront killed herself to preserve herself in the eyes of herself and what followers she has left as the purest of Nazi ideals.
Gunpowder and Crimson Countess not wanting to give answers to Butcher, Frenchie and Kimiko makes more sense after Soldier Boy's return: They did not want to reveal that they actually are the reason he was stuck with the Russians in the first place.
The real reason Stan Edgar isn't afraid of Homelander is because he views him and most supes (excluding Victoria, his daughter) as products. In the lens of a businessman, products are a lot of things, including replaceable. That was the lesson he was trying to teach Homelander by bringing Stormfront onto the team (before the two teamed up instead). If Vought loses Homelander, they could just get another powerful supe, as far as Edgar is concerned. Also doubles as Fantastic Racism, since Homelander was a test-tube baby raised in a lab in isolation.
- This is probably connected to Soldier Boy being betrayed by his team. When he confronts the TNT Twins, they admit that Black Noir was behind everything, which Soldier Boy finds hard to believe, due to Noir being a complete follower of Vought. But as Mallory's flashback shows, Stan Edgar was already at Vought and was good friends with Noir. Therefore, there is a possibility that he planted the idea in Noir's head, so that he could have Noir take over leadership of Payback. Recall that in the animated spinoff, Stillwell was afraid that Edgar would do and use anything to undermine both her and Homelander so that Edgar can push Noir as the main supe of the Seven. Something similar could have happened here (all of that would have occurred without Noir's injury from Payback's last mission and his later helping of Homelander covering up his first screw-up). Also, remember that Soldier Boy is supposed to be the "Homelander before Homelander". Stan Edgar could just see both Soldier Boy and Homelander as coming from the same mold: bigoted bullies who think that they are better than everyone else. Therefore, he has seen Homelander's behavior before and is not only not surprised or scared, but also confident that he could just get rid of him cleanly and have no trace going back to him. This could make him the Greater-Scope Villain of the series.
During Grace Mallory's flashback, she sees Mindstorm helping Gunpowder drink out of a bottle of water after the attack. In Episode 7, we learn one of Mindstorm’s abilities is trapping people “in an endless nightmare until they die of terminal dehydration.” With the revelation that Payback is responsible for handing Soldier Boy over to the Russians, and the fact that Gunpowder is stated to be the only one who wasn’t willing to go with the plan, this could imply that Mindstorm subdued Gunpowder before the plan was put into motion to make sure he didn’t interfere. Then, after Soldier Boy was subdued, he brought him out of his temporary coma and made sure he was okay. It also explains why Gunpowder literally saw nothing. As far as he knows, he blacked out.
It might seem rather odd that Soldier Boy's new nuclear explosive abilities can also nullify the powers of other Superhumans, but it actually has some thematic relevance. The primary threat of radiation exposure is that it screws up a cell's "programming" and makes it impossible for it to continue replicating; it's possible Soldier Boy's new power can attack the extra organs that Supers likely have to make their powers work in the same way. It also serves as an inversion of how nuclear energy was often depicted as the source of superpowers in the Golden and Silver Ages of comics.
Maeve and Billy hooking up makes sense for a variety of reasons. Aside from both hating Homelander, they see in each other the things that they both wish that they had: Billy sees in Maeve the humanity that she has managed to hold onto and that he himself is losing due to his obsession with destroying Homelander. Meanwhile, Maeve sees that Billy isn't allowing fear or anything else to hold him back from going after his enemy, whereas it took her years to even think of blackmailing him. These things are what draw them together, both in working for the same goal and attraction.
In the comics, the Temp V that the Boys take gives them solely some measure of Super-Strength and Invulnerability, as opposed to the TV adaptation which gives Butcher Laser Eyes and Hughie Teleportation on top of those abilities. The Tagline for the season is "leveling the playing field" and Supes in this setting have the former two abilities to some extent as Required Secondary Powers-so the Boys are receiving abilities that puts them on equal footing.
- It's almost appropriate who got what abilities as well: Butcher, an Axe-Crazy Blood Knight, receives Laser Eyes (an offensive ability) just like his Arch-Enemy Homelander. Hughie, who was always the one to advocate against violence, receives teleportation (a non-offensive ability) that would be perfect for rescue to quick escapes.
  - It's also fitting that Hughie gets teleportation. His main "arch-enemy" has been A-Train, a speedster. A-Train is fast, but teleportation is even faster.
In "Herogasm", after Homelander is told by the Deep and Ashley that Black Noir left, he goes off to his room, and proceeds to have an interesting conversation with himself; his mirror's reflection takes on a more hostile, cruel and distinctly adult tone of voice, while Homelander himself expresses a more demure, childlike and quiet one. Both represent the sides of his personality (his Manchild tendencies and his intense narcissism), but also his two greatest desires coming into conflict with one another; his hunger for love and his desire to be feared. In other words, Homelander is his own worst enemy.
In Black Noir's hallucination flashback of his time in Payback, he imagines Stan Edgar and his team as various animals and the animals of choice do reflect their key characteristics.
- Soldier Boy is an eagle, as he's the all-American hero who serves in the military to honor his country. Eagles are also predatory birds, and Soldier Boy is shown to have been very abusive to his teammates.
- Gunpowder is a pig; he's a gun enthusiast who over-indulges in combat and warfare but is severely undisciplined on the battlefield. It could be inspired by the Black Sabbath song "War Pigs", a song about war and the destruction caused by man.
- The TNT Twins are a pair of horses; after the war against the Sandinistas, they became the hosts of Herogasm and are both obsessed with sexual pleasure and hedonism.
- Black Noir is a sheep, which reflects his loyalty to Vought and his meekness and submissiveness. He's also depicted as a black sheep, which not only reflects his hero color motif but also reflects how he never really fit in with Payback because he wanted to break away into comedy roles and how he was bullied by Soldier Boy, who made him feel worthless. Not only that, Noir was suffering from institutional racism and was the only black member of Payback.
- Crimson Countess is a fox, which reflects how she was sneaky and guileful, and also evokes the archetype that foxes are seductive, which she takes in a decidedly more adult direction by being a cam girl.
- Mindstorm appears to be a goat, which could reflect his telepathy since goats are associated with mysticism and the occult. Goats are also said to symbolise success through solitude, which Mindstorm somewhat reflects by isolating himself and using his powers at a distance to knock out, disorientate, and set traps for his opponents.
- Stan Edgar is a meerkat, which symbolises group efforts, family bonds, close friendships, and protection. As a Vought executive, Stan is a corruption of this because Vought is a corrupt business that makes supes and controls public relations between supes and the public when they harm others through collateral damage. Stan also has a close bond with Victoria Neuman, his adoptive daughter. He's also responsible for Homelander and Soldier Boy as it was Stan's decision to replace Soldier Boy with his son, Homelander, because he was stronger and had more powers.
When Black Noir is recollecting his conversation with Stan Edgar, Stan has his older voice (Giancarlo Esposito), not his younger voice (Justiin Davis). Why? Because Black Noir was so traumatised by the fight against Soldier Boy that he can only remember Stan's older voice, suppressing Stan's younger voice in the process.
- Also, if you watch Episode 3 again, Mallory ends up picking up the tail end of the conversation between Stan and Black Noir that we see in full in episode 7. She begins listening in right as Stan is asking Noir if he's successfully convinced the other members of Payback to join the plan to sell Soldier Boy to the Russians, just narrowly missing out on Stan revealing to Noir that Vought was allowing them to do this since they were planning replace him with Homelander.
It makes sense for a racist company like Vought to hide Black Noir's race during the 80s, but it becomes even more racist when you realise that during the 80s, it was common for movies or comics to have a Token Black (Who would probably be a Flat Character whose main traits would be being street savvy and rebellious, but representation nonetheless), and in general it was the first time where people of colour had semi-prominent roles. The fact that Vought still chose to hide his race in an era that while definitely racist would've been at least tolerant of a black member of Payback, shows just how close minded the corporation really is.
The reveal that Soldier Boy is Homelander’s father makes a lot of sense when you think about the most prevalent theme of Season 3: fatherhood/family. Butcher is trying to be a good role model for Ryan, and fears the fact that he has become his father (and probably worse). Homelander is desperately searching for Ryan’s location. MM and Todd are at odds for how to raise Janine. Stan Edgar is revealed to be Victoria Neuman’s adoptive father and expresses how proud he is of her for “playing all sides.” Kimiko considers Frenchie part of her family now and wants to protect him. Soldier Boy mentions wanting to have children with Countess. Homelander mentions wanting to have a family with Maeve, and even claims he’ll harvest her eggs to do so. Butcher is projecting his guilt about Lenny’s death onto Hughie. A-Train is trying to repair his relationship with his brother. And now, the parallel between Soldier Boy and Homelander make even more sense as of why they’re so similar: they’re biologically related.
- Homelander also once again proves to be the ultimate foil to Butcher, because just like Butcher, he unwittingly adopted his father’s behaviors.
It makes sense why Stan Edgar was so flippant about Homelander and considers him product he can replace: he signed off on Payback selling Soldier Boy out to the Russians once they'd used his sperm to conceive Homelander as his replacement, so Stan has experience in dealing with a Supe that was the World's Strongest Man.
In Season 3, Episode 2, Homelander quotes the episode's title by stating "The only man in the sky is me." This obviously paints him as an allegory for God, but he is also the only person in the entire series capable of flight, which undoubtedly only bolsters his personal opinion that he's better than everyone, including his fellow supes.
Butcher turns on Soldier Boy once he attacks Ryan. It's not just about protecting Ryan, though. He is seeing his own father in Soldier Boy; someone who is willing to cause harm and pain to his own family. That makes realize that there are some lines he isn't willing to cross, and if he has to also protect Homelander to stop Soldier Boy, he will. Considering what happened with Lenny, he probably feels he has a second chance to stop an abusive monster and not fail.
The entire third season could be seen as Laser-Guided Karma for Stan Edgar, after his teamup with Stormfront. His scheming brings him under investigation by his own daughter, who betrays him to Homelander and seems to have moved on from him. His betrayal of Soldier Boy results in the destruction of Payback and Annie's defection. Also, Annie has brought an uncomfortable spotlight on Vought with her accusations, meaning that his actions will be further scrutinized. Assuming he actually cared about Black Noir, his death will hit him hard. Finally, his prediction about Homelander's true self being revealed and having people turn on him ends up being false, as he ends the season more popular than ever along with his son. He must be one very unhappy man right now.
Todd, Janine's stepdad, wholeheartedly buys into Homelander's nonsensical claims against Starlight and the accusations that Starlight House, her support system for troubled teens, was a sex trafficking ring. While this is symbolic of Real Life far-right ideologies that result from conspiratorial nonsense, Todd's gullible reaction to whatever bullshit Vought claims also serves another purpose; to demonstrate that people like Todd are the exact type of people that Vought's superhero-fueled marketing schemes are specifically meant to target, and who unknowingly enable them to do harm. This is also why Janine's birthday party is Homelander-themed: Todd is the exact type of person to buy into Supe merchandise and encourage his kid to have a Supe-themed party. And this is also why he goes down the rabbit hole so quickly, until he's eventually encouraging Homelander's murder of a protestor at his rally. He's already the type of person to buy into Vought's glamour to begin with, so even when Vought is headed by Homelander, it still holds his devotion.Unfortunately, it's worked too well, as there's millions of Todds out there who would do ''anything'' for their "hero".
Homelander's pitch to get Soldier Boy to join him was not only doomed to fail, it was probably worse than if he'd just said nothing at all. Why? Because part of his logic was that Soldier Boy shouldn't honor his deal to Butcher because "he's nothing, he's just a human." Soldier Boy was never a Super Supremacist like Homelander, because he was born a human and only became a supe well into adulthood. Unlike modern supes, he knows that the mythos built around superheroes is nothing more than lies; they're not chosen by God, they're not the next step of human evolution, they're not even innately talented or virtuous. Anyone shot up with Compound V can become super with a favorable roll of the dice. Soldier Boy tried essentially the same tactic with his own father, bragging about how strong and beloved he was as a superhero, only for his dad to admonish him for "taking a shortcut" with Compound V instead of joining the military normally and proving his mettle through his own strength and skill. Deep down, he knows his dad was saying, "A hero? You're a laboratory experiment, Ben. Everything special about you came out of a bottle," in spite of his continued attempts to disprove him. Homelander trying to cite a glorified steroid cocktail as the reason why they are inherently superior thus smashes Soldier Boy's Berserk Button with a sledgehammer, and fully confirms to him that Homelander is worthy of nothing but spite and hatred.
Soldier Boy goes into singing and acting despite being terrible at both and is quick to bring them up in lieu of his feats of strength. We later learn why: his father saw him as a disappointment for becoming a lab rat as he thought superpowers were "taking a shortcut." His superpowers don't (directly) help him sing or act, so he clings to those "talents" as proof that his dad was wrong and he's actually worthy of his fame.
- In Soldier Boy's first scene, Mallory tells him, regarding his pickup lines, "I know that you think these lines work, but they don't, and they never have. The women are either humoring you, or they're scared of you, but none of them like you." This works as foreshadowing twice over. Obviously, it refers to how his teammates (including his fiancé) hate him and only follow him out of fear, and at this moment have secretly been given orders from Vought to betray him. But it also ties into the above: that line visibly shakes Soldier Boy more than anything else, as you can see his lip quivering as if he's about to cry. He was probably having flashbacks to what his father said; the idea that he's not actually charismatic and that another thing he thought he could claim for himself (his reputation as a lady's man) is just the result of the drug cocktail he took shakes him to the core. It's implied that deep down he knows that she's right, hence his Lame Comeback and admission in the season finale that he's as pathetic as Homelander and his father was right to call him a disappointment.
While Ryan's smile after Homelander kills a protestor at his rally has the audience assume the worst, the real meaning behind the smile may not be so sinister. Ryan was told by Butcher that it was his fault that his mother died, and his guilt over what happened causes him plenty of nightmares. Later, Homelander reassures him that "accidents happen" (which, while unsettling that Homelander sees murder as an "accident", it does apply in Ryan's case), so Ryan clearly feared others never forgiving him for what he did. When he saw that the crowds cheered when Homelander killed someone, it may have reassured him that other people won't hate him for what he did.
The relationship between MM and his daughter Janine is contrasted with the relationship between Homelander and Ryan. Janine and Ryan are similar ages, and while one is the child of victims harmed by the most famous of Supes, the other is the offspring of said dysfunctional Supes. MM has a talk with Janine detailing their family's Generational Trauma at the hands of powerful Supes and corporations, and he ends it by encouraging her to understand the nuances of the world. Meanwhile, Homelander's encouragement to Ryan has him talking about the harm he could do as "accidents" and ultimately encourages Ryan to not look at reality in an empathetic way and to be self-serving. In other words, one father encourages his child to be wary of danger caused by irresponsible individuals, and the other promotes the very same attitude that encourages that irresponsibility in the first place.
Musical abilities aside, Soldier Boy's style of singing is a little different because he sounds more like he's just talking in rhythm to the music as shown by his covers of "From a Logical View" and "Rapture" compared to Starlight's "Never Truly Vanish". Although this could be in reference to Sprechstimme (speech-singing), a cross between speaking and singing in which the tone quality of speech is heightened and lowered in pitch along melodic contours indicated in the musical notation that was popular in the 20th century. The other idea could be that Soldier Boy didn't fully invest in this part of the role because dancing and musical theatre were seen as effeminate during his time period.
When forced to eat Timothy the octopus, Deep claims that Timothy is begging for his life and claiming that he has a family. However, in real life, an Octopus stops functioning and essentially becomes catatonic after mating with another octopus. After mating, the animal will drift in the sea until it's eaten by predators, dies of a disease, or starves to death. Timothy pretty much tried to lie to save himself from The Deep.

Fridge Horror

The show overall

Throughout the show, whenever a Supe is introduced, they always seem to be somewhat miserable with their life or at least jaded from living with superpowers. At the very worst, we get Homelander, but even the ones who are not as bad as him still tend to be pretty desensitized to acts of violence and murder (Maeve, The Deep and A-Train are not bloodthirsty psychopaths, yet all three are clearly used to other people dying and tend to have all at some point turned the other cheek when something goes wrong). Even the Supes who try to stay heroic, like Starlight, are prone to an array of problems, such as societal or familial pressures and being bullied and harmed by other Supes, and otherwise exploited by Vought in whatever way possible. The only Supes who don't seem to suffer as much are the ones who try to stay out of the spotlight, and sometimes that doesn't even protect them, nor save them from previous traumas outside of their control. Being injected with Compound V seems to have irreparably damaged the lives of individuals who could have otherwise been decent, mundane citizens.
- You don't even need to be a psychopath like Homelander to have a body count; plenty of Supes seem to kill or harm people by complete accident, and are horrified by their actions like any other person would be (such as Popclaw).
- With the knowledge that Compound V was injected into thousands of babies and that Supes are made by Vought, how many Supes were furious or heartbroken at the revelation that all of their problems have been because of their parents' lack of foresight?
Superheroics is a business in the world of The Boys, but there is only one company that dabbles in it: Vought International. The Seven? Vought. Payback? Vought. Teenage Kix? Vought. Every other superhero on Earth? Vought. One can only imagine how ineffective the anti-trust laws are in this universe to let such a blatant monopoly happen. Even worse is the possibility that there are such laws, but Vought is so rich and its Supes so powerful that no lawsuit could actually work on them.

Season One

By all rights Translucent being Nigh-Invulnerable on the outside would have contained the explosion... or it could have forced it out of all his orifices like if HR Giger designed a line of Play-Doh toys, including but not limited to where the bomb was put in.

Season Two

Mother's Milk is particularly angry at Hughie for wanting to continue the fight. Why? Because he's worried that Hughie is following in Butcher's footsteps. They would rather have Butcher because Butcher is chaotic but delivers results, while Hughie is too darn nice.
The Deep’s mushroom trip leads him to confronting the fact that his reason for abusing women is because he feels a lot of self-hatred about his gills, and believes that women will humiliate him for it. With this in mind, him being raped by a fan while she repeatedly called him a freak must have been his worst nightmare. Not only was he raped, but his worst fear was essentially confirmed.
Annie’s story about her father sneaking her out to get doughnuts is undeniably heartwarming, but Annie is implied to have been very young when her father left. That means Annie’s mother had a young child dieting, refusing to let her gain any weight. Children tend to have high metabolism, and some dialogue in seasons 1 and 3 establishes that A-Train needs to consume about 30,000 calories a day to fuel his powers. It’s very likely Annie often went hungry as a child, which may have contributed to her developing an eating disorder (as implied in S01E02 "that's Annie January! I went to Hoover High with her. #shewasbulimic"), all for the sake of her Stage Mom.
Homelander is missing for enough time while visiting the compound that people remark on how strange it is, and he is there to put Ryan to sleep at night and for breakfast in the morning. He stayed overnight. Fortunately, the house seems big enough for there to be a guestroom and there are no hints that he assaulted Becca again, but Becca had to try to sleep knowing that her rapist was inside her home and could harm her and/or her son at any point. She couldn't stop him, and the Vought employees watching over them were completely disinterested in trying.
While we don't exactly know all the things that Compound V can do, we at least know that it can enhance one's senses through Required Secondary Powers. Now imagine if Black Noir had supersenses, and imagine just how badly the effects of his allergy are harming him at that moment without his epi-pen. By the next episode, he's sustained brain damage.

Season Three

Homelander forcing that girl to commit suicide after Stormfront did can be seen as a very dark last gift to his lover. Killing a Jewish person in her name would probably be something Stormfront would delight in. But now consider that exchange between Victoria Neuman and Homelander. Homelander thanks her for choosing her kind. Is he gradually starting to take on Stormfront’s ideologies after all?
With Soldier Boy on the loose we now have a Supe that is explicitly capable of nullifying superpowers granted by Compound V. Considering where and how he was found, and with superheroes being a very dominant American invention in The Boys, we could be looking at a potential Winter Soldier situation. Over the episode we can see that Russia has a lot of Anti Supe propaganda plastered on the walls in the form of drawings. Soldier Boy was most likely an attempt to strike back against the United States new 'weapon'. What is to say Soldier Boy was the only one? There could be more.
If Compound V can make a hamster that dangerous, imagine what it would be like to test it on a much larger animal like a gorilla or a shark ^note
Homelander has Maeve kidnapped by Black Noir, who was previously put into a coma by Maeve and could have been looking for payback. We never learn what he did, if anything, to Maeve up until the point we see her in captivity.
Black Noir is the reason that Soldier Boy was taken by the Russians. Who knows what else he is capable of. Homelander, for all of his horribleness, should watch his back.
- Given what we now know about Soldier Boy's relationship with Payback, and how much taking down Soldier Boy costed Noir, it's clear that Black Noir had a justified reason for taking Soldier Boy down, and needed planning, help, the element of surprise, a large amount of luck, and abuse of the one thing that's been shown to work on Soldier Boy to barely take him down, even temporarily. Which is a huge problem, because if a team of multiple Supes needed all that to deal with Soldier Boy, and it wasn't even permanent, then taking down Homelander, who's basically an untrained Soldier Boy with more powers and an even greater degree of super-strength, is proving to be more and more of a herculean task. Especially since Black Noir running away from the Soldier Boy confrontation means he's likely on both Soldier Boy and Homelander's shit lists now...
Blue Hawk attacking the group of black people at the community center and targeting black neighborhoods is bad enough, but it's made even worse by his insistence that the crowd was instigating the fight and that he acted in self-defense. In Real Life, corrupt police officers abusing their power will use the "self-defense" excuse because it allows them Plausible Deniability on the off-chance that an act of brutality might have been self-defense. Blue Hawk, like most Supes, is practically indestructible, meaning that the people he harms are in no way ever an actual threat to his life, and he attacked them simply out of hatred and nothing else, making the excuse even more flimsy than it already was.
In "Herogasm", after Homelander is told that Black Noir left, he gets very quiet and goes off to his room, and proceeds to literally talk to himself in the mirror. His reflection seems to represent all of worst traits that Homelander has, including his intense narcissism and craving for violence, and he talks to Homelander like an abusive parent, even mentioning "helping" Homelander to cope with the "bad room" as if he and Homelander are two separate entities. Homelander seems to mentally regress back to himself as a little boy and talks in a much more childish tone of voice, and when he states his desires to be loved, his reflection derides that desire as "cancer" he needs to be rid of. It's not made clear exactly what's happening here, but it's abundantly clear that Homelander is much more mentally unwell than previously thought. While it's easy to write him off as a shallow narcissist, it’s clear that he has some seriously deep-seated issues if it's caused him to develop some kind of break in reality.
- After being on the receiving end of a Curb-Stomp Battle by Butcher, Soldier Boy and Hughie, Homelander retreats to his room and looks into the mirror again, only this time, he's completely silent and looks rather shaken up, likely because his pride was seriously wounded from his first real fight. Is there some significance in the fact that his reflection doesn't talk back, and what does that mean for Homelander's psyche? Is he actually having another conversation with himself, only the audience isn't privy to this one? And if so, just what could he be thinking about? Even worse, what if his reflection isn’t talking back because there are no longer two sides to him? What if his inhuman personality has finally started to take full control?
Soldier Boy is Homelander's father. This must be repeated: Soldier Boy and Homelander are father and son. That means that a lot of Homelander's nastiness is genetic and inherited from his dad. And now, the two are about to reunite...
- Which raises the question of what this could mean for Ryan, especially if his father or grandfather find him. Or both.
- Also, consider how Vought got Soldier Boy to help create Homelander with his sperm. This may not be the first time they have done this. There could be many supes that actually birthed from older supes. Add to this Stormfront's whole involvement with Vought in the first place, and there could have been a real Eugenics program going on. It might still be going on.
  - And consider the possible mothers. Who would such a program consider the perfect mother for the perfect child? Was Homelander fucking his own mother in Stormfront?
- If there is some kind of eugenics program happening, then that makes it extra horrifying that Homelander plans to harvest Maeve's eggs to have Supe babies with her. How do we know that Vought doesn't plan on creating the next Homelander/Soldier Boy? And, considering Homelander's presumed involvement in their rearing, how screwed up would that child become with him as a parent?
- Also, keep in mind that they use Homelander's existence as the real reason for getting rid of Soldier Boy. That's right, they had plans to use Homelander as a replacement for Soldier Boy while he was an infant! Who knows how many other supes were used that way. Maybe Edgar already had a plan in waiting to replace Homelander before Ryan came into being.
Using Temp V more than a couple times is a fatal process. Upon finding this out, Butcher knocks Hughie out on an ostensible run to go get more, then uses them in the final battle of the season. With the implication that one more dose would have put Hughie’s life in danger, and the fact that he’s already used it more than him, it becomes painfully clear that it was already too late for Butcher.
Maeve threw some of the world's most potent nerve agents encased in a glass perfume bottle out of the top window of building into one of the most densely populated cities in the US. How many people did she just kill?
Soldier Boy called Homelander a disappointment, the way that his father did him. This shows a bad case of genetics: what if Ryan does something to anger Homelander; will history repeat itself?
- Also worrying: Ryan's smile at the end when Homelander kills someone at the rally. Will he become like his father after being exposed to that?
- Keep in mind that we now have seen Ryan flying and throwing a baseball similar to his father in Season 1. It looks like his powers are developing as he gets older. And if Homelander is stronger than Soldier Boy, does that mean Ryan will be more powerful than his father when he’s fully grown? And if Ryan does end up like his father, then Homelander might actually be the second worst thing everyone has to worry about.
Bob Singer is running for President with Victoria Neuman as running mate for Vice President. If he gets elected, a supe who is associated with Homelander and whose power is to make people explode will have access to world rulers and be just one heartbeat away from being the President herself.
- More like one head explosion away from being the President herself. Victoria could easily promote herself just by eliminating the guy in front of her.
  - Might not even need to be a full head explosion, depending on how much control Victoria has over her powers. One deliberately burst artery in Singer's brain? Instant, undetectable death by aneurysm, easily written off by Singer's age. And now Vic's the president herself.
  - It is unlikely Victoria has that kind of finesse. She had to rely on Homelander to take out Bob's original VP pick, and in turn Homelander had the Deep carry out the killing. From what we have seen, Victoria's abilities tend to be overt lacking subtly as they literally cause violent organic explosions. That being said, she and Homelander have seem to have an uneasy partnership going forward. Both understanding the value of a mutually beneficial alliance for now. He can provide discrete removal of any political obstacles with the assistance of a bowed Supe community, and she can provide him carte blanche on any of his actions with the power of the vice-presidency.
Todd starts out as a goofy but harmless guy who likes superheroes. Throughout the season, he starts believing the propaganda about Starlight's charity for at-risk youth being a front for human trafficking and ends up in the audience when Homelander kills a guy. Now remember that Todd is a teacher and works around impressionable children.
Soldier Boy decides to disfigure Black Noir before subsequently bashing out the latter's brains when he could've just went for the kill. He is most likely killing any chances of Black Noir being an ordinary celebrity.
The similarities between Crimson Countess and Queen Maeve cast even uglier implications about Maeve's previous public affair with Homelander, and Countess' own with Soldier Boy. Did Vought press both Countess and Maeve to have relationships with the leader of their respective team as a marketing ploy? Were they selected for that purpose, even? Did SB (a violent, old school misogynist three times Countess' age) or Homelander (a confirmed rapist and psychopath) ever force them?
With the reveal that Butcher has at most a year and a half to live, there is a small but real possibility that he is going to be outlived by his hated father.
It's said that even after Stormfront's fall from public favor and subsequent suicide, a small subset of her fanbase, the Stormchasers, admire her and praise her values - and since Stormfront was revealed to be a violent, xenophobic fascist, it's safe to say that those fans shared at least some of her beliefs to begin with (or were slowly indoctrinated through her internet presence, a rather common method in the modern age). Stormfront herself may have failed in her goal to create a white Supe ethnostate, but who knows how much chaos she'll sow posthumously simply by giving a bunch of like-minded people a platform and a unified banner...

Fridge Logic

In the first episode's Cold Open, we see Homelander kill an already subdued criminal by throwing him dozens of feet in the air. This seems like it's setting up a discussion of police brutality (ironic, considering Garth Ennis is probably a Blue Lives Matter man), but this goes nowhere, and even contradicts how we later see Super violence depicted. Homelander killed that man in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, on camera; there's no possible way that could be covered up, which means people are, at least tacitly, okay with Supes playing judge, jury and executioner. But there are no family members of criminals summarily executed by Supes while crowds cheered in The Boys, or in the support groups Butcher visits. The implications of a public okay with such obvious violations of the values it claims to uphold are never discussed, and every other time Supes kill criminals, like with the active shooter, they take care to do it behind closed doors, and even come up with a cover story.
- Considering the Black Comedy undertones, it's possible that scene is not meant to be taken seriously. Also the terrorist in the pilot episode was armed, had brandished his gun at children and had fired at Homelander (he couldn't hurt him but still). A regular police officer shooting him dead would likely be accepted. Also, the time between the dude surrendering and getting launched in the air lasted about a second, and the terrorist doesn't even appear to have dropped his gun, just lowered it. Perhaps the witnesses simply didn't notice Homelander's malice.
- There's also some fine lines between "this guy definitely deserved it," "this guy probably deserved it," "this guy might have deserved it," "this guy probably didn't deserve it," and "this guy definitely didn't deserve it." Self-Defense laws are tricky and vary wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction based on when and how much force is acceptable. It's likely the public totally accepts Homelander's first shown kill because the guy was armed, dangerous, and not obviously surrendering, so in terms of storytelling language, he's a Mook who can be disposed of with no remorse. As you get deeper into the series and see that Homelander really will kill for very little reason (sometimes even no reason at all), you re-evaluate this sequence. What seemed at first less-than-ideal-but-still-okay is now a sign of how bad Homelander already is, and how much worse he'll get over the course of the series.

Fridge / The Boys (2019)

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Fridge Brilliance

Fridge Horror

Fridge Logic