Nightmare Fuel / The Boys (2019)

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Stillwell: "I'm scared... I'm scared of you."

"I'm the Homelander, and I can do whatever the fuck I want."

— Homelander

The Boys lives and breathes Beware the Superman. Think about it. The whole idea of the very people you depend on to protect you turning out to be the people you need protection from, and to make matters worse, those false protectors have superhuman abilities, making the situation twenty times more chaotic and unpredictable.

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General

• Homelander in general. Think about what Patrick Bateman is capable of doing as a regular person. Now imagine giving him Superman's powers, complete legal protection from one of largest and most influential corporations on the planet, and the mentality that he can do "whatever the fuck he wants" because he's a god on Earth. That's essentially Homelander. In the words of Alan Moore, "I never said 'The Superman is real and he's American.' I said 'God is real and he's American.' If that statement starts to chill you after a couple of moments' consideration, then don't be alarmed. A feeling of intense and crushing religious terror at the concept indicates only that you are still sane."
  • Furthermore, Season 3 confirmed what was somewhat obvious — the only thing keeping Homelander from ruling the world atop a bloody throne is the fact that he has an inherent need to be loved by the masses. If he breaks free of that limitation — or people are no longer able to love him, or if the rest of the world actually sees what he's like — it might be game over for planet Earth. In other words, if Homelander decides that humanity is fucked, then humanity is fucked.
  • Credit where it's due — Antony Starr is disturbingly good at having "dead eyes" and an affect so flat he actually looks artificial at points, as well as conveying the personality of an utter sociopath cheerfully trying to manipulate the world to his whims however he sees fit. The artificiality is actually enhanced by a Season 2 poster◊ that gives Homelander a Volumetric Mouth, making it very disturbing.
  • Many fans have actually admitted to having nightmares about Homelander after watching the show.
• Stormfront, being an outwardly cheery analogue to racist figures in authority and law enforcement, needlessly murdering non-white people and getting away with it by having it all written off as "collateral damage".
• Soldier Boy is to Captain America what Homelander is to Superman. This man answers the questions of what would happen if the people who bullied a young Steve Rogers were given the Super Soldier Serum instead of Steve. Needless to say, the results are horrifying. Beneath his good looks and charm is a bitter, narcissistic, bigoted, perverted, and sociopathic old man. Not only is he nearly as strong as Homelander, but he's given quite the upgrade after being experimented on in Russia. Couple his radiation blast with his PTSD and Hair-Trigger Temper that could be triggered at any moment, and you get a literal walking time bomb that could kill dozens of people at any time. He also doesn't age, so the only way to stop him for good is to kill him with force. But as stated prior, that task is really difficult. When it comes to sociopaths and narcissists in real life, their families often take solace in the fact that their abuse will end with their deaths. Now imagine giving someone like that nigh-immortality…
• Vought International - the company who created and enabled both of them, along with every single supe. A pure embodiment of corporate evil, Vought is everywhere in the world of The Boys, controlling its own Propaganda Machine, with numerous analogues to real-world organizations under its umbrella, along with an army of lawyers and lobbyists and politicians that ensure they can get away with anything. Anything. They've used human experimentation—sometimes on children—and allowed their supes every indulgence they could want, no matter how depraved. As the first episode does a good job of showing, they ensure that their supes can get away with murder, along with mutilating you by snapping off your penis, and you'll never be able to do anything about it. And more than that, their products (the supes) are simply too physically powerful to realistically suffer any consequences. As the most extreme example, Homelander can't just be put in jail.
  • Madelyn Stillwell is a very creepy person who almost never shows her real emotions, instead putting up a corporate smile even in the most dissonant of occasions.
  • Also, the fact that Stillwell, one of the biggest sociopaths in this show, is terrified of Homelander just emphasizes how scary Homelander is.
  • Also, the fact that Stan Edgar, the CEO of Vought, is not afraid of Homelander makes you wonder what he's capable of or has done in the past to not be intimidated by the most powerful Supe on Earth. Even Homelander admits that he used to find Edgar intimidating. Although Homelander then calls Stan less than pathetic, given the context, he likely is only saying this to make himself feel in charge again.
    • What really makes Edgar so scary is his competence at his job. When Vought is taken over by Homelander it begins to quickly crack apart as neither Homelander nor Ashley can actually run a corporation as big as Vought, especially with their inability to take criticism. Edgar though not only knew how to run the whole business, but did so well, actually encouraging and embracing criticism against Vought so he could find the weaknesses in their brand and correct them and then assume control over their critics, to the point that even when the Boys got a victory it was something that Edgar could spin to be to his/Vought's own benefit. IE, they take down Stormfront, Edgar gets to cut out a problematic entity within the business who was hard to control; they bring so much attention to Vought's corruption and influence that the public demands accountability, Edgar sets it so his adopted daughter is the one leading the government agency tasked with such. And, as bad publicity begins to have some effect on Vought, he agrees with the opposition that superheroes are too unpredictable and tries to industrialize them by marketing Temp V... with no concern as to the brain damage it causes. He also lacks any loyalty to a single audience and is more than willing, not to mention capable, of marketing the Seven and other Supes to any audience, as seen by them marketing towards both Alt-Right groups and woke groups via Stormfront's fascism and Maeve's pinkwashing respectively. It's not a surprise how influential Vought became under his leadership, but it is worrying, especially as he was only taken down by a surprise betrayal from his own daughter, and even that he saw as a positive thing because it showed to him she'd learnt well.
    • By the end of Season 3, we learn Stan Edgar was the one who told Noir to get rid of Soldier Boy because Homelander had already been born and was being groomed into being Vought's next leading Superhero. This begs the question of how much of a hand Edgar really had in Homelander's upbringing. He at least had some involvement, but it's also very possible he didn't just know, but actually saw a lot of what Homelander went through in person and didn't even flinch. This would give an even darker reason for why Stan isn't afraid of Homelander. He doesn't just view him as bad product. He also can't help but remember him as a pathetic, crying, screaming child.
  • The sheer level of influence Vought have is genuinely concerning. Putting aside their monopoly on superheroes, they are the leading name in the entertainment industry, own every branded merchandise their supes shill, have theme parks, and also control the news. When Ashley tries to do cover spin on Annie's Instagram testimony against Homelander and Vought, their news anchor even proposes that Annie's actions are potentially "treason", which is an absurd thing to claim (let's remember all Annie actually did was talk shit against a private corporation she worked for, which isn't even illegal; at best it would be slander if it wasn't true), but it's apparent Vought have so much influence within the US, and are so confident about their control, that they think it's perfectly OK to declare not supporting them of being treason against the US, and the scary part is it's clear that swathes of the public agree. Of course, no company could exist like that in real life, right? ……right?
• Billy Butcher as well. While the intention of the show is to show how terrifying superhumans without a moral compass would be, it ends up doing an equally good job (intentional or not) of deconstructing the Badass Normal A Real Man Is a Killer type escapist characters. Billy has a sad backstory and a good reason to be distrustful of the Supes and hate Vought's general activities, but his moral compass is almost as bad as Homelander's. He willingly kills anyone in his way, shamelessly gaslights and otherwise abuses Hughie, Frenchie, and MM, shows nothing but disdain and Fantastic Racism towards Kimiko and Starlight, even trying to kill the latter while she was talking to Hughie. He acts as if he's just trying to keep Supes in line, but it's clear he sees all of them as simply evil, even when its clear many are victims of Vought and are ignorant of their true origin, making Billy come off as little better than an X-Men villain. In a show where Beware the Superman is the point, it also does a damn good job of showing that Humans Are the Real Monsters.
• The world of The Boys in general is a deeply cynical parody of superhero media, and it certainly shows, given its frequent displays of intense violence and creatively-gruesome murders. It essentially plays superhero tropes for horror by showing what it would be like as a normal person to inhabit a world with individuals who hold completely unchecked power and cocktails of emotional issues, while being backed by powerful corporations that won't hold them accountable anyways.
  • Though the Supes are shown as dangerous to an extreme extent, at the heart of the show is a deeply cynical view of human nature. While Supes are powerful and thus dangerous, it's not the power alone that makes them horrifying, it's the fact they use those powers for the exact same evils that are common among everyday people. Blue Hawk and Stormfront are literally just everyday racists, The Deep is a serial sexual harasser and rapist, A-Train is ultimately just a self-absorbed athlete willing to do anything to stay on top, Soldier Boy was just a garden-variety bully, Neumann is a ruthless politician, etc. Even Hughie gets a little Drunk On The Darkside while under the effects of Temp V, becoming more abrasive and violent. And while it's left ambiguous how much the drugs contributed, it's made clear that Hughie's darker feelings were always there. People like Annie, Kimiko, and Maeve show that having powers doesn't innately make you a bad person, but the others show what it looks like when bad people do have that kind of power and nothing to stop them. Butcher says it best in season 3 when his experiences with Temp V give him an insight to what the Supes experience, it's not the V that's the problem, it's all the human shit it brings to the surface by ramping up their inner nature. Butcher himself showed this as his usual raging violent nature combined with the V turned him into an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight who reveled at killing with his bare hands and lasering anything in sight.

Season 1

• Robin's Cruel and Unusual Death at the hands of A-Train. It comes from out of nowhere — one moment, she's holding hands with Hughie having a romantic moment, and the very next moment, she is gone, and the hands that poor Hughie is holding are the only thing left of her that's whole, because A-Train's Super-Speed has all but liquefied the poor girl, nothing but blood and bits of spine and bone immediately to the right of him in A-Train's wake. Poor Hughie is traumatized like hell because of this, and all he can do is scream Robin's name.
• The Landlord's death. Popclaw seduces him and performs some roleplay so she can avoid paying rent. While performing oral sex on her (while she's high on Compound V), she finds the experience to be too orgasmic and she unwittingly crushes his head between her thighs. The guy is clearly in pain but she's too distracted to hear his muffled screams, as his head begins to crack open like a rolled-up tube of toothpaste until it bursts. Popclaw soon realizes what she's done, and is just as horrified by this as the audience.
• For anyone that deals with sexual harassment, the scene between Starlight and The Deep was pretty unsettling.
• Everything about the plane crash. The terrorists were scary enough, but Homelander coming in and not only making the situation worse but threatening to kill anyone who doesn't accept their fate is just downright harrowing.
  Homelander: *pushes back panicking passengers* You stay the fuck back, or I'll laser you, goddamnit! I'll laser every fucking one of you!
  • To elaborate on the horror, the passengers are already held hostage by the terrorists, who have killed all of the pilots except for one. When Homelander and Maeve attempt to talk down a terrorist who has a gun to the last pilot's head, the terrorist blows the pilot's brains out and is promptly sliced in half by Homelander's laser vision. And then it turns out that Homelander accidentally incinerated the control panels when he lasered said terrorist, meaning that there is no way for the plane to be landed safely. Instead of coming up with even the most half-assed solution, Homelander actively refuses to help, either because he could use it to further their Supes-in-the-militiary goal or out of pure callousness and dismissal of human life. Compare his Dissonant Serenity with Maeve's genuine panic and horror at the situation, and it becomes all too clear how little of a hero Homelander truly is.
  • It doesn't help that the people on the plane at first seem happy and grateful that the Supes showed up, with Homelander eagerly reassuring them that everything will be fine. As the situation takes a nosedive, Homelander keeps insisting that he will help them despite having no intention to do so until it dawns on the passengers that he's lying out of his ass, at which point all of their relief gives way to confusion, terror, and groveling for their lives. It doesn't help that there are children on the plane as well.
  • Maeve tries to convince Homelander to at least take a few kids with them, only for him to deny this for fear that the kids will tell others about how they abandoned the rest of the passengers. So, any hope that Homelander might at least care about the lives of children has gone out of the window.
  • The episode ends with Homelander and Maeve visiting the site of the plane crash, and Homelander giving a speech about how the crash could have been prevented if they were allowed in the military, essentially using the tragedy he caused to fuel Vought's agenda. The manic look on his face as he hypes up the crowd really doesn't help.
• Homelander's attack on the Syrian terrorists, calmly slicing apart armed men and unarmed women with his laser eyes. At many points, all you can see of him in the dark are his glowing red pupils. At one point he deliberately lasers a terrorist above him, so a terrorist in front of him gets drenched in the other's blood and innards. Moments later, he cuts off the legs of another and slowly crushes the man's head under his heel, while sadistically grinning. Then he lasers a fleeing terrorist, bisecting him in full view of a troop of American soldiers.
  Homelander: God bless America.
• "Are you telling me that we have a super terrorist?"
• The Reveal that Homelander orchestrated the development of super-terrorists, deliberately invoking the Superhero Paradox for his own gain. You may never look at a superhero franchise the same way again.
  "Now we have villains all over the globe that only we can fight. Sequel after sequel after sequel..."
• The Deep getting his gills fingered, even as he tells the girl doing it that it's hurting him. He's effectively being sexually assaulted and/or raped, and the scene is not played for laughs.
  • The gills themselves. The best way to describe them is waterlogged stab wounds with fangs (actually the fleshy fringes of the gill lamellae) coming out of them, and if you look closely, they twitch. Just... no.
  • Even worse when one considers that he most likely breaths from there. In other words, he's essentially getting his lungs penetrated. No wonder it hurts…
• Becca's horrifying delivery of Homelander's child, which clawed itself out of her and bled her out. It turns out to be fake, but is still no less disturbing.
• When Billy Butcher becomes unhinged, he can become absolutely terrifying, such as when he stalks Mesmer through a train station and kills him by bashing his head against the sink, moments after forcing a horrified Mesmer to read his mind and see exactly what's going to happen to him. Butcher's expression while bludgeoning Mesmer is one of absolute rage.
• The sheer level of damage Black Noir does to Kimiko is horrendous. We've seen her get her skull pounded into concrete by A-Train, with the speed and strength of a jackhammer. A jackhammer taking performance enhancing steroids. While she holds her own, Black Noir does eventually get the better of her and goes to work with his knives. He all but disembowels her. Thankfully, she's got a healing factor so she recovers. Thing is, Noir was sent after the completely human Frenchie. Imagine if he'd caught him.
• Assuming any of it is true (Frenchie is a very mysterious man and if he's true to his comic counterpart, may not even be French...) Frenchie's descriptions to Hughie and Kimiko about his childhood are haunting to say the least. He tells Hughie his father, who had bipolar disorder, tried to smother Frenchie when Frenchie was just ten. Later, Frenchie tells Kimiko his father abducted him from his mother when Frenchie was a little boy, and ran off with him, travelling constantly, imprisoning him in hotel rooms and only taking him out for late night walks to emotionally and physically abuse him by telling Frenchie he loved him, then burning him with cigarettes. (This could explain a lot of things about Frenchie, such as his apparent obsession with watching documentaries or surfing the internet; it might be how he learns thing) Similarly, Kimiko was abducted as a child, forced to be a child soldier and then ended up in a basement in NYC, a prisoner and an experiment, turned into a powerful, deadly Supe. While Kimiko has no issue using her powers to defend herself or Frenchie, she's profoundly traumatized and seems to struggle with the nature of what she has become. It draws a fascinating parallel with Homelander, who like both Kimiko and Frenchie spent a childhood being isolated and abused to someone else's ends.
• While at a meeting with other victims of collateral damage, the audience learns of other mishaps the Supes have caused. One woman was crippled for life when Tek Knight rescued her, and one man went into detail about an accident he had while he was having sex with Ice Princess; we discover that she accidentally broke off his penis when she turned to ice mid-climax. Hughie and Butcher are visibly disturbed hearing the latter story.
• When taking into consideration the circumstances surrounding both plane crashes seen in season one, disturbing implications begin to surface. Homelander convincing Maeve to get off the hijacked plane (which he accidentally disabled) and leaving the passengers to die on impact brings the question as to just how many people Supes have allowed to die in order to cover up a screw up. Homelander assassinating the mayor of Baltimore by bringing down his plane begs the question of just how many people have been straight up murdered by superheroes, and the ethics involved with Vought making the conscious decision to cover it all up.
  • Taking that thought process further, Madelyn isn't even close to being shocked or surprised Homelander murdered the mayor, and we don't even see her reaction to the hijacked plane, just her later exasperation with Homelander for trying to take credit for turning it around with the press. It's an afterthought to her baby's appointment with the pediatrician. Just how accustomed is she to Homelander casually murdering, or allowing the death of innocents, just because something happened he didn't want to deal with?
• Billy's open manipulation of Hughie is a plot point within the show itself, but it's with Frenchie where things are their most disturbing. Frenchie is the only one of the team Billy just forces to get involved by tricking him into showing his face to the captured Translucent. He was forcing Hughie by then, but Hughie, like MM, was given a choice about getting involved in the first place. We subsequently learn that when Billy is around, Frenchie suffers major financial and personal losses as a matter of course, but Billy doesn't act as if this bothers him. Frenchie is the one Billy most often sends into direct danger and even Frenchie expresses anger that Billy views him as a weapon and a tool and nothing else. Billy doesn't bat an eyelid when Frenchie's burned (which even MM takes note of) and shows complete, callous disregard for Frenchie's feelings on anything involving Kimiko, relenting only when Frenchie stands up to him for the first time. Frenchie seems to be the only one totally lacking the emotional tools to say no to Billy on anything, or even recognize the lengths to which he's being manipulated and used, even though he's not totally oblivious. Given what we learn about Frenchie's horribly abusive childhood and the father who abducted and abused him, Billy's treatment and the fact Frenchie can't seem to break away, takes on particularly dark shades.
• The Deep can talk to fish, dolphins, lobsters, porpoises, presumably all sea life and they talk back, which means in this universe, animal life is fully, 100% sentient and intelligent. But everyone still eats meat and fish - including The Deep who see enjoying a juicy beef burger. While the real world is in an eternal debate about the relative intelligence and sentience of different animals, in the in-show version of America (it's not clear how other countries receive and view the Supes), any meat/fish eaters are knowingly eating animals that can think, talk and feel.
• Hughie has Starlight get him a free ticket into Ezekiel's private religious session. Homelander is there, none too pleased about Hughie worming his way out of thousands of dollars, barely hiding his temper under a fake smile. So, during the surprise baptism, he holds Hughie under the water almost till he drowns, turning it into a waterboarding session. Makes it even worse if you have hydrophobia.
• How about the possibility that Homelander raped Becca out of petty spite towards her husband, having overheard Billy mocking him at the Vought Christmas party?
• The sheer, callous disregard for life that Homelander shows when Stillwell begs him to take her infant son to safety when Butcher has a jacket made of explosives strapped to her. You'd think, like Billy did, that she's his Morality Pet and he'd relent, right? Nope! He keeps talking, casually, as if absolutely nothing is wrong, ignoring her increasingly desperate pleas for him to leave Teddy out of it.
  • All throughout the season Homelander shoots many unsettling glares at Teddy, clearly resenting the infant for taking Stillwell's attention away from him as well as becoming jealous when Stillwell breastfeeds him. Kind of a wonder that Homelander hadn't harmed Teddy beforehand...
• Stillwell finally admits that she is afraid of Homelander. He repays her honesty by, as shown in the page's image, burning her face off. To say he burns her face off is actually an understatement. Because after he burns her face off, he melts through her fucking skull with his Eye Beams, slowly, leaving the pneumatic sacs within her skull visible throughout the entire ordeal. Even for someone as nasty, amoral, and inhuman as Stillwell, even she didn't deserve that.
• The very ending from Becca's point of view. For eight years she believed she and her son were safe from the superpowered monster who raped her, and all she can do now is stare in paralyzing disbelief when the monster not only shows up at her doorstep but has his focus dead set on the innocent boy who was the result of said rape. And not too far away is her injured husband who, as revealed in the second season, could have been killed by said rapist had she not threatened to kill herself in front of their son.

Season 2

• Black Noir tearing a mook's head in half at the jawline.
• One of the most disturbing moments is Homelander casually shoving his illegitimate son off a roof. Even to test for powers, no one should go through that. It gets worse once his mom arrives and struggles to find signs of life on the boy.
  • In general, every interaction with Homelander and Becca is utterly horrifying, due to how completely menacing he is while Becca is forced to put up with a sociopath around her child. She's forced to see her rapist whenever he wants to drop by, and there's nothing she can do about it. Even when he's not physically hurting them, Homelander is embodying all of the worst elements of an abusive relationship.
• Ashley takes Homelander to meet Blindspot, a Daredevil-esque superhero who is blind but has impressive athletic ability thanks to super-hearing. Homelander's reaction? He casually boxes Blindspot's ears, which destroys the poor kid's ear drums and causes him to bleed out on the floor, because Homelander doesn't want "a cripple" in the Seven. All in front of Ashley, who Homelander then threatens.
• Susan Raynor's assassination, apparently by Vought, by way of Your Head Asplode. Shocking not just for the gore but for how sudden it is.
• The origin of Vought International and Compound V, as explained by Stan Edgar: the company's founder, Frederick Vought, was a Nazi war criminal who was appointed by Hitler to be the chief physician at Dachau, and used the Jewish inmates as guinea pigs to test his earliest versions of Compound V, and switched sides when the war was turning against the Germans, endearing himself with the Allies (enough to get a pardon from Roosevelt) and having his public image completely rehabilitated as a result.
  • Even more disturbing when you realize that a Real Life pharmaceutical company, Bayer AG (in its previous incarnation as IG Farben), actually did stuff like this during the Holocaust and their executives, like Frederick Vought, got off with relative slaps on the wrist. The reason they got away with being Karma Houdinis is because the Soviet Union would have given them the exact same treatment.
• Stormfront is a terrifying individual, mirroring her comics version and even more realistic. She comes off like someone who isn't afraid to speak truth to power, citing Pippi Longstocking as a personal hero. But then we see her murder her way through a housing complex and deliberately killing the innocent (black) bystanders purely because she can, before she brutally kills Kenji and calls him a "yellow bastard". Given the fact that she has a reputation as a powerful, successful superhero, she is clearly a parallel to violent, racist members of law enforcement.
  • This gets more worrying in episode 4, where it was revealed that as "Liberty", she seemed to have a habit of arbitrarily pulling over black motorists in the middle of the night and beating them to death on a whim. And naturally, anyone unfortunate enough to witness this knew that no one would ever believe them or help them.
  • The flashback we have to one of these "traffic stops" shows Liberty murdering a black man in front of his own sister. When the sister sees his body, his face has been pulverized by whatever Liberty/Stormfront did to him. Even worse, he's still breathing…
• Oh, you thought The Deep's gills were freaky-looking before? Just wait until they start talking to him. Seriously, as much as the scene Crosses the Line Twice (they're voiced by Patton Oswalt of all people) it's still genuinely incredibly disturbing to watch.
• We learn that Doppelganger can only hold a shape for so long before it starts to hurt them. Homelander doesn't care and forces them to maintain the image of Stillwell, and we hear them reacting in pain as they returns to that form.
• We are introduced to Gecko, a supe with the power to regrow his own limbs who works as a prostitute for clients with amputation fetishes. We're shown him attending a man in a motel room, who squees while chopping off one of Gecko's arms with a machete. Later Gecko suggests that this client can slice off his penis with more money, which immediately makes him ask where is the closest ATM. To make things even more disturbing, Gecko barely shows any sign of pain while having his arm chopped off, which probably means he either doesn't feel it or got used to it.
• Kimiko ripping off a Russian gangster's face.
• While Homelander laser-beaming a whole crowd, starting with a guy flipping him off, is an Imagine Spot, it's still a big reminder of what the jackass Supe would do if he wasn't a Slave to PR.
• Hughie, MM, Butcher and his aunt hiding from Black Noir. From the basement, they can hear his loud footfalls as he searches through the house above, occasionally interrupted by the loud crash of him breaking down walls. Just when it seems like he's stopped and might have moved on, he chucks a smoke grenade down stairs right where they are.
• Homelander and Stormfront torture and kill a petty criminal as a form of foreplay. To wit, Stormfront snaps his wrist when he points a gun at her, and then Homelander slowly pins him against the wall, hand over the top of his skull, as the man whimpers and begs for his life. Then, while then casually discuss how awful crime is, Stormfront... stimulates Homelander as he slowly builds pressure on the poor man's skull. We hear cracking sounds and screams until... *splat*. It then cuts to them having intense sex not two feet from the decapitated corpse, smearing his blood on each other's faces. Yikes.
• Cindy. Just... Cindy. One of the supes being held in Stormfront's testing lab, Frenchie, MM and Kimiko accidentally let her out while trying to break out Lamplighter. Her power is that she can crush whole bodies with her mind while being Immune to Bullets. The episode ends with her hitching a ride to parts unknown.
• The entire facility breaks open and releases the Supes, who covers many of the walls in the workers' blood. We don't see too much of it, but what we do get to witness are several people begging for their lives. The implied carnage from all of the fantastical powers is enough.
• Stormfront revealing who she really is to Homelander. Born in Berlin before the rise of the Nazi party, she was the first superhuman Vought ever created and proceeds to go on a racist rant about how every other race is "grinding us down and taking what is rightfully ours." It's a downright chilling scene which is capped off by Homelander seemingly joining her.
  • Extra chilling is that up until this point, Stormfront has been shown to be a carefree gadfly. When she tells Homelander her plans for world conquest and that she truly loves him because he's the perfect Aryan superhuman of the Nazis' dreams, she's on the verge of tears. She's not a monster for shits and giggles, she legitimately believes that supes (white supes specifically) are meant to be the rulers of the world and it's likely nothing will break her out of this mentality.
  • Taken even further when at multiple times for the rest of the season when Stormfront would go on one of these rants, Homelander is shown to be a bit unnerved. This especially when she starts talking to Ryan about it. Now Homelander is no stranger in believing himself to be superior to races or species but it's often checked by him being more narcissistic and sociopathic. He believes himself above all others, but he still wants the adoration of all others regardless of background and at no point outside of petulant rage does he legitimately consider a genocide. It also goes to show that while he can handle Stormfront's craziness when she still strokes his ego, peddling Nazi racism to his son might be a bridge too far. It's very likely that if Stormfront hadn't been outed and neutralized by the end of the season that down the line Homelander and Stormfront would come to blows over this.
  • In the season 2 finale, Stormfront is discussing how the spread of Compound-V to 'the right people' will achieve her goals. Homelander notes there's a few billion of the 'wrong people' out there and Stormfront simply smiles as she wryly responds that "Heydrich had a solution for that", all but explicitly stating part of her agenda is restarting the Holocaust on a global scale.
• The Deep casually telling A-Train he often fantasized about drowning him. A reminder that for whatever goofy antics the Deep gets up to, he's not harmless.
• A man is radicalized by Stormfront's anti-Super-Terrorist messages, as he constantly takes it all in. It slowly builds up, with subtle cues showing how he's slowly becoming more and more unhinged throughout his daily routine. It escalates until he suspects that a cashier that he had been interacting with is a Supe, and pulls a gun on him. He shoots, and slowly puts the pistol down when he comes to terms with what he had just done.
  • Made worse due to being eerily similar to the persecution suffered by foreign immigrants post 9/11. Considering the cashier was called Mr. Singh (a Sikh surname), it's probably intentionally, as several Sikh men were attacked and even killed after 9/11, being mistaken for Muslims.
• The Church of the Collective further show their danger by unpersoning Eagle the Archer, releasing their blackmail material and causing The Deep to immediately abandon him at the church's beck and call. While they're quite goofy, they are still not to be messed with.
• Ryan is fully won over by Homelander and Stormfront. The boy no longer has his loving upbringing, rejects his mother and enters the hands of the two most sociopathic Supes that the show has.
• Lamplighter calmly commits suicide by Self-Immolation as a horrified Hughie can do nothing but watch. We get to then see the charred corpse in gory detail as Hughie smashes a bottle and uses it to cut the corpse's hand off, to pull off a Borrowed Biometric Bypass.
• Black Noir's efficiency and brutality is emphasized in episode 7. We see it mostly from Annie's perspective, as he sends smokebombs and apprehends her and her mother. When he tracks her down after she breaks out, he beats her senseless and begins to choke her out. Fortunately, Maeve comes by with a force-fed Almond Joy.
• Butcher threatens to kill Vogelbaum's entire family at his estate if he does not follow his demands, shocking the former Vought scientist. Then, his daughter, who Butcher just threatened to have brutally killed, enters the room oblivious to the threat and pours him a cup of tea. Billy smiles at her like he hadn't just been contemplating bashing her brains in. Vogelbaum can only wonder how he can be so cruel.
  • The look in Butcher's eyes while he's delivering this threat makes it worse. He looks empty, and when Vogelbaum's daughter comes in, he seems momentarily dazed, like he's coming out of a trance. If you've read the comics, Butcher there has a tendency to dissociate when he's well and truly pissed off. When Jack from Jupiter killed his dog in retaliation, this led to him gutting Jack like a fish, repeating "Why'd you kill me dog, Jack?" over and over and over, and pausing only to mutter "It ain't me, son. I'm somewhere else watchin' it happen. It ain't me." The implication that this Butcher might have similar problems is chilling.
• The Congressional hearing is stopped when several people have their heads exploded just like Raynor's.
  • This is an understatement. The hearing represents a high point, a victory- Starlight and her mom are safe, Butcher has threatened Vogelbaum Junior into testifying. Vought are screwed. And then the congressman officiating has his head blow up. It comes out of nowhere. And then it happens to Vogelbaum. And then it happens to a random woman in the crowd. And then it just. Keeps. Happening. It even happens to Shockwave, showing that not even the supes are immune to it. The worst part? We don't even see Cindy, or whoever else is executing it. People are looking around in absolute horror, trying to run from a massacre that has the floor and air so full of blood that it seems to be raining the stuff, and they can't tell where it's coming from.
  • Throughout all of this, Homelander and Stormfront both remain disturbingly calm, seeming almost vaguely amused.
  • The hearing gets an extra helping of Nightmare Fuel when re-watched after the season finale and the revelation that Congresswoman Neuman was responsible for the head-popping. The perpetrator can clearly be seen targeting several of the victims. Neuman breaking away when Mallory tries to get her out of the room becomes horrifying — she wasn't panicking, she was ramping up the body count.
• Stan Edgar being able to work with Stormfront, a Nazi. As a black man, the fact that he is able to justify in any way, shape, or form dealing with a Super Supremacist who believes in Hitler's ideals just to make money is terrifying.
• Stormfront's choking of Becca pushes Ryan to his limits. He's angered enough to use his laser vision, and with a white flash that temporarily takes Butcher down, we see Stormfront completely dismembered and melted by the beams, mumbling in German. While cathartic, one can't help but be somewhat disturbed by Stormfront doing her best impression of Anakin on Mustafar.
  • What's more worrying is that Kimiko, Annie, and Maeve (regarded as the second strongest supe) giving a sustained beatdown to Stormfront only succeeded in banging her up a bit... and Ryan nearly vaporized her in one shot. Either the gap between Maeve and Homelander is colossal in scale, or Ryan is something far more powerful entirely.
  • This becomes downright terrifying when one takes into account that Homelander used his laser vision on Stormfront earlier in the season and even though he implicitly did not hold back and exposed her to his vision for far longer than Ryan, he only managed to give her some temporary scars. This means Ryan, a child who barely received any training with his powers, easily managed to do what the most powerful Supe in the world couldn't do. Even though he seems more well-adjusted than his father, the mere thought that there is someone even stronger and therefore potentially more dangerous than Homelander is unsettling, to say the least.
• The look of murderous rage on Butcher's face after Ryan accidentally kills Becca. At first, he looks completely broken and defeated. Then, he picks up his crowbar, and gives Ryan a truly terrifying Nightmare Face that makes him look almost animalistic.
• Homelander does NOT react well when he sees Vought goons inside his house. Realizing they came for Ryan, he rends them apart with his gaze, demanding to know where his son is. When he finally leaves the house, Homelander is covered from head to toes in blood and remains so until the epilogue of the season. We never see what Homelander did to those soldiers.
  • When Maeve threatens to expose his callousness during the plane incident, Homelander outright says that he'll destroy everything and everyone if she does so. Only Maeve saying that she'd be glad that everyone knew how much of a monster he was stops him from burning the world to the ground.
• Near the end of Season 2, Alastair has a conversation with Victoria Neuman about possibly damaging Vought and Edgar further. She agrees, and Alastair happily begins to open a can of Fresca. Then his head explodes. The camera pans to the outside of his building, finally revealing who it is that's been exploding heads throughout the season. It's Victoria, and what this entails for the future is only a matter of guesswork at this point.
  • And now Hughie is working for her, obviously unaware.

Season 3

If the previews are any indication and the episodes currently released, Season 3 might be the darkest of them all.

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• The first look trailer adds to the unnerving atmosphere that Homelander brings in his scenes. All we see is him smiling for the camera with Starlight, while Ashley anxiously watches. She has every reason to be afraid, because Homelander's smile is completely and scarily fake. The only thing we hear are the camera flashes, which get progressively louder. And then he stops smiling.
  • Homelander's blank smile after someone in the audience of his birthday celebration yells "Your Nazi died" and the way the camera lingers on his reaction is nothing short of horrifying. He is 2 seconds away from recreating the Joker talk show scene from the The Dark Knight Returns.
• The Red Band trailer introduces a key element from the comics that had so far been absent from the series: the Boys, specifically Billy, take Compound V and gain superpowers. You may think this would be a good idea, until you realize that Billy now has superpowers.
  • Let's not forget that this is the same man who hallucinated Homelander speaking to him recently. Looks like Homelander isn't the only Supe about to go insane.
• Termite shrinks himself to enter a man's urethra and pleasures him from the inside. And then Termite sneezes due to the cocaine he ingested, causing him to grow back to normal and blow the man up, splattering gore and shit all over himself and the room they were in.
  • Once Frenchie sees the aftermath, Termite proves himself as a powerful and terrifying foe, beating him and Kimiko down with his small size massive strength. If Butcher hadn't bagged him at the last moment, he would've killed Frenchie the same way he killed that other man, only intentionally.
  • Butcher bagged him in a plastic baggy full of cocaine, which he shakes vigorously. Termite's tiny size, combined with him basically being waterboarded in crack, leads to the mother of all overdoses for Termite.
• Despite the fact that it's been a full year since his losses in the previous season, Homelander spends the first 2 episodes sporting a Thousand-Yard Stare and it absolutely terrifies the rest of the Seven and any Vought employees who run into him, who all believe that Homelander is on the verge of completely snapping and going rogue. Those fears aren't completely unfounded as well, as A-Train nearly gets lasered after quietly mouthing off to Homelander behind his back.
• Ryan's constant nightmare about his father. With every passing episode, this seems less like a bad dream and more like a premonition.
• Homelander's superhuman senses have been used extremely well at the beginning of this season to emphasize how dangerous he is. Homelander is already scary enough because of his incredible strength, speed, durability, flight, and heat vision that can fry you like an egg. But as we especially see in "Payback" and "The Only Man in the Sky", what also makes Homelander so terrifying is the fact that almost no one can hide anything from him. A-Train barely whispers "fuck you, man" under his breath when Homelander is about 14 feet away, and not even a millisecond later he calmly stops dead in his tracks and asks "What did you say?" The look on A-Train's face afterward says it all. And during Homelander's 'birthday' rant, Ashley asks one of the tech workers Roger to cut to commercial. Homelander, despite being several meters away and behind a thick wall, presumably looks exactly where Roger is and threatens him to not dare do so, even calling out Roger by name. Butcher even admits that it's only a matter of time before Homelander finds Ryan and does God knows what with him. No matter where you are in this world, it's not a matter of if Homelander will find you... it's when.
  • The fact that we still don't know the exact limits of Homelander's powers makes you wonder how many conversations between characters he's overheard in the past without them, or even the audience, realizing it.
  • In a later episode, Homelander tells Maeve he knows she's been conspiring with Butcher because he can smell him all over her. While it's true that Maeve did get a little bit too close with Butcher at that particular time you can't help but think how many times people have been wrongly believing they've successfully met each other without Homelander knowing, only for him to have known all along the moment he walked near one of them.
• Homelander's threat to pull Butcher apart "limb by limb" to make him reveal Ryan's location sheds some light on what he might've done to the Vought soldiers in the Season 2 finale...
  • This also lines up with why Homelander was covered in blood and unable to find where Ryan was at the time; It's hard to answer your torturer if you're bleeding out too fast.
• Victoria's power is even stronger than what was seen in Season 2. It turns out she can make all organic matter she sees explode, from fingers to entire bodies.
  • Hughie witnesses her meeting with Tony, in which they try to kill each other once Tony realizes Victoria/Nadia is trying to kill him. He nearly crushes her skull with his bare hands before she detonates his hand, and shortly after, she obliterates his lower jaw and part of his face. Once she's done with him, Victoria kills Tony by making him explode and his blood rains all over her and the hidden Hughie, who breaks down upon realizing Victoria used her powers to kill Raynor and so many others.
• Gunpowder is a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic from the get-go. He's also got the superpower to make bullets ricochet off any surface so that they hit his intended target even when they're covered, not unlike Bullseye's ability.
• After his first run-in with Gunpowder, Butcher returns for a rematch, having taken a sample of V24 to even the odds. Despite the fact that Billy gets all the info he needs, he still bashes Gunpowder's skull in, before his heat vision goes off & lasers both the car and Gunpowder's head in half. While the heat vision might've been an accident, the senseless beating is still a reminder that Billy is highly unstable and somebody that absolutely should not have powers under any circumstances.
• In her attempt to fend off Frenchie and Kimiko, Crimson Countess fires a blast in their direction. While the two duck to avoid it, a Voughtland employee in a Homelander mascot costume isn't lucky. The poor soul gets hit with the blast, and is blown to chunks after impact. And this was seen by children. Both Frenchie and Kimiko are horrified by this (Kimiko even more-so).
• Mallory's early encounter with Payback is a bloodbath that the supes only made worse. The guerilla attack plays out in the most horrifically realistic fashion, as while Mallory herself manages to survive in a fairly badass manner, it's clear she was scared shitless. During the massacre, we see that Black Noir - at the time a plucky young guy who aspired to be more than another brand - suffered serious injuries to his face and brain.
• Homelander finally decides he's had enough of playing it safe. He goes on a rant that he quickly twists into a rage against the establishment, which the Angry White Men demographic immediately eats up. When Starlight tries to yank on his leash, Homelander tells her while he would much prefer to be loved by everyone, he has no problem being feared instead, since his lust for power has long since taken over.
  • Homelander is set up to talk a suicidal girl out of jumping off a building, during which an entire camera crew is waiting to make this a moment for Homelander rather than the girl in question. Homelander is visibly bored trying to reason with her, which is already a red flag on its own. Then when he hears Stormfront killed herself, he straight-up orders the girl to kill herself.
    Homelander: You know what Chelsea? I think maybe you should jump.
    Chelsea: I don't think I want to now.
    Homelander: You don't want to? Come on, show some follow-through, Chelsea. Jump.
    Chelsea: No, please. I just wanna get down.
    Homelander: I'm not SUGGESTING anymore! ...jump.
    Chelsea: N-NO! OH GOD, PLEASE!
    Homelander: Oh no, no God. The only man in the sky... is me.
    • Let's also think about Chelsea's final moments. She not only is forced to commit suicide, but she also has to deal with the revelation that the most powerful Supe in the world is secretly a sadistic sociopath who is growing increasingly unstable with every passing moment. Imagine also realizing your loved ones are likely blissfully unaware of this and that you won't be able to warn anyone. This might actually be a worse death than the victims of Flight 37.
  • Homelander demonstrates his newfound clout over his fellow supes by bringing the Deep back onto the Seven, which triggers Starlight. He then coerces the Deep into eating his pet octopus alive, knowing full well that the Deep can hear the poor thing begging for its life. Then he uses a public appearance to rope Starlight into being his girlfriend, during which she's forced to kiss him.
  • MM's flashback while watching footage of Soldier Boy dancing and singing from the 1980s. We only get brief glimpses, but from what we see, it's the stuff of nightmares.
  • When Annie threatens to release the Flight 37 video, Homelander tells her to go ahead, pointing out that while he would lose everything, he would also have nothing left to lose. He then calmly details to Annie how he would go on to destroy the United States, and how easy it would be for him to do with his powers.
    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—White House, 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 okey-doke by me. So. Go ahead, partner. Do it. No? You don't want to do it? Well, then, I would have to say that you have absolutely no fucking leverage because I am the Homelander. And I really can do whatever the fuck I want.
    • What makes Homelander's description of how he'd destroy the world so chilling is the fact he's echoing Butcher's snarky lesson on torturing people. Don't do it all at once, draw it out. Start with the fingers and toes.
    • And the Fridge Horror too of Maeve's situation. She can't release the video, the world will end if that happens. She's in a Morton's Fork situation and her chances of dealing with Homelander with as little damage and/or casualties as possible is very slim to none.
• The Russian lab that The Boys have infiltrated includes a hamster in a sealed container that looks adorable until it suddenly starts to ricochet all over the inside revealing the scientist managed to infuse it with Compound V. Then during the firefight it gets loose and literally flies and burrows into a soldier's eyesockect.
  • Just the idea that Compound V can give animals superpowers and they're, based on Deep's interactions with ocean-life, naturally sentient to boot. God forbid this happens en masse leading to a Planet of the Apes or Zoo situation but with superpowers. Also if Compound V can make a hamster that dangerous, imagine what it would be like to give it to a larger animal. A cat? A dog? A tiger? An ELEPHANT?
    • Or even worse, imagine if they infuse a virus like the Ebola with the Compound V.
  • Soldier Boy leaving his chamber in the lab is oddly haunting. We've seen him previously in flashbacks as a brash, charismatic, chauvinistic, misogynistic womanizer. But here he just seems…lifeless. What exactly did the Russians do to him?
  • Thanks to being experimented on by the Russians, Soldier Boy is now the most dangerous man on the planet, bar none. The reason for that is simple: He can nullify superpowers, as evidenced by Kimiko being left to helplessly bleed out after an energy attack. This begs one serious question: If it can work on Kimiko, then who's to say it won't work on any other Compound V-based Supes such as Queen Maeve, Starlight, or even Homelander himself? They would all be rendered literally powerless, and therefore, defenseless. In short, he's now a living, breathing piece of Kryptonite in the show's setting.
• Homelander showing Starlight the mutilated corpse of Supersonic as a means to threaten her and Hughie. Hell, it doesn't even look like a typical attack, it looks like the work of an animal. The fact that it's hard to tell what Homelander did to him is even worse, as he could have used his Eye Beams to do the job, or he could have literally ripped Supersonic's limbs off before destroying his face. Even worse, knowing Homelander, it probably wasn't a quick death.
  • This brutal death drives home just how strong Homelander really is in comparison to the average human. Supersonic is shown in a clip of American Hero easily curling 900 lbs, and Homelander was able to rip him apart like he was made of paper. Putting that into perspective is terrifying.
• There's something disturbing about the final shot of Hughie in the fourth episode. After stealing from Butcher's V24 stash, he gains not only the power to teleport, but enough super strength that he punches a hole through a Russian's chest like a hot knife through butter. Afterwards, he is reveling in his power: smirking at the blood on his newly healed arm, literally Drunk on the Dark Side in the van while Kimiko is bleeding out behind him. If Hughie can be corrupted, then no one is safe.
  • In fact, seeing Hughie from Season 1, a timid man who went along with the Boys due to A-Train's murder of Robin to Hughie here, Drunk on the Dark Side, reveling in his carnage, it seems that by using superpowers for himself and by having Billy by his side, Hughie's character here is a far-cry from his earlier appearances.
• By the fifth episode, Homelander has well and truly lost any pretenses and hesitation. After getting rid of Edgar, he makes Ashley CEO of Vought and proceeds to run the company like a dictatorship. When a woman asks him one simple business-related question, he immediately acts aggressive and asks if she thinks she can do a better job. It gets to the point where just about anyone in the room thinks she's going to be killed. He then proceeds to make The Deep head of the criminal unit, who fires most of the staff because of the vague notion they are not "team players." Within Vought, Homelander has become a true dictator who will punish any slight against his god-like self-image, and will only tolerate those absolutely obedient to him and makes that the deciding factor of any work, not actual competence. He even has made Maeve disappear to a rehab place in Malibu which, in context, sounds a lot like a prison political dissidents are sent to, or like when a cult decides you need to disappear from the public eye. The worst thing about it all is that, unlike real dictators who are one heart attack or bullet away from being taken care of permanently, Homelander is pretty much invulnerable.
  • Worse, Starlight, who knows well enough to suspect the official story about Maeve going to rehab, tries to find out if Maeve is alive. Ashley blows her off and tells her that the next time, Starlight should make an appointment if she wishes to speak to Ashley.
  • Episode 6 also makes it abundantly clear that the way Homelander is running things is horribly unsustainable and bound to blow up at any given moment. Though he is Vought's mascot, Homelander has no experience running a business and isn't open to any criticism, Ashley and The Deep are only working to placate him as much as possible rather than get any actual work done, most of the staff has been fired, and with Maeve, Noir, A-Train and Starlight either MIA, dead, or quitting, there is essentially no checks and balances in place to prevent Vought from being run into the ground. Much of the scenes at the headquarters only involve Homelander, Ashley, and The Deep because everyone else is gone. We better hope the Boys find some kind of way to defeat Homelander soon, as it's only a matter of time before Vought collapses and Homelander eventually snaps, and the order of those events could go either way.
• The sheer ease with which Blue Hawk throws around the black people at the community center. When they start to criticize his obviously fake apology, he immediately acts defensive, spouts common Angry White Man answers against Black Lives Matter movements, quickly loses his cool, and starts to manhandle everyone in reach before A-Train stops him. It just goes to show how powerless normal humans really are even against a lower-tier Supe. Nathan is left crippled from Blue Hawk's rampage, and is stated to never walk again.
  • Even worse is the sheer ease in which Blue Hawk avoids punishment. He quickly has the story spun that the person he was crippling had a gun and that he needed to "protect" the neighborhood, blaming Antifa for the incident.
• While it's theoretically very good news that Soldier Boy is now willing to side with the Boys in trying to stop Homelander, especially after all they've been through so far, there's still one small issue at hand. If Soldier Boy is indeed more powerful than Homelander, then who's gonna restrain him after Homelander is dealt with? Another thing to note is that while Homelander at least has insecurities that make him somewhat easy to manipulate, Soldier Boy doesn't seem to have those vulnerabilities. All of this, of course, is assuming that they're capable of stopping what Homelander is trying to do.
• From what little is shown and told, the Russian scientists who conducted their experiments on Soldier Boy tried everything they could think of to injure him. Radiation poisoning, acid, burning, freezing, both internally and externally and on different parts of his body. Despite all the horrors, he survived everything without so much as a small scratch or two. It's a miracle the man doesn't show much worse psychological damage than PTSD flashes.
• Episode 6: "Herogasm". Oh boy... It sees our main characters infiltrate this titular event to find some of Soldier Boy's former teammates. It is a getaway mansion where Supes can have as much sex with each other and prostitutes as they please. Anytime there is focus on the debauchery that occurs in that house should be considered Nightmare Fuel as it is completely bizarre, gross, and downright disturbing for anyone to witness. Really makes those comics fans wondering how their favorite heroes would use their powers to do the nasty reconsider even the thought of it.
  • MM points out that the prostitutes at the event sometimes get badly hurt from the Supes and their powers. But the Supes could not care less about it. As MM speaks we see an example on screen: a prostitute visibly in pain as a spiked ice dildo is inserted into her. Really puts the issue of sex worker abuse and violence against them in a terrifying new light.
  • Love Sausage returns after his breakout from Sage Grove in the previous season, and his love sausage is every bit as large, prehensile, and unnerving as before, even when it's not trying to choke out MM. Worse still, after Soldier Boy has his meltdown, Love Sausage can be seen, still alive, but having suffered some gnarly burns to his sausage.
  • The showrunners themselves are more than aware of how disgusting this is. Considering how violent, gross, and crude the show naturally is already, it says a lot that they had to put a disclaimer on this particular episode.
• While reminiscing on the 80's, Soldier Boy mentions Bill Cosby, whose crimes he is completely unaware of. Just before Hughie gets a chance to catch him up on current events, Soldier Boy comments on how strong his drinks were. While played for Black Comedy, the implication that Bill Cosby tried to rape Soldier Boy is pretty unnerving.
• During her confrontation with Neuman, Starlight dares her to pop her head or get out. Neuman stares unnervingly at Starlight for several moments. After she leaves, Starlight discovers that her nose is bleeding.
• Just before Homelander arrives at the scene of the disaster, we see a shrunken Termite badly burned and in pain, desperately calling for help. Then, Homelander's heel squashes Termite like a grape on his way inside. Considering that Homelander has super-hearing and could definitely hear the tiny supe, it's obvious that he did that on purpose for absolutely no reason other than sheer spite.
• Amidst the chaos of Soldier Boy's attack on Herogasm, A-Train enacts his vengeance on Blue Hawk for paralyzing his brother by using his speed to drag his body across the road pavement. The result is the latter's unmoving corpse on the road, with the front side, from torso to head, eviscerated and mutilated from the friction and a long trail of blood behind him.
  • Also, while not exactly deserving of any sympathy, it can still be quite disturbing and spine-chilling to very briefly actually hear Blue Hawk screaming as A-Train runs across the screen, showing that Blue Hawk was actually alive for at least part of his dragging and in excruciating pain. One can only wonder just how long he lasted before his body finally gave up and put him out of his misery.
• The confrontation with Homelander at the end of the sixth episode quickly shows that for all Soldier Boy's prowess as a fighter, he is no match for Homelander physically. It takes Soldier Boy, Butcher and Hughie (both powered up from temp V) to even temporarily restrain Homelander, and the worst thing they give him is a bruised cheek while they're all battered from the confrontation. However, it's possible Soldier Boy was weakened due to releasing an energy blast and having a PTSD episode before the fight began. Homelander even admits Soldier Boy was giving him a run for his money at first.
  • Billy is downright scary during his brief fist fight with Homelander, even flashing a bloody Slasher Smile. It's clear that he absolutely loved every single punch.
  • They do however temporarily get the upper hand, and we get to see a cornered Homelander: a snarling abomination with constantly blazing eyes. He doesn't even look human anymore, he looks like a demon that is being banished back to Hell.
• We get another glimpse Homelander's ever escalating Sanity Slippage when he starts talking to himself in the mirror ala Norman Osborn. Made all the more terrifying by how innocent the real Homelander sounds compared to the man in the mirror. He comes across like a bullied child, except the bully is himself! The promise he makes to himself is quite chilling. Homelander is very aware of his desperate need for validation and approval, and he views it as a "cancer" that needs to be cut out. Whenever that happens, the apocalypse will begin.
• Homelander's ever depleting sanity continues to showcase just how much danger the world is in with him not in control of himself, as he continues doing more and more actions that previously he seemed too cautious to ever even consider. When Neuman tells him to get his shit together and begins going into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech Homelander cuts her off by grabbing her throat and actually threatening her. He outright admitted to being previously afraid of Stan Edgar, but now it seems his fear and paranoia is driving him to become more destructive!
• Through Black Noir's Disneyesque recollection of Nicaragua, we see what actually caused his horrible disfigurement. It wasn't a random explosion or a stray bullet from Gunpowder, it was Soldier Boy! After incapacitating the others, Soldier Boy picked up Black Noir and shoved his face onto the hood of a burning car, melting the left side of his face like Gregor Clegane did to his brother. Then, for good measure, he caved Noir's skull in with his shield, tearing his head open and splattering parts of his brain on the ground. Though clearly exaggerated in this cartoon world, it's absolutely terrifying to think that this is what Soldier Boy was capable of when pissed off.
  • Before that, Black Noir recalls a training session detailing the abusive grip Soldier Boy had on Payback. When Noir calls out Soldier Boy for ruining his audition for Beverly Hills Cop, Soldier Boy brushes it off and eventually responds to further protesting by subjecting Noir to a brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown while the rest of Payback only look on horror. Noir wasn't even trying to pick a fight to begin with or defend himself at all, and tries to crawl away before Soldier Boy pulls him back for another beating and daring the rest of the team to help.
    Soldier Boy: You think you can be me? You're not a movie star. You're not shit. I see you getting out of line again, tryna "move on up", I will put you in the fucking ground, understood?
  • We get a small glimpse of his fury during his confrontation with Mindstorm. Upon getting the info he needs about Nicaragua, Soldier Boy enters a complete state of rage and smashes Mindstorm's skull into a bloody puddle with his shield.
  • And not to sound like a broken record, but if Soldier Boy can do that when enraged, and Homelander is stronger than Soldier Boy (even if by a hair), just imagine what he could do when fully unleashing his power. You can start running now.
• The revelation that Soldier Boy is Homelander's biological father, which leads to Soldier Boy secretly reaching out to the supe behind Butcher's back. If he does betray them, that means Butcher now has to face the two strongest supes in the world.
  • Even worse, Homelander's existence is the real reason Vought decided to get rid of Soldier Boy in the first place! As Stan told Black Noir, "old soldiers fade away." The company chose to use a child to eventually replace his father, abusing and isolating said child in the process. No wonder Stan keeps referring to Homelander as a "product": the company he works for literally discarded one powerful supe for another, and it may be their policy concerning supes to begin with.
• Homelander casually revealing to Maeve that he's going to harvest her eggs against her consent, so he can inseminate them and have 'sublime' children after he no longer has another use for her.
• Butcher's mind-control induced nightmares of the horrific abuse he and his little brother Lenny suffered at the hands of their father. This culminates in Butcher being forced to watch Lenny commit suicide, while the young boy blames him for his and Becca's deaths, as well as warn him that Hughie will die too. Bear in mind, Butcher didn't witness this event in person; he learned about it after the fact.
• Everything about Mindstorm's powers are fear inducing. All it takes is a single moment of eye contact for him to Mind Rape someone. Forcing them to relieve memories of the worst moments of their life while until their comatose body dies of thirst or starvation.
• The effects of Temp V. When taking it, Butcher and Hughie see something leaking from their ears. We later get a good idea of what that is.
  Annie: Temp V is gonna kill you both.
  Butcher: Well, it's gonna have to join the queue.
  Annie: I was just in the lab. It causes lesions. Okay? It turns your brain into fucking Swiss cheese, so please be honest with me, and tell me, how many doses have you taken?
  Butcher: Just a couple.
  Annie: Jesus Christ. Butcher... three to five doses kills you.
• Homelander's fight with Maeve takes a brutal turn when he slowly shoves his thumb into her right eye, pretty much destroying it.
• The way Homelander slowly walks up to the Boys after Maeve saves everyone from Soldier Boy is very unnerving. He casually strolls up while the music gradually becomes a mix of ominous sounds. He doesn’t say anything darkly humorous to Butcher, he just stares at him with a look of pure rage and hatred.
• After killing Black Noir, Homelander walks in on the Deep, A-Train, and Ashley discussing Soldier Boy's approach. The Deep makes a reasonable plan—to use Black Noir, the last member of Payback, as bait—a plan that immediately falls to pieces as Homelander sets Black Noir's helmet on a side table and sits down. After telling them that Noir was keeping secrets from him, he mentions that when Vought brought him on, he was promised a team of heroes whom he thought would be "the family [he] never got". His smile switches to disappointment as he says, with no change in volume, "And then I got…you." What he does next is effectively a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to all three people present.
  • Homelander turns the Deep's "I've always tried to help" against him, mocking him for running from Herogasm and having sex with a sea animal. Homelander then has the Deep actually help by ordering him to assassinate Lamar Bishop, presidential candidate Robert Singer's VP pick, which even the Deep is reluctant to do since it's basically treason. His replacement is revealed to be none other than Victoria Neuman.
  • Next, Homelander tells Ashley to take off her wig. Almost reflexively, she asks, "What wig?" Homelander then gives her a chilling Death Glare. Saying nothing more, Ashley slowly pulls off her wig, revealing that she is nearly bald from all the stress and hair-pulling. As she does she is near tears expecting Homelander to punish her further, and both A-Train and The Deep are horrified. But the Supe says nothing further to her, pleased with her submitting to her humiliation.
  • Then Homelander turns his attention to A-Train, who has been silent for the whole scene, asking the athlete how he could kill one of his own kind (referring to Blue Hawk). A-Train says nothing, just looking at the helmet on the table. Yes, it's hypocritical, but the difference between both Supes is that Homelander has so much less holding him back from killing someone he trusted than A-Train does.
  • Homelander ends the "meeting" by saying that Noir was more valuable to him than all three of these people put together...and yet he still made the conscious decision to kill him. In a way, he essentially states that the three of them are less than worthless, and the same thing can happen to them at a moment's notice.
• There's something oddly unsettling about seeing footage of Soldier Boy from the 1940s. It puts in perspective how long Soldier Boy has been around acting like a sociopath. Despite 78 years passing from when he was injected with Compound V, the man hasn't really changed in the slightest.
• The ending. Homelander reveals his son Ryan to a mob of his followers, and a Starlight supporter makes the horrible mistake of throwing a water bottle at Ryan. Homelander responds by lasering his head off in full view of everyone. After a moment of shocked silence, Todd's look of horror morphs into a crazed smile, and he starts up the crowd again in celebration of Homelander murdering a man in broad daylight, sealing Homelander's claim that he really can do whatever the fuck he wants.
  • And that's not even the worst part. After seeing all the support his dad gets after killing someone, Ryan starts to smile. Ryan is being corrupted into becoming the next Homelander. Two fucking Homelanders in the world, just as Becca feared…
  • What makes this worse is that this is partly Butcher's fault, for yelling at Ryan that Becca's dead because of her son's actions that day. Meanwhile, Homelander (who did also say the same thing in earshot of Ryan at the end of Season 2) later talks to Ryan, saying that he doesn't blame the kid for Becca's death. Ryan received what he needed to hear, from the worst possible person he could possibly have received it from.
  • The crooked, gleeful smile that creeps onto Homelander's own face as everyone begins to cheer also deserves mention. As seen in "Making Things Worse", he's already had fantasies about killing innocent people in public just for criticizing him, but has never been allowed to act on them; now, he tenses up, nervously looking around in uncertainty. And then, he finds out all of his dreams have come true: people will not only love and worship him no matter what, but will love him for being a monster.
  • Here's a more horrifying thought. What if the crowd cheered on Homelander not because they agreed with what happened, but because they're afraid of what would happen if Homelander lost his supporting fans? No sane man would cheer on a mass murderer, right? Well, give said mass murderer the powers of a god, an intense, but highly fragile ego, and the backing of a giant company that not only brands monsters like him as heroic but controls everything and the Propaganda Machine. Now you would understand why people would cheer him on out of pure fear and not genuine admiration.
• Todd as a character is pretty unnerving, especially if you have family or know people who've gone down similar paths. He's presented initially as a goofy but not particularly unpleasant guy who is obliviously really into superheroes, especially Homelander. As Homelander slowly begins to show his true self, Todd eats it up, and buys every lie, spin, and falsehood, out of idol obsession. It's very similar to the real life way that people have fallen to far-right radicalisation. Even more disturbing, he's casually pushing this extremism onto Janine, and MM looks like the bad guy when he tries to stop it. And as Todd is a teacher, who knows how many other kids he's helping to brainwash.
  • Another note of disturbing points is when Todd repeats Vought's and Homelander's Blatant Lies that Starlight is actually engaged in human trafficking, and her charity dedicated to helping runaway and at-risk teens is actually a cover for a child trafficking ring for terrorist groups. It's utterly ridiculous but Todd not only fully believes it, but is morally outraged...which yeah, if that was true, that would be reason to be outraged. Todd is completely Obliviously Evil and genuinely believes that Annie, the closest the show has to an actual genuine The Cape, is a monster who needs to be stopped. Adding extra disturbing qualities to it, the accusations are actually pretty close to exactly what Vought themselves are guilty of (injecting children with Compound V without their consent to create supes, aiding terrorist groups in the creation of supe terrorists to create conflicts that would require supe soldiers, unlawfully imprisoning anyone who gets in the way of the company's interests, etc).
  • Bear in mind, Homelander is caught on video admitting to what he was doing, and later he kills a man in front of a crowd of his supporters, Todd included. Todd is not only blindly in support, but he's the first supporter to cheer Homelander on for his blatant murder of someone for opposing him (though he did try to throw a water bottle at a young child), which Todd and the crowd think is something that completely justifies violent murder. Again, this not only shows just how far Todd is radicalised, but how easily Homelander was able to corrupt his supporters into being OK with that kind of action. It's going to be much harder to be able to hold Homelander in any way accountable since at this point, the flight video would probably not be enough to break his hold on them.
  • A bit of Fridge Horror on top of everything? If M.M. and Monique didn't find out about Todd taking Janine to Homelander rallies, she probably would have been at this rally, and traumatized for life after seeing her hero commit murder. Hopefully, she wouldn't have cheered along with him too.

Season 4

• The first look trailer gives us plenty of nightmarish imagery, including a young girl with four Xenomorph-like tendrils coming out of her mouth, some kind of supe whose powers seem to involve ripping himself in half, and a stinger that features Homelander once again covered in blood.
  • Worth noting: all the other times we've seen Homelander covered with blood like this, he's been an emotional wreck. This time? He's just smirking serenely, not a care in the world.

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