YMMV / The Boys (2019)

YMMV tropes for the The Boys (2019) series

YMMV Tropes with Their Own Pages

• Alternative Character Interpretation
• Memetic Mutation
• Moral Event Horizon
• Nausea Fuel
• Woobie

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A-D

• Adaptation Displacement: The fact that the series is based off a comic is common knowledge, but the show has reached a level of mainstream success and awareness that the comic never came anywhere near. It doesn't help that most who have read the comic, even those who liked it, won't recommend it to fans of the show and consider the series to be a superior product overall due to lacking the comic's edge without substance and having a much better handling of the overall themes.
• Adorkable:
  • While it's still exceedingly rare in such a Crapsack World, once Kimiko finally starts to get out of her shell she begins showing a much more fun and quirky side to her. From her childlike fascination with things she never got to experience as a kid, to a love of musicals and her endearing sense of sarcasm, it's really no wonder Frenchie fell so hard for her.
  • Hughie, especially at the start. In a world of superheroes, corrupt executives, abusive parents, criminals and trained killers, Hughie Campbell sticks out, being sweet, dorky guy with a passion for electronics.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
  • As several critics have pointed out, this adaptation works better as a condemnation of modern celebrity culture and the intertwining of capitalism and politics than one of modern-day superhero franchises. Amusingly, this was also an opinion of many of the readers of the comics who had felt that the satire never entirely hit its targets except as a metaphor for real-world celebrity worship and politics, rather than being an effective critique of the superhero genre. Both Eric Kripke and Seth Rogen later admitted on the aftershow that, aside from using the series as a means to make deconstructionist counterprogramming to all the superhero shows and movies that were being released around the time, the show was made as commentary on various types of celebrities.
  • A-Train's obsession with and taking extreme measures to maintain his position as the fastest man alive (including abusing Compound V) resembles a great deal of how many real-life professional athletes use performance enhancing substances and push their bodies way past what is healthy, trading serious health problems later in life for a medal or new record today. Him being kicked off The Seven when these health problems impact his performance, with the additional implication that Vought's speedster superheroes regularly burn out from the physical strain of staying on top after a few years, makes the aesop even more apparent.
  • The frequency to which the show uses sex as a means of showcasing how "depraved" Supes are can lead to an accidental message against sex itself, at least outside of vanilla monogamy. The only time sex is shown in a positive light is between Hughie and Annie, and their sex life appears to be pretty vanilla with Annie expressing in season 3 that she never used to have a lot of sex with her previous boyfriend to assure Hughie My Girl Is Not a Slut. Meanwhile, fetishism is common among the "bad Supes" with Homelander having a specific fetish for milk and mommy play, which is used to present him as a creep and reinforce he's not as cool a guy he thinks he is, and supes frequently explore Power Perversion Potential, which is consistently depicted as an amoral and depraved thing to do purely on its own (they do show that it can have lethal consequences when things go wrong, but even when it doesn't it's still treated as a bad thing). Herogasm and other sex parties attended by Supes is also presented as a demonstration of their depravity, but while a few token indicators are used to show they're not practicing Safe, Sane, and Consensual, the implication is still that the concept of having group-sex-for-fun is Sick and Wrong and they're a bunch of perverts who kinda deserve to be Asshole Victims. Even among sympathetic characters, Maeve embracing her bisexuality and being promiscuous is used to show she's depressed and lonely without Elena, and is framed as part of her being on the Despair Event Horizon.
  • The superheroes being an allegory for celebrities and the fact that these celebrities were given superpowers as infants, the series can be seen as a lesson about child actors, "Hollywood is not a healthy environment for children and the children who take part in it are only doing it because they have no choice on the matter due to desperation or due to the involvement of their parents". As adults, these former child actors are shown to be socially maladjusted, mentally scarred, and spoiled rotten from the fame they received at a young age. Mesmer had no value for his daughter and just wanted to get back in the spotlight, A-Train lived in poverty and values money over human life and empathy, Homelander was raised in a lab and has no value for human life, and when Black Noir was a kid, he apparently and accidentally crippled another kid through his powers, not only that, he grew up in a time where racism was expressed more openly and violently and so it also affected his value of human life.
• Applicability: As opposed to being a satire on celebrity culture and the modern superhero genre, the show actually works quite well as an allegory for the pro wrestling industry; specifically WWE. The superheroes have distinctions between their civilian names and public names, with some supes never answering to their legal names and having gimmicks based around their powers. Homelander as the All-American Face who's secretly a raging narcissist, conniving corporate politician, and harboring an awful lot of bigoted skeletons in his closet could easily be mistaken as a parody of Hulk Hogan, whose reputation took a nosedive in the 2000s for similar reasons. Vought promoting female empowerment, while still restricting its female superheroes and still allowing sexual misconduct to happen is painfully reminiscent of the WWE 'Diva Era' of the late 2000s to mid-2010s, where WWE promoted its women as 'Smart, Sexy, Powerful' - but were actively mistreating them behind the scenes, restricting how impactful their matches were allowed to be and forcing many to adopt Hotter and Sexier attire or compete in Fanservice segments. Featuring prominent Black superheroes like A-Train and Black Noir but never pushing them as leaders, and even The Deep lamenting that he's a "diversity hire" can parallel wrestling companies that hire non-white talent to look diverse but rarely push them in a meaningful capacity. A-Train's problems with Compound V and Maeve's alcoholism can bring to mind WWE's own attempts to cover up the talents' substance abuses until the Wellness Policy was introduced in light of the Chris Benoit murders, as well as the open secret that company leadership prefers workers with the biggest muscles/strongest powers and unsafe supplements can be a gateway to a career push.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A few viewers were unaware that Fresca is a real beverage, assuming it was made up for the show.
• Anvilicious:
  • The show is not subtle about the effects of having terrible father-figures on people. Dr. Vogelbaum treating Homelander like a science experiment is why he is the way he is, and the same is true of Butcher and his father; Lamplighter talks about how he only ever became a supe and a member of The Seven to make his dad proud; Maeve's dad was a stage dad who used her to earn gambling money; Homelander himself basically tricked Ryan into turning on Rebecca; and, worst of all, Frenchie's father kidnapping and burning him is likely what lead to Frenchie becoming a hitman. While Hughie and Starlight are shown to have terrible mothers, they and the effects they had on them aren't shown to be nearly as bad as the above examples.
  • Starlight is barely inducted as a member of The Seven when she's coerced by The Deep to perform sexual favors for him. According to showrunner Eric Kripke, the women in the production team and writer's room insisted on including this storyline to reflect real-life experiences of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, after their original plans downplayed and/or omitted this story.
  • The way that Vought's PR machine micromanages the public appearances of its Supes is a thinly-veiled commentary on how corporations like Disney are often possessive and controlling of their actors and actresses' lifestyles. It goes even further in Season 2 by showing how easy it is to exploit well-meaning ideas like feminism and queer acceptance for the sake of market value without actually listening to women and queer people.
  • Stormfront is basically a Ripped from the Headlines alt-right proponent in her public image. She's also literally a Nazi, who hides her darker fixations and beliefs behind dog-whistles (speech that is meant for only people in a certain group to understand while being superficially innocuous).
  • If you thought that Stormfront was too on the nose, then just wait till you get a load of Blue Hawk. He is the living embodiment of Police Brutality, complete with dog whistles and faux non-apologies. If that weren't enough, he literally says "All Lives Matter" and screams "Supes Lives Matter!". Somehow, in a show with a person whose power is a giant elongated penis, Blue Hawk might actually be the least subtle character in the series.
• Ass Pull:
  • The reveal that Soldier Boy is a Phony Veteran was clearly grafted on solely to make him less likable with no regards to how it fit the rest of the story. Not only does it make absolutely no logical sense (why wouldn't the Americans use a Nigh-Invulnerable superhuman in battle?), it contradicts both Soldier Boy's behavior (as he shows clear signs of being a combat veteran in how he fights) and everything said about the character before that episode. Most obviously, Stan Edgar outright told Homelander that Soldier Boy slaughtered Nazis by the dozens in World War II back in Season 2, with the context of that conversation being specifically Stan stripping away Vought's PR campaign to tell Homelander the real story. There's absolutely no reason he'd be lying.^note It is possible that he didn't take part in the beach-landing but instead took part in other operations.
  • Elena coming back out of nowhere to take Maeve back after no build-up whatsoever and forgiving her after the Flight 37 video comes off as a forced storytelling to just cut Maeve some slack after everything she’s gone through.
  • Maeve's survival itself is one, as no explanation is given as to how she wasn't killed by either Soldier Boy's explosive blast or the subsequent several hundred feet drop after being De Powered. The only possible explanation is that her Super-Toughness didn't fade until after she was safely on the ground, but this is both unaddressed by the episode itself, and inconsistent with previous depictions of the blast's effect which showed it to be instantaneous. It's also inconsistent with the limits of her own Super-Toughness in prior scenes, most obviously how she explicitly would've died in the Season 1 plane crash according to Homelander,^note Which is why she abandoned her morals and allowed Homelander to take her to safety rather than staying with the people.an event that would be nowhere near as intense and concentrated as literally hugging a large bomb.
• Award Snub:
  • Despite being quite popular and acclaimed, the first season went almost entirely unrecognized come awards season. The second season did better, scoring nominations at the Emmys for Drama Series and Writing, but was otherwise snubbed except for just a few below the lines categories.
  • In terms of the show's actors, the lack of recognition for Antony Starr's widely acclaimed performance has been called especially disappointing.
• Awesome Ego: An unintentional example is Soldier Boy. He was meant to come across as an arrogant, self-absorbed Jerkass, much like many of the other Supes in the series, but since it's shown he can actually back up some of his boasts as seen in his fight with Homelander, and he's played by the extremely charismatic and handsome Jensen Ackles, a lot of fans greatly enjoy his overly macho character instead.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Clash's "London Calling" which plays over Butcher's fight with Translucent.
  • Iggy Pop's "The Passenger," which plays at the end of the first episode as Homelander kills the Mayor of Baltimore by taking down his plane.
  • "Cherrybomb" by The Runaways, which plays over Hughie coming to terms with him having murdered Translucent.
  • Rachid Taha's cover of "Rock The Casbah" as Homelander cleans house at a terrorist base in the Middle East in the eighth episode.
  • Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" plays at the end of the tenth episode.
  • Billy Joel's "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" is used to convey Hughie's existential crisis throughout the second season.
  • Aerosmith's "Dream On" is greatly used in the end of the twelfth episode, scoring both Butcher's return to the Boys and the Homelander/Stormfront sex scene.
  • Peaches's aptly named "Boys Wanna Be Her" in the Season 2 finale when Maeve, Kimiko, and Starlight beat the crap out of Stormfront.
  • Scorpions's "Rock You Like a Hurricane" plays during the flashback to Payback in Nicaragua. The larger than life rocking fits both the eighties time period and the excess of superheroes.
• Badass Decay: Homelander starts the series out as the world's strongest Supe and a brutally cunning strategist, able to quickly adapt to deal with failures, think two steps ahead of his enemies, and ultimately ends the season gaining everything he wanted while forcing The Boys into hiding. While he's still every bit the physical threat in the second season that he was in the first season, it also begins to de-emphasize his intelligence by showing the fallout of his choices in the first season, and introduce new players to Vought like Stan Edgar and Stormfront, who are both just as intelligent as Homelander, aren't interested in placating his ego, and can't be bullied into obeying him. This combined with his spectacular failure at being a father-figure to Ryan causes his flaws to become much more apparent and makes him far more prone to making mistakes and bad choices. The season also ends with him being thoroughly outplayed and defeated, being forced go give up everything and let The Boys, Maeve and Starlight go after they blackmail him with footage from Flight 37.
• Base-Breaking Character: Lamplighter is rather divisive amongst viewers, mainly due to how sympathetic he really is. Some like him due to Shawn Ashmore's nuanced performance, believe him to be a Jerkass Woobie in spite of his horrible actions, and see his suicide as quite tragic. However, some dislike him for continuing to do horrible things despite his remorse, such as burning innocent people alive, see his suicide as selfish and almost getting Hughie screwed over, and think he just comes across as an Unintentionally Unsympathetic and Wangsty jerkass.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In "The Bloody Doors Off", Butcher and Annie carjack an innocent man, leading to Annie murdering him. Despite this seemingly showing a big turn for her character, it's never brought up again and Annie is right back to the way she was in the following season.
• Cant Unhear It: For whoever reads the comics, there's no doubt you'll be imagining the voices of Antony Starr as Homelander and Karl Urban as Billy Butcher.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • The reveal that Kimiko has a Healing Factor that allows her to survive seemingly fatal wounds in her fight with Black Noir would probably have been more surprising had we not already seen her brush off A-Train repeatedly slamming her head into a wall with his super speed.
  • Stormfront being evil is not exactly hard to see coming, while her being a Nazi was also very obvious, given her Meaningful Name is shared with a notorious white supremacy group. The unprovoked murder of innocent African-American bystanders, and use of a slur when killing Kimiko's brother confirmed viewers' suspicions well ahead of time.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Finding out that Translucent was spying on Maeve and Starlight completely naked is creepy. Seeing him turn visible without bothering to put on any clothes is darkly hilarious.
  • Hughie blows up Translucent, then the episode ends with "Cherrybomb" by the Runaways playing as Hughie comes to terms with the fact that he just killed a man.
  • A-Train visits a child with leukemia as part of a Make-A-Wish gig. The boy says he wanted Translucent, so A-Train reassures him that Translucent is busy right now, but might visit him next week. Cue the doctor giving a very pessimistic look. Even funnier is that the whole scene was broadcast live to Facebook, so we can see the reacts go from thumbs-up to shocked and angered emojis and the view count absolutely tanks, dropping by close to a hundred thousand in mere seconds.
  • The whole sequence with the dolphin in the truck. First, it gets launched out of the window (while Spice Girls' "Wannabe" plays in slow motion, no less) and smacks into the road. Then the 18 wheeler runs it over. The cherry on top of the whole scene is The Deep's dialogue suggesting that the dolphin was sexualy propositioning him the entire time!
  • Billy using a super-abled baby with Eye Beams to down some goons. Finding out that there are babies being injected with a Super Serum? Not funny. Billy using said baby with Eye Beams to kill goons about to kill them? Hilarious. To add off the hilarity, Billy looks at the baby and says "I'll stomp ya" if the baby doesn't keep their nose clean when they're older.
  • The Deep's gills? Disgusting. Them talking while he's tripping on mushrooms? Even more so. Them counseling him, giving him a legitimate breakthrough about his self-image and how he treats women, causing him to be a better person? Somehow hilarious, especially when they start singing!
  • Once the Deep puts a whale in front of The Boys' boat, Billy deciding to ram the thing up to the beach, covering everyone in blood and downright breaking poor Hughie, is way funnier than such an act of animal cruelty should've been.
  • MM getting strangled by a Supe's stretched-out penis. It's just as simultaneously uncomfortable and hilarious as it sounds.
  • Maeve, Starlight, and Kimiko beating the living shit out of Stormfront is not just crossing the line, but doing leaps over it: the set-up, the music choice, Frenchie's quip in the background... A brutal beatdown that you can't stop laughing about. Or cheering on.
  • Someone being killed while having sex with a supe? Tragic and disturbing. The fact it was because said supe was caressing a guy's penis from within and accidentally blew him up? Kinda funny.
  • Maeve's subplot as a commentary on rainbow capitalism and how Hollywood attempts to commodify queerness starts off as disturbing... and then Season 3 makes it disturbingly hilarious by showing just how vapid Vought is when it comes to this type of thing, with Maeve's section of Voughtland selling "BLM BLTs", "Woke Wok", and "LGBTurkey Legs".
  • Homelander forcing the Deep to eat his octopus friend Timothy alive is horrifying, but it's darkly hilarious to hear him say "eat fucking Timothy" with a deadpan voice.
  • Kimiko is sent undercover to kill a Russian crime boss. The situation is made very gross by that she does this while he is wearing nothing more than a bathrobe and shorts and about to have sex with several prostitutes, or possibly sex slaves. That she then kills the crime boss and impales several of his guards with his collection of superhero-themed dildos and vibrators he was proudly showing off moments earlier? Not only funny, but also a hilarious instance of Karmic Death. The aftermath even shows some of them switched on and vibrating and turning while sticking out of the corpses.
    • The Starlight-themed sex toy is this by virtue of simply existing, given not only her image and background as a good little Christian girl from stereotypically-wholesome Iowa, but for what she's endured since joining the Seven.
  • Due to being a Fish out of Temporal Water, Soldier Boy shows cheerful obliviousness to Bill Cosby's sexual assault allegations, as well as the possibility that Cosby might've roofied him. Going so far as to mistake the drug for a very strong drink. Hughie's disturbed reactions only make this scene funnier.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • The Deep may have extorted oral sex from Starlight, but by the end of the first season, he has suffered both a Humiliation Conga and a Trauma Conga Line (Starlight calling him a loser and reminding him that everyone thinks he's a joke; the company forcing him to promote an aquarium he wants to boycott and getting a dolphin that he tried to rescue killed; getting banished from New York City to Sandusky, Ohio as a precaution in case the other women he assaulted come forward, and living off a meager allowance, while putting up with the harassment of the locals; essentially getting raped by a crazed groupie; and suffering a near mental breakdown after being informed that he was forbidden from joining the Navy and leaving Sandusky), so it's hard not to feel a little bit sorry for him. After joining the Collective, he finds out his rehabilitation may come at the cost of his agency, as they pick a girlfriend for him regardless of his preferences and ultimately only keep him around for two different money-making schemes, getting rid of him the moment he's useless.
  • Stormfront went from being an entertaining gadfly to an unrepentant bigot within the space of three episodes. Then we find out she had a daughter that wasn't born with her prolonged youth who has since died of old age. While it doesn't excuse her plans to establish a Fourth Reich for white supes, you can't help but sympathize with a grieving mother.
  • The Season 2 finale actually found a way to do it for Homelander. While taking away Ryan from Becca (on top of all the other horrific things he's done) is very wrong, you can see that Homelander is legitimately just trying to be a good dad while Ryan is in his care. He immediately gets Ryan out of a stressful situation, sits and talks to him and has a very loving moment with him. When Vought forces come to retrieve him, Homelander starts out in his usual sociopathic cadence but pretty quickly devolves into a furious man just looking for his son. By the end of the season, he's lost pretty much everything, though it's all through his own doings.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Considering that Becca claims Billy has always been rage-filled and violent, his poor social skills, extreme emotions, and M.M.'s insistence that Hughie serves as Billy's conscience, it's implied that he may have some form of borderline personality disorder. According to his aunt Judy, he was always like that since he was a kid (having nearly killed a bully for picking on Lenny), and he nearly murders Ryan after he accidentally kills Becca, in what appears to be a dissociative state of rage. Not helping matters is that his father purposely raised him to be like this, so how much of this is Nature Versus Nurture or some combination of the two is ambiguous and will likely remain so forever.
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing:
  • The show has been accused of this by some. The Boys, particularly Billy Butcher, are portrayed as in the wrong whenever they use lethal force outside the law to get revenge on, or even kill, corrupt Supes. However, given how absolutely horrible many of the Supes are, how the law constantly lets them get off scot-free for their actions, and how The Boys are always the underdogs in the situation, they can come across as actual escapist characters rather than a brutal Deconstruction of them.
  • The show makes many attempts to steer the audience away from seeing Homelander as an example of Evil Is Cool, depicting him as a pathetic Psychopathic Manchild. The issue is that, for all the scenes depicting Homelander as weak, Stupid Evil, and petty, there are also a large number of scenes that seem to revel in the awesomeness of his Beware the Superman abilities and characterization, alongside him being surprisingly cunning at times. This isn't helped by the fact that Homelander, as the face of the show, tends to show up in lots of merchandise and crossovers (2023 saw him enter the Call of Duty franchise and be a Guest Fighter in Mortal Kombat 1, for example.) As such, many have pointed out that the attempts to paint Homelander as pathetic and disgusting can easily fall flat.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Soldier Boy. Partly due to the fact that many of his misdeeds aren't actually shown like with Homelander and Stormfront, and partly due to Jensen Ackles being really handsome and charismatic. Even after clearly crossing the Moral Event Horizon, a lot of fans still see him as more of an anti-hero than a villain. It helps that a lot of his unsympathetic moments are shown to be a result of Values Dissonance and even Fish out of Temporal Water, as opposed to Homelander who displays loads of bigotry and toxic masculinity but doesn't have that same excuse. And Soldier Boy does have some Evil Virtues that Homelander categorically lacks, making it surprisingly easy to root for everyone to just stand aside and let Soldier Boy get rid of Homelander.

E-I

• Epileptic Trees:
  • While The Legend claims that Soldier Boy is a Phony Veteran, this directly contrasts the claims that Stan Edgar made to Homelander. Fans have found a couple of ways to reconcile this — one possiblity is that while Soldier Boy didn't take part in D-Day, he might have fought elsewhere in France before being benched prior to the final push into Germany^note Soldier Boy arriving in France two weeks after D-Day meant he would've arrived in time to take part in Operation Cobra, especially since The Legend only says that he didn't fight in Germany. Another possibility is that most of the Nazis that he killed had already surrendered or were POWs, since it's already been shown that Supes will kill surrendering foes.
  • The penultimate episode of season 3 reveals that overuse of V-24 is invariably fatal, and that Hughie and Butcher are rapidly approaching the safe limit. Some fans believe that this might lead to a situation where the two receive permanent powers via regular Compound V in order to save their lives.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Black Noir, for his weird antics, relative lack of abhorrent behavior (especially compared to his comic self), and overall air of mystery. When the third season expands on his backstory bit-by-bit with Payback flashbacks, fans liked his sympathetic plight.
  • The Deep is easily one of the series most memorable characters despite only being central for some secondary (if not tertiary) plotlines and being consistently portrayed as a sexual predator, a fish-fucker and a incompetent moron. This largely because his many weird behaviours and his ever-lasting, ever-escalating Humiliation Conga make up some of the series most darkly funny and Squick moments. Also because sometimes you can feel some pity for him.
  • Terror, the Butchers' adorable bulldog.
  • Supersonic, for being one of the very few Supes who isn't a complete asshole, being Amicable Exes with Starlight, and even being willing to take down Homelander when he discovers how evil he is. Sadly, he's betrayed by A-Train and gruesomely killed off by Homelander as a warning to Starlight before he can become a more valuable character.
  • Originally introduced during a commercial break of a January 2022 episode of Vought News Network before debuting in the Episode 7 of Season 3, The Buster Beaver's Gang quickly gained their own set of fans due to their cute appearance alongside being Black Noir's only true friends. The most notable is Black Sheep Chef, who not only played the role of Black Noir as the animal gang are reenacting Black Noir's past, but is strongly implied to had been Noir's favorite character of the Buster Beaver's Gang. Some fans even wished on a future spinoff series focused on the Buster Beaver's Gang or a potential short for The Boys: Diabolical.
  • Soldier Boy is only a central character for the latter half of season 3, with about 12 minutes of screen time. Despite this, he is easily a fan-favorite, due to being played by Jensen Ackles, being one of the few characters powerful enough to give Homelander some serious opposition, being genuinely badass unlike other Supes, and having several comedic moments. Him coming across as Unitentionally Sympathetic during the S3's final conflict is both a result of and a contributing factor to this.
• Evil Is Cool: Most of the villains in the series (mainly Supes) are too pathetic and/or despicable to qualify for this trope, yet there are a few exceptions.
  • Stan Edgar. Possibly the most dangerous non-powered being in the whole series, yet you can't help but cheer for him when he manages to put Homelander in his place without breaking a sweat. It helps he's played by Giancarlo Esposito, who has played villains of this type.
  • Part of Black Noir's status as an Ensemble Dark Horse involves his dangerous hand to hand skills paired with a ninja aesthetic and air of mystery. His relative lack of abhorrent behavior compared to the rest of the Seven also helps in this regard. However, the series also managed to pull This Loser Is You in regards to his appeal, when in a flashback his mystique and silent image are explicitly listed as something popular with little children.
  • Soldier Boy, to the point people began to downplay his negative traits massively. Besides that though, he's charismatic and confident in a way Homelander (and most other Supes) is not, is actually quite competent during battle, and delivers a lot of Black Comedy one-liners due to his ridiculously outdated worldview. Ironically, he was intended to be the inverse of this trope.
• Fandom Rivalry: However, there is a little bit of one between some fans of the show and fans of the original comics, given how massively different they are. Some comics fans feel like the massive success of the show has overshadowed the comic series, while some fans introduced through the show are put off by just how much darker and edgier the comic series is.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Some fans have taken to calling spelling Hughie as "Ue", especially in memes, based on how Butcher pronounces Hughie's name.
  • Likewise, there are a fair few memes that call Homelander "'Omelanda", or similar phonetic spellings of how Butcher pronounces the word.
  • The Deep is often ironically referred to as "the Peak", which is a meme version of the character who is supposedly competent, wise and universally beloved.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: While the canon pairing of Billy/Becca has its fans, most fans pair Billy with either Hughie or Homelander instead. In the case of the former, it is due to the chemistry between their actors and the fact that Hughie is Billy's lancer, it is also more popular than any of Hughie's canon relationships (such as with Starlight). In the case of the latter, it is due to their antagonistic relationship and is more popular than the canon Homelander/Stormfront.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Starlight is forced into a Hotter and Sexier costume, where she has to wear a Leotard of Power and a longer wig, showing more cleavage. Despite how degrading she finds it, there's no denying it looks very flattering on Erin Moriarty, and there are plenty of cosplayers for that outfit too. Even Moriarty herself was reported to have liked it.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Jesus Christ. Ashley constantly dresses in colorful, cheesy clothes with weird markings, has no sense of fashion and in Season 2 wears yellow heels to grey suit. It gets better in Season 3, but in one episode she looked like a mint candy.
• Faux Symbolism: America's poster-boy Homelander gets in bed with a full-blown Nazi and allows himself to be manipulated by her. Audiences immediately saw it as a comment on how patriotism (at least the superficial idea of it) can be compatible with fascism.
• Fight Scene Failure: A lot of supe-on-supe fights tend to be rather underwhelming to viewers, as the show doesn't put much effort into them the way more traditional superhero TV shows like The Flash (2014) or Smallville would. While this might be somewhat intentional as part of the "superheroes suck" aspect by showing how these conflicts wouldn't be as epic as those make them out to be, in practice it just makes the effects look really cheap (despite the show's otherwise high quality). It doesn't help that Power Creep, Power Seep is heavily in-play; though all supes have some level of Super-Strength and Super-Toughness, their feats are often demonstrated in non-combat areas or informed. So when they get into fights, their strength levels don't always match their previous estimates or billing and the resulting fight scenes look more like a standard scrap between two normal individuals outside of the occasional token toss into the air or minor scenery destruction.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Preacher (2016), as both are recent and popular television adaptations of Garth Ennis' work that share a similar Lighter and Softer/Denser and Wackier approach to their creative processes.
  • Fans of Invincible (both the comic and the new Amazon animated series) tend to get along incredibly well with fans of The Boys, from general overlap (both adaptations are on Amazon) to their tone to what they tackle. That and the sheer violence, of course.
  • The inclusion of Jensen Ackles as well as being showrun by Eric Kripke naturally brought in many fans of Supernatural.
  • There is a little bit of overlap with the Prometheus fandom too because of the uncanny similarities between the android David and Homelander, with many fans commenting they could not tell apart Anthony Starr and Michael Fassbender while playing the respective roles. Both David and Homelander hide their Omnicidal Maniac tendencies under a Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold facade, both developed a God complex, and suffered at the hand of corporations run by ruthless businessmen that refused to see them as humans, both have same hairstyle and the german dub is even done by same voice actor.
• Foe Yay Shipping: A lot of fans ship Billy Butcher and Homelander together, despite the fact that the two loath and constantly try to kill each other, mainly due to the chemistry between their actors and many feeling that it is more interesting than their canon romances.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Thanks to Antony Starr's highly expressive performance, Homelander has gradually become one of these over the course of the show, with meme culture often portraying him in a similar light to Patrick Bateman.
  • Jensen Ackles's turn as Soldier Boy has been described as a goldmine of memes, thanks to him saying the most outrageous things with a completely straight face, as well as his ultra-masculine character.
• Genius Bonus:
  • A-Train laments that he's aging out of his prime running years and will end up a "freak" like Ben Johnson. Johnson himself was caught using performance-enhancing drugs and stripped of his gold medal at the 1988 Olympics.
  • In "Nothing Like it in the World," Hughie and Annie sing along to "We Didn't Start the Fire" during the road trip to investigate Liberty. That song appears on the album Storm Front.
  • The fact that "Stormfront" is also the name of an infamous neo-Nazi website is an early clue that Stormfront is herself an actual Nazi.
• Growing the Beard: While the show was never considered bad, by Season 2, it grew beyond adapting its source material and moved away from the rather thin "Superheroes Suck" and into its own territory of political commentary and satire. With Season 3 being considered superior to its predecessor.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Robin's death is sad enough, with Vought offering hush money to Hughie and his dad outright saying that they don't have the resources, financial or otherwise, to sue for manslaughter. Billy reveals that so many Supes have done damage that a local support group has twenty people with stories of those who survived but got permanent injuries or trauma from Supes. The group leader outright says that it's okay to be angry, but this is how the world is and the only choice is to accept it and find ways to live with yourself. Hughie's face during the session screams, "How come I have never heard of these people before?"
  • Seth just seems to be a cog in the Vought PR machine along with Ed as the marketing writer team. He writes stories to spin Supes in a good light and lets Stillwell sell them. There's always an aura of nervousness, however, when he's pitching to Stillwell or the Supe in question. We find out why; if we believe him, Seth goes to a Collateral Damage support group where he admits that he let an ice Supe seduce him, and still loves her even though she accidentally castrated him with her powers.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In the first episode of season 3, M.M. is celebrating Janine’s birthday, which is supe themed, with her dressed up as Starlight. It’s uncomfortable at first, especially with Todd dressed as Homelander. However, in later episodes, M.M. and Starlight have become Fire-Forged Friends, which makes seeing Janine in Starlight’s costume a lot more comfortable to watch.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Antony Starr absolutely shines here as Homelander, who shows off throughout the first season and well into the second how well he can switch between being a friendly Superman Substitute in public and an absolutely terrifying and heartless monster in private.
  • Similarly, while Aya Cash had already gotten a lot of praise for her previous role on You're the Worst, she really gets to go to town in terms of versatility here as Stormfront, seriously rivaling Starr in how well she can flip between being surprisingly amiable in public and a horrifying Neo-Nazi Serial Killer when "on the battlefield."
  • Karen Fukuhara has also been getting this reaction with many praising her for always making her emotions known with no spoken dialogue, particularly when Kimiko reunites with and eventually mourns for her brother.
  • Chace Crawford does a stellar job as The Deep, not only showing excellent comedic timing but managing to earn genuine sympathy from audiences for a despicable man. This is especially pronounced in the scene where he interacts with his gills, a moment that could've been pure Narm in the hands of another actor, but is genuinely heartfelt and hilarious in Crawford's hands. Definitely a far cry from his previous role as Nate Archibald.
  • Karl Urban gets to shed off Butcher's Action Hero nature and deliver a very sincere and heartbreaking performance when he reunites with Becca and loses her again.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • A few fans have theorized that Stormfront's suicide is a cover up given we don't actually see her die, nor do we get a good look at the body afterwards.
  • Many believe that Black Noir is Not Quite Dead after Homelander supposedly kills him, as we've already seen he's survived through horrific injuries before and has a Healing Factor to an unknown extent. The fact that he was just going through his first big arc in preparing to fight back against Soldier Boy, and Soldier Boy is still alive only further supports this. Additionally, in proving to his team that he killed Noir, Homelander noticeably only shows them his mask, and not the actual corpse. This was shot down by Kripke though, who confirmed the character's death and even gave out of universe practical reasoning for it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Season 2's subplot about the filming of the Dawn of the Seven movie, itself modeled after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as far as the title and poster are concerned, started airing right around the time it was announced that the "Snyder Cut" of Justice League would be released. This itself is somewhat ironic, considering that the intended Shout-Out to Joss Whedon (who penned some rewrites to Dawn of the Seven in-universe) instead feels more like a retroactive Take That! against his involvement in the 2017 theatrical cut, which has become rather infamous for its deeply Troubled Production where he had rewritten and reshot a large chunk of the film to give it a lighter tone and more humor (only for critics to disparage its inconsistent tone) while also allegedly engaging in abusive behavior towards the cast and crew.
  • There's quite a bit of this with Jack Quaid (Hughie).
    • First, there's that fact that he's voicing Superman in the animated series My Adventures with Superman, making this a show where Superman works to take down a Superman clone. To make it even more ironic, the main villain of the first season is Task Force X, a government organization that believes Superman is a threat and are trying to take him down, like a villainous version of The Boys. He also voiced Alberto Falcone in the animated adaptation of The Long Halloween.
    • Quaid also has a role in Star Trek: Lower Decks, which is funny considering he's starring alongside two actors (Simon Pegg and Karl Urban) who'd previously starred in the reboot movies (with the former playing his character's father).
  • Ana Sani plays crime analyst Anika, who has a bit of a Sweet Tooth and is rarely seen without some sort of sugary treat. Two years later, she’d end up voicing the title character of Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City, the latest series of a franchise well-known for having characters named after sweets and candy.
• Hollywood Homely: The characters constantly joke about Starlight being way out of Hughie's league and wonder what she sees in him. Although Hughie is quite insecure and clumsy at various times, it still does not erase the fact that Jack Quaid is pretty easy on the eyes. Making this more ironic is the fact that Hughie received some Adaptational Attractiveness in the series, as the Hughie of the comics was explicitly drawn to look like Simon Pegg.
• Improved Second Attempt: The comics were heavily criticized for subpar writing, the characters not having that much depth, and how overly disgusting it could be, with many believing that Ennis let his extreme hatred towards superheroes blind him from writing a good story. In contrast, the show has been praised by viewers for changing the story of the comic in the TV show with stronger writing, better character arcs, and giving the Supes complexity rather than being one-dimensional villains, resulting in the series achieving international success, spawning a franchise and becoming one of the very rare times where the adaptation is superior than the source material, along with making Homelander one of the most iconic villains in modern television.
• Inferred Holocaust:
  • With the police investigating the explosion at Butcher's Aunt Judy's house at the end of "We Gotta Go Now", Judy is very likely to be arrested when the police find evidence of her selling drugs in her basement.
  • In the finale of Season 3, Maeve stops the Boys from taking down Soldier Boy by throwing their glass bottle of novichok out of a high window in the middle of New York. It is never even mentioned that this has the potential to kill hundreds of people.
• The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: The TV series, albeit with a strong Black Comedy factor, is a cynical Deconstruction of the Superhero genre as whole, with a shady corporation in control of various aspects of society, the Super"heroes" only interested in their own fame, and the protagonists being very flawed individuals as well. This doesn't stop the fans from making jokes and memes on every character of the show.

J-M

• Jerkass Woobie: Just about all the Supes. The vast majority of them are a bunch of lying, raping, murdering bastards with zero morals. They are also all fundamentally broken people who cling to their wealth and fame because it's all they've got, while all the genuinely positive things they try to have or do keep slipping through their fingers. See here for specific examples.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: In a cast of truly depraved monstrous superhumans, some of the most hated characters are ordinary people.
  • The Deep's wife Cassandra is a manipulative and sadistic gold digger who mistreats her husband. She pushed Deep to eat his octopus, and later fed him racist lines just so he could be on Homelander's good side.
  • Todd is the new husband of MM's ex-wife, who is pushing his reactionary beliefs onto his stepdaughter. He is a representation of people who got suckered into supporting Trump, Qanon, and other nonsensical conspiracies, and many fans despise him since he reminds them of people they actually know.
• Karmic Overkill:
  • Mesmer's fate is this, if not outright Unintentionally Sympathetic. Betraying the Boys and throwing away his chance to get back into his daughter's life so he can have another shot at fame was no doubt a scummy move. However, the Boys abducted him, got his hand broken trying to read Kimiko's mind, and it was implied that his daughter still wanted nothing to do to him even after he visited her. In spite of his actions, getting his head bashed into a sink was a pretty horrible way to go, and him spending his last moments begging Billy for his life after reading his mind so he would know what he was going to do to him made it worse.
  • After a while, it can be hard to enjoy the Deep's everlasting Humiliation Conga. While he is an asshole who definitely deserves punishment for his actions, the fact that he is raped by a fan while exiled to Ohio (which is never brought up again), threatened multiple times by Homelander, forced to eat his octopus friend by Homelander and his wife, and finally, falsely accused of abuse by his wife after he cheats on her with an octopus, is a bit much even for the Deep. Especially after Season 2 revealed that his behaviour is a result of a fear that women will reject him because of his gills, it can be extremely hard to see the above mentioned rape by a fan who specifically targets his gills as karma.
  • Many feel this way about Soldier Boy. Although he was definitely deserving of some punishment for abusing and mistreating his team, him being betrayed by them and shipped off to Russia to be experimented and tortured on for nearly 40 YEARS can be a little much to say the least, even with what he did to poor Black Noir. In the finale, he even comes across as Unintentionally Sympathetic as he kept his promise to The Boys to kill Homelander, who he realized was his own son, yet ends up being betrayed by them anyway after he ends up hurting Ryan because he was in the way.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Kimiko is left mortally wounded by Soldier Boy at the end of season 3's "Glorious Five Year Plan", leaving many fans wondering if she'd make it or not. She pulls through by the end of the next episode.
  • Soldier Boy, one of the strongest superheroes ever, played by Jensen Ackles, and featured extensively in the promotion of Season 3, is revealed to not have been killed offscreen by Russians 40 years ago, but merely captured.
• Love to Hate:
  • Antony Starr has gotten unanimous critical praise for stealing the show as Homelander. As despicable as his character is, Homelander takes command of every scene he's in, balancing humor, depravity, and outright horror with remarkable ease.
  • The Deep is a sleazy, abusive scumbag, but the show spends a lot of time showing how truly pathetic he is. It can be tremendously cathartic and entertaining to see him constantly fuck up and in constant fear. It's aided by Chace Crawford's shamelessly self-pitying performance.
  • Stormfront's Smug Snake personality gives her an incredible presence thanks to Aya Cash's excellent performance, and once she's outed as a racist sociopath who's not only a Distaff Counterpart to Homelander, but somehow angers the man himself, audiences quickly embraced her as the ultimate Hate Sink.
  • Blue Hawk is a racist who brutalizes black people and every scene he's in shows just what an awful and unpleasant person he is. But his sheer loathsomeness combined with Nick Weschler's performance that commits to making him as vile as possible makes him enjoyable to watch and his death at A-Train's hands all the more satisfying.
  • Todd is a representation of those who follow the alt-right; Homelander's biggest Loony Fan cheering him on when his idol preaches and practices violence towards the "right people," a Conspiracy Theorist who peddles blatant disinformation while living in his own alternate reality where facts twist themselves to suit his needs, and a Smug Snake who has the gall to say he's a better father than Marvin despite taking Janine to Homelander's Trump-esque rallies. Despite his limited screentime he hits all the right beats that make him loathsome in a realistic way akin to Dolores Umbridge, making it all the sweeter when M.M. punches his lights out.
• Memetic Badass:
  • The Deep is somehow this and a Memetic Loser at the same time. Fans will ironically hype him up as the best and strongest character on the show, probably because of what a joke he actually is.
  • Stan Edgar gets this thanks to the admittedly awesome moment where he gives Homelander the scathing of a lifetime. Fans have jokingly labelled him a Supe who can defeat any opponent by using Trash Talk.
  • Soldier Boy, for actually managing to give Homelander a good fight and even coming close to winning (albeit with help from a super-powered Butcher and Hughie). That, and the fact that he's basically a walking representation of ultra-masculinity has caused him to jokingly be deemed a total "giga-chad".
• Memetic Loser: The Supes in general are this, due to being all blatant parodies of mainstream superheroes, having questionable codenames and often being horrible or broken people. Of course, this is partially by design. They are also this due to them often being (somewhat deliberately) writen as much less powerful than other superhuman characters from different works. Whenever a character from The Boys (often Homelander) is put on a crossover with a similar character from another story, expect the supe to either be portrayed as weaker than or downright lose a fight against their counterpart. A few stand out:
  • The Deep. When Starlight calls him a pathetic asshole in Season 1, it’s a perfect summary of him. Nobody respects him: not just because of his incredibly situational powers or the Body Horror that comes with it, but also because he’s got the brains of a barnacle and an ego that leads him to sexually abuse the women around him. Almost all of the tragedies he suffers, usually coming at the cost of his only friends (which are fish), are caused by his own hand. Oh, and he fucks fish. It’s because of these vile traits that the viewers tend to enjoy watching him get his comeuppance... whenever he actually deserves it, at least.
  • Homelander himself is arguably an even greater example. If you actually watched the series, you would know that Homelander is a near-invincible threat whose immature personality only serves to make him come across as much more intimidating and unpredictable. This is not the idea the (many) Homelander meme templates give, as the vast majority of them consist of Homie on his lowest, most cringe-worthy moments. If your only contact with the series was via online meme culture, then you would be very forgiven for assuming Homelander to be an overemotional and ineffectual weirdo. Following his appearance on DEATH BATTLE! his status as a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond became yet another meme at his expense, with users often joking about how easily he'd be defeated by even the weakest characters in other universes. This only went further when Homelander was announced as a Guest Fighter for Mortal Kombat 1, and fans were ecstatic to see him... to make him the punching bag of every other character in the roster and inflict every Fatality possible.
  • Starlight. Despite her introduction showcasing impressive martial arts skills and raw physical power her threats often fizzle out. This is further hampered by her reliance on external electricity to fuel her powers. The show has a tendency of creating situations where she's pitted against demonstrably stronger Supes where she is not even shown putting up a serious fight at least if she is still gonna lose said fight. The audience complained and made a lot of memes about her confrontation with Soldier Boy, where the dramatic build-up suggests an outcome where Starlight could seriously injure him, yet her supposedly powerful attack only manages to push him back a few meter. As of Season 3, she is seen more as a joke and a wasted potential by the fanbase.
• Memetic Mutation: So many of them that Vought made sure to create a separate page for them.
• Memetic Psychopath: A-Train is frequently portrayed in memes as someone deliberately ruining various happy couples by killing the girlfriend. While he did kill two girlfriends in the show itself (Robin Ward, Hughie's girlfriend, and Popclaw, his own girlfriend), he killed the former by complete accident, and he was forced by Homelander to kill the latter.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Fans of both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Extended Universe love the series even though it regularly lampoons their creative decisions, likely because it balances the levity of the former with the gravity of the latter. Zack Snyder himself got a laugh out of the Dawn of the Seven trailer, which spoofs all three of his DCEU films at once.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • A lot of fans take Stan Edgar’s claim that he cannot do anything about Stormfront because he’s black as a great justification for his actions, even though he’s the CEO of an extremely powerful corporation and personally brought her into the Seven, and could very easily deal with Stormfront without “lashing out like an entitled maniac”. While his point has merit outside of this conversation, it is more of a way to absolve himself of any guilt, similar to how he publicly condemns human experimenting while also engaging in it
  • More broadly, the show developed a notable fanbase of "anti-woke" conservatives in its first two seasons in a manner similar to South Park, largely due to its skewering of We Care messaging by corporations trying to appear progressive on social issues. Season 3, however, made it clear that the show's own politics were rooted in an earnest embrace of social progressivism, and that its satire was aimed more at disingenuous attempts to latch onto these causes than at the causes themselves, as it made the villainous Homelander into an Angry White Man with shades of Donald Trump. Needless to say, a lot of these right-wing fans were not happy and railed against the show's creative team for making it "too political", even though the show had worn its politics on its sleeve from the start (what with the criticism of anti-gay fundamentalism in the first season or the alt-right in the second).
  • Homelander himself has gained a strange level of admiration from some viewers. This isn't a matter of interpreting him as more sympathetic than he is or whitewashing his behavior, but admiring the fact he's a Smug Super who can abuse his power any way he sees fit, with people viewing him unironically as a genuine Power Fantasy despite the fact he's meant to be a criticism of such. Some even prefer him to Superman, due to finding the latter's altruism and restraint with his powers "weak" or boring, genuinely believing that a character with this power should embrace it to bully others the way Homelander does. Suffice to say, this is not how Homelander is meant to be viewed.
  • The show has at least attempted to avoid this with Billy Butcher, who in the comics was criticized for being as much of a power fantasy as superheroes themselves. While the rest of the Boys are genuinely heroic if somewhat messy, Butcher is explicitly a He Who Fights Monsters Token Evil Teammate engaged in Fantastic Racism whose violence and toxicity are not celebrated. Despite that, some still view him as an admirable anti-hero, agreeing with his worldview and celebrating his unapologetic assholery.
  • Soldier Boy singing "Rapture" is supposed to be another example of Stylistic Suck from Vought, instead, many fans consider it an example of Awesome Music (including Debbie Harry herself). Jensen Ackles's baritone certainly helped.
  • The “Girls get it done” scene gets a Misaimed Hatedom. It was meant to be a mockery of clumsily handled "Girl Power" scenes in action movies, like the scene in Avengers: Endgame where all the female superheroes come together in during the Final Battle to support Carol Danvers, which garnered criticism for feeling like shallow pandering. Despite this, many anti-feminist people still took a shot at the scene and complained about how it was pushing a woke agenda.

N-R

• Narm:
  • The abbreviation of "superheroes" as "Supes". One might be inclined to think everyone's just really serious about their brands of soup.
  • Apparently Kimiko can't think of another way to indicate she wants to rescue her brother than simply pointing out the word "boy" over and over and over again, no matter how many times she sees that Frenchie has no idea what she means by it and always acting just as frustrated that he can't magically deduce what she wants from that single word.
  • Soldier Boy's dialogue to Mallory in the flashback is such a laundry list of Straw Misogynist cliches - flirting with her openly in front of his girlfriend, telling her to smile more, accusing her of being gay when she calls him out on his behavior - that it's eye-roll worthy. Although given that Soldier Boy is meant to be a scathing indictment of toxic masculinity and Deliberate Values Dissonance in general, this might have been the point.
  • Similarly, Mallory's initial statement: "Planet Actual Woman" comes off as extreme, even if the rest of her speech is a sharp dressing down of his character.
  • Homelander revealing to Starlight that he knows all about her plan to get rid of him and showing her Supersonic's gruesome and bloody corpse as a warning is genuinely frightening and shocking, yet the moment can be slightly ruined by Erin Moriarty's rather flat reaction.
  • In the Season 3 finale, Starlight gets a massive power boost that makes her eyes shine even brighter and gives her flight. The whole scene is treated with incredible gravitas what with slo-mo shots of Hughie and Soldier Boy looking at Starlight flying while sparks fly in the background, giving the impression that she's going to do some super cool new move. Then she just blasts Soldier Boy a couple of feet back with her standard light beams, something she's done multiple times already throughout the series. The fact that Starlight collapses after the light show and Soldier Boy just shrugs off the attack a few seconds later makes the entire scene look even more underwelming.
• Narm Charm:
  • While it quickly falls into Black Comedy Animal Cruelty due to Butcher Out Gambitting him, the Deep actually gets a brief opportunity to be surprisingly badass when he's facing off against The Boys by showing how effective he can be when in his element.
  • The Deep conversing with his gills in a way that touches on his Freudian Excuse and ends in a Pep-Talk Song is as ridiculous as it sounds, but thanks to a knowing comedic angle and Chace Crawford's sincere performance, the result is a scene that's not only hilariously out there, but emotional and touching.
  • Though Karl Urban's accent has been called dodgy, this is forgiven due to the overall strength of his performance, and Butcher's voice has still been noted as cool and easy on the ears.
  • Soldier Boy's infamous "rap". While he's a completely inept as a singer, the sheer absurdity of mass murdering superhero Soldier Boy singing along to Blondie's "Rapture" in full costume in a long-forgotten 1980s variety show makes the clip incredibly memorable.
• Never Live It Down: Considering the meme that has A-Train ruin various couples by killing the girlfriend of said couples, it's safe to say that the fandom is never going to let him live down accidentally killing Robin Ward from the first episode.
• Nightmare Fuel: See here.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Translucent's invisibility is already creepy enough. Finding out that he likes sneaking into toilets completely naked and is strong enough to knock down someone like Butcher is downright terrifying.
  • Similarly, Naqib is basically the underlying terror of a suicide bomber turned up to eleven since he can always come back and explode again.
    • He is also just one of the many, many super-terrorists that have been started thanks to Homelander releasing Compound V worldwide. Several unofficial organizations have come to reap whatever rises from the spread of them, with the Haitian Kings gang that Frenchie has connections to being paid to traffic one.
  • Maeve tells Elena that the reason why she is so afraid of being in a relationship is because once at an award ceremony, a producer got a seat next to her and flirted most of the night… and then Homelander brutally murdered him. Not only is it terrifying that innocent people could be killed just for talking to you, but also the idea that Homelander could murder you for something you didn't even realize was an issue.
  • Susan Raynor's head bursts while she's meeting with The Boys in an open area. No one knows how this happened, leading to fear that there's a Supe out there with the power to make Your Head Asplode from a distance. The implication that they were under surveillance at the time and she was killed because she was about to reveal something important hardly makes them any less twitchy. Then episode seven rolls around and the exact same thing happens to more than a dozen people at the Congressional hearing. One of the officials is the first to go, followed by Jonah Vogelbaum, making you think its targeting those who are a danger to Vought. But then it starts happening to random people, including Shockwave. And neither Homelander nor Stormfront seem to know what's going on.
  • In general, numerous shots are filmed just slightly off-center so as to enforce the idea of Homelander potentially flying right into the scene and ambushing whoever is there.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: The subtle nature of Becca's reaction to seeing Homelander in the Season 1 finale, as well as the overall mystery surrounding her disappearance, had fueled strong speculation that Becca had an affair with Homelander, rather than be his victim. Despite Word of God, it wasn't until Season 2 that such theories were explicitly disproven.
• Play-Along Meme: During the third season's 7 on 7^note an In-Universe news show ad campaign as well as the other viral marketing clips which are trailers and promos for the In-Universe films, most (if not all) of the commenters on YouTube go out of their way to be completely in character if they were citizens of the show's reality.
  Commenter: Homelander saved my cat stuck in a tree yesterday. She lost her tail but it's a small price to pay. Thanks, Homelander!
• Popular with Furries: Season 3 introduces Buster Beaver's, the show's version of Chuck E. Cheese (mainly based during the Pizza Time Theatre days). Buster Beaver (voiced by Eric Bauza) and his friends gained a few fans from the furry fandom as early as January 2022 before the teaser for Season 3 hit the Internet. However, the unnamed Black Sheep Chef has gained the most attention out of the group.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • In the comics, Soldier Boy is a fairly irrelevant character with a silly costume. He is also a massive coward with zero combat prowess who mostly just shows up to be degraded and humiliated in some way; he literally only exists for the out-of-universe reason that Garth Ennis wants to bash Captain America. In many ways, he's the complete opposite of what makes Jensen Ackles' portrayal of the character so beloved.
  • The Deep. He isn't disliked in the comics, he just doesn't do anything. He barely speaks, and essentially just a living prop inside a diving helmet, whereas in the show he's a far more fleshed-out character.
  • Black Noir. While he isn't disliked either in the comics, the twist revealing that Noir is a clone of Homelander, and also the one responsible for everything horrible Homelander supposedly did is a controversial one, especially once it's revealed that Noir in the show is a Black guy named Earving and is given a sympathetic backstory and an almost child-like personality.
  • A-Train. While he's still a massive douche, in the comics, he was one of the three Seven members that sexually assaulted Starlight her first day, openly mocked her for it during her first official meeting, and eventually tried to outright rape her when the two were alone. The show's A-Train may be insufferable, but he isn't a sexual predator whereas the comic version is so unbelievably unlikable that it's almost comical.
• Ron the Death Eater: Elena gets a lot of flack from some fans for breaking up with Maeve after finding the footage of Homelander making her abandon a crashing plane. A lot of these fans accuse Elena of blaming Maeve for the crash, when she actually makes it very clear that she doesn't and understands that Maeve was just scared. Overall, Elena is incredibly gentle with Maeve considering the difficult situation they were in, and doesn't completely cut ties with her. Rather, she says that she just needs time. These fans also ignore that Maeve was the one who originally broke up with Elena, and just because she didn't want to be outed, a much less important reason than discovering your girlfriend is complicit in mass murder, and may have been involved in other disasters.
• Rooting for the Empire: Some fans might find themselves cheering on Soldier Boy during the season 3 finale. In spite of having established that he's just as awful as the other Supes on the show, it didn't change the fact that he had no intention of hurting anyone as soon as he was done with Homelander. Butcher and his teammates turning on him and siding with Homelander during the final battle is even considered to be an Unintentionallly Unsympathetic moment by many fans due to the fact that Homelander was the greater threat and not Soldier Boy.

S-W

• Salvaged Story: Season 3 in general did a lot to fix many of the complaints of Season 2:
  • Due to Eric Kripke's dislike of the idea of The Boys gaining superpowers, Season 2 really began to stretch the bounds of the believability of them surviving every encounter with the supes. Season 3 instead compromises and introduces V24 (a Compound V variant that lasts for 24 hours), allowing The Boys to have a much more believable chance against the supes without giving them full superpowers just yet.
  • Fans were puzzled by A-Train somehow being able to run perfectly again despite dealing with a debilitating heart condition throughout Season 2. Season 3 brings back his condition to the forefront of his character as, while he can still use his super speed, he risks his heart exploding every time he does so. As a result, he has stopped racing and has to find a new way to be useful to Vought now that his primary contribution is gone. It also clarifies the confusion as to why Vought brought him back when Homelander expressed doubt that A-Train was even in the top twenty of speedsters, namely that they wouldn't have brought him back if it weren't for the bad PR from Stormfront. This culminates in him suffering a heart attack when he finally uses his super speed to kill Blue Hawk, a heart attack that would have been fatal had Vought not transplanted Blue Hawk's heart into him.
  • After Teddy Stillwell was revealed to have survived the explosion at the Stillwell house in the Season 2 premiere, fans were quick to call out that Homelander seemed to be acting out-of-character as he seemed to save Teddy despite hating him personally and caring nothing about individual people (he didn't even take credit for the save). Season 3 reveals that Homelander didn't save him and Teddy has the power to teleport.
  • After Starlight's admitted annoyance toward the innocent man she and Butcher carjacked and killed rubbed fans the wrong way, the show has taken strides to show Kimiko having great remorse over the collateral damage she leaves. In particular, when Crimson Countess accidentally turns a Voughtland mascot into Ludicrous Gibs while aiming at her and Frenchie and it covers the children in the gore, Kimiko blames herself for it.
  • After some fans derided the multiple times blackmail had been used against the more powerful characters by the protagonists, Season 3 shows it not working: Gunpowder responds to it with violence against Butcher, and Homelander straight up tells Starlight to go ahead and reveal the Flight 37 footage when she threatens to use it if he puts the Deep back on the Seven, saying that if he loses everything, then he has nothing to lose and can go on to kill everyone in his way as a result.
• Shallow Parody: The show does do a good job at parodying the commercialization of the genre and the unfortunate way it's been in the pocket of major corporate interests, but much of the specific depictions of superheroes fall rather flat.
  • A lot of the Deconstructive Parody elements rely on the premise of "What if X character was actually evil", with Homelander being an obvious example as one towards Superman. However, Homelander's primary motivation for his evil nature stems from wholly original flaws with his character, namely his need to be loved, rather than corrupting any of Superman's actual personality traits or flaws, making it less a criticism of Superman as a character and more just a Villain with Good Publicity supervillain with Superman's powers.^note For example: Homelander basically lived his entire childhood in a lab, whereas Superman was an alien who had a normal family life. A closer deconstruction would be if Homelander was raised by an abusive family who instilled things into him that run counter to Superman's values. This isn't limited to just Homelander, but most of the Corrupted Character Copy supes fail to deconstruct any of the original characters' flaws (for instance, rather than deconstruct any of Aquaman's issues, The Deep is a sexual predator, while Maeve, rather than parodying Wonder Woman's Holier Than Thou tendencies, is a drunk and depressed washout), instead choosing to just depict most of the characters as depraved narcissistic hedonists. What makes it more shallow is that both Marvel and DC themselves have done a more accurate job deconstructing their own and each other's characters, with "evil Superman" being such an overused plot point fans have actually gotten sick of it, and pretty much every superhero having an Evil Counterpart (in some cases, multiple), a Bad Future or Alternate Universe version of them turning evil, or a Sketchy Successor who shows why it's more than just powers that made The Hero who they were.
  • Homelander and Stormfront, as well as many other heroes, are shown to be very popular with the Alt-Right in-universe, with the apparent implication that superheroes are naturally going to resonate with the fascists. While there are undeniable issues with Misaimed Fandom, it's not been with Superman and more 'traditional' superheroes, but characters like The Punisher and Batman, IE, the gritty Badass Normal anti-heroes, the kind of characters who inspired Butcher and The Boys themselves (and though the show criticizes this too, it doesn't acknowledge the links between vigilante violence and white supremacy the way it invents one between that and costumed super-beings). The more "traditional" superhero has largely fallen out of favor with the Alt-Right under the belief they've "become woke", while beforehand, conservative-leaning readers and writers had often criticized Superman for not being more fascist with his approach. Ironically, Homelander himself became quite popular with real-life Alt-Right crowds who didn't get that he was a criticism of them ^note alternatively, they did understand the criticism and embraced him to piss people off , in a way that Superman would never be embraced by such today.
  • The show somewhat falls into the same "all superheroes are Evangelical Christians" trap the comic does. As mentioned in the YMMV page for the comics and the Dead Unicorn Trope page, fundamentalist Christian characters are largely limited to supervillain entities like the Purifiers and Moral Substitutes like Bibleman.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Epic Fail of the failed Flight 37 rescue is often seen as the series' definitive example of how it serves as a Darker and Edgier Deconstruction of the superhero genre.
  • On a (relatively) lighter note, Butcher using a baby Supe with Eye Beams as an Improvised Weapon is seen as a perfect example of the series' Black Comedy and utterly insane antics.
  • And on a considerably grimmer note, there's Stormfront's massacre of an entire apartment building of black families, which gives a whole new idea of how few punches the show is prepared to pull in its messages.
• Squick: The revelation that Soldier Boy is Homelander's father gets a bit icky when you remember they've both done the nasty with Stormfront. Given her Nazi views regarding genetics, inbreeding probably wouldn't be beneath her.
• Strawman Has a Point: It's meant to make him look overly smothering but Mr. Campbell actually took a sensible course of action when asking his son's former pediatrician about what he could do to help with Hughie's deteriorating mental health. While pediatricians generally don't see patients after they age out, they can make recommendations for other specialists, which is exactly what said pediatrician did, providing the name of a therapist that could talk Hughie through his PTSD. That's not even going into how long it can take to schedule an appointment with an adult general practitioner in the US.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While Black Noir's show version certainly has fans, there is some fans of the comics who decry the fact that he has basically been turned into an In Name Only version of his comics counterpart due in no small part to the fact that this will change the entire ending.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Naqib is introduced at the end of Season 1 as (narratively at least) the first "Super Villain", and with his explosive powers, he seemed to be setup to be a potential foe for the Seven to have to deal with, especially once it is revealed Homelander had spread Compound V across the world to encourage "Super Villains" to make the Seven seem necessary for the military. Season 2 quickly kills him off in his only scene, not helped by him getting a new actor, which made people initially confused if it was the same character.
  • Shockwave could have gotten at least some development as to whether he was a Redeeming Replacement or (like so many other Supes) just as flawed in his own way. What little we see of him suggests he is a bit smug, but be barely gets any scenes before he gets killed in Season 2.
  • Lamplighter is reinvented as a surprisingly nuanced character, being a Death Seeker over his past mistakes. After maybe two/three episodes of focus, he rather abruptly kills himself after most of his interesting traits get brushed aside to focus on him watching porn. Eric Kripke himself said that once he saw how Shawn Ashmore gave depth and sympathy to Lamplighter, "I really regretted that we were killing him."
  • Gunpowder is the first member of Payback to die and in the process gets the ball rolling for Billy to find Soldier Boy, but with The Reveal that Gunpowder was the only member of Payback who didn't betray Soldier Boy to the Russians, some fans lamented that it was a lost opportunity for Soldier Boy to interact with a member of his team that he wouldn't be interested in taking revenge on.
  • Supersonic, one of the few Supes who isn't a huge Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and becomes a member of the Seven at the start of Season 3. What's more, he's Amicable Exes with Starlight and, thanks to her telling him, also completely in the know about how corrupted the Seven and especially their leader Homelander really are. He lasts about two episodes before he's betrayed by A-Train and gruesomely murdered by Homelander to scare Starlight into obedience.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • One of the criticisms given to the series is how the world hasn't really been changed that much by the existence of Supes until the modern day. Admittedly, there are several hints that America is still stuck in the 2000s' sexual mores (Starlight's enforced purity shtick and the more open homophobic propaganda, for example), but it's still a bit jarring to see how the overall world is Like Reality, Unless Noted despite the existence of superpowered vigilantes since the 1940s. This is made especially noticeable in Season 2 when Hughie and Starlight sing along to "We Didn't Start the Fire", which is somehow exactly the same.
  • While the Deep's rape by a fan was praised for not being Played for Laughs, the scene has not even been mentioned since that episode, almost making it a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. The incident hasn't played any role in the Deep's story, and it makes the redemption arc he seems to have been setup for in Season 2 feel like it went no where.
  • Season 3 opens with it being a timeskip of over a year, during which Hughie has been helping Victoria Neuman regulate heroes, even mentioning early on that they have reduced the amount of Hero collateral by nearly 60%. As interesting as this is, the fact it just skips over this idea, only ever showing one time the Boys try to bust a Hero for their actions, makes it feel fairly underdeveloped as an idea, especially because very shortly after the season starts, Hughie learns Victoria is actually the Supe behind the head-exploding's cases, at which point the story shifts and doesn't really continue the idea. An entire season could have been dedicated to just this concept alone.
  • Homelander unceremoniously murdering Black Noir before he even got a chance to confront Soldier Boy in the Season 3 finale, especially after the previous episodes have been hyping up the grudge match between the two Supes, has been widely criticized by audiences as a missed opportunity that robbed them of the Catharsis Factor of Noir getting his rematch against the man who has both tormented and disfigured him.
  • After all the build up to it, Soldier Boy and Homelander's showdown at the end of Season 3 is quickly cut short and they both wind up fighting other parties instead. And though we did get to see a battle between the two earlier, that was before they learned of their parental connection, which could've made a more extended rematch far more emotionally gripping and exciting.
  • Despite Stan Edgar's earlier claims, Soldier Boy's true wartime experience was limited to propaganda stunts according to the Legend. Many fans would have liked to see Ben as an bona fide veteran who had the less glorious aspects of his exploits covered up in a deconstruction of the mythologization of the Greatest Generation. Him having fought for real, being decorated and celebrated, and then still rejected by his father as a fraud who had to use a "shortcut" would have also been more poignant then if he was rejected for being a simple fraud. Some fans have even tried to utilize Exact Words to reconcile both Legend and Edgar's accounts.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Let's just say that if it wasn't for Hughie and Starlight, this show would be a lot harder to watch when the majority of the Supes are tragic Jerkasses, the Boys are only somewhat better, and the world they all live in seems determined to make everyone as miserable as possible.
• Too Cool to Live: A villainous example. Gunpowder is a supe with the powers of super sight and accuracy, which make him so skilled with guns that he was able to out match Butcher (pre-temp V anyway) and pull off trick shots similar to what you see in Wanted. He is killed in his introductory episode after a second round with Butcher.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Many fans wound up siding with the villainous Soldier Boy in Season 3’s final battle. He was the only one capable of defeating Homelander (an existential threat to humanity, mind you) and stuck to his word despite an emotional conflict in doing so. It was Butcher and Maeve who betrayed him after he nearly killed Ryan while targeting Homelander. And as ugly as the death of a child is, it's hard to blame him for disregarding that particular piece of collateral damage because Ryan is not just a kid but also has his father’s powers who had just attacked him to save Homelander and has already demonstrated himself capable of killing anyone in that room with a glare. And while Ryan is a far better person than Homelander and Butcher actually has a relationship with him, Soldier Boy is still right to call Billy out for his hypocrisy in making him kill his own newly discovered flesh and blood yet stopping their entire plan for his stepson. Additionally, despite him having no known plans to continue his violent lifestyle after finishing the deal, the rest of The Boys all decide to target him instead of the still present Homelander, who they know will continue his tyrannical behavior and has the potential to do much more damage.
  • Crimson Countess decidedly fails at being the Asshole Victim she's presented as since, although she is shown recklessly killing bystanders with her powers, both those instances we see are accidents. And in fact, she killed bystanders after two people had assaulted her in her dressing room or else trying to help her teammates. She's also very nice to Kimiko when she finds out she can't talk, making their attack on her seem wildly disproportionate. Then in her next appearance, she's attacked in her own home and tied up so her former abusive boyfriend can kill her in a revenge quest.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Lamplighter is supposed to be seen as a tragic character, who killed Mallory's grandchildren by mistake, and between that and his dreams of becoming famous for his father, has become a depressed Death Seeker. However, some felt this failed to make sympathetic, because he is introduced helping test Compound V, even killing people who Stormfront is displeased with, and isn't shown doing anything to help people he himself claims need it. This isn't helped by the fact that when he and Hughie are in the Seven Tower, Lamplighter sets himself on fire activating the alarms and alerting the building, which seemed to be his intended goal, but the way this is conveyed makes it seem like he did it only because his statue was removed. Worse, his personality after escaping and hiding with the Boys makes him seem like an asshole who forces Hughie to watch porn that makes him uncomfortable. These traits make it hard to see him as a tragic character for some viewers.
  • Butcher comes off this way in Season 3's climax. In order to save Ryan from Soldier Boy's blast, he attacks him with his heat vision. Though his desire to protect Ryan is completely understandable, he does so not by getting Ryan out of the battle and into safety, but by betraying and fighting Soldier Boy, destroying their chance to kill Homelander, the worse threat of the two. This applies to the rest of the team as well, for putting so much effort into stopping Soldier Boy that they ignore Homelander, the clear bigger threat, with the exception of Maeve.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Stormfront (an expy for Thor) is beloved by the masses for her affably snarky demeanour, while Homelander (a Superman Substitute) is considered old news because his imperfections are becoming more apparent with the arrival of some worthy competition. That's not a million miles away from describing the rivalry between the Marvel and DC cinematic franchises.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: In-universe, Hughie in Season 2 angrily questions why Frenchie and M.M. want Butcher's leadership when Butcher would have left them to rot in prison when Hughie risked his life to rescue them. Not to mention that it was kind of Butcher's fault that they all became fugitives. (Kimiko opts to stay out of it as a neutral party.) Frenchie and Mother's Milk both say that Hughie is trying his best but lacks the authority to carry out a meaningful long-term plan. Yes, Butcher is unreliable and a toxic influence but he gets results. For what it's worth, Butcher in the next episode admits that Hughie has every right to be angry with him and strives to make up for his past callousness.

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