Characters / The Boys (2019): Starlight

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

Starlight / Annie January

"I'm supposed to be this hero, idol symbol, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing."

Portrayed by: Erin Moriarty, Maya Misaljevic (young)

"Since when did 'hopeful' and 'naïve' become the same thing? I mean, why would you get into this business if not to save the world? That's all I have ever wanted."

The newest addition to The Seven.

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#-D

• Accidental Murder: She accidentally kills an innocent bystander who got a gun at her and Butcher upon seeing Hughie hurt, thinking they are thugs. The real tragedy is that she can't even bring herself to care.
• Action Girl: Downplayed. In her Establishing Character Moment she beats up a thug harassing a girl and it is shown that Annie is a very strong, capable woman as seen in her fights with Stormfront and Soldier Boy, and she’s one of the few supes with actual training and even good at martial arts, yet she doesn’t get too much into action compared to someone like Queen Maeve, Kimiko, and Stormfront. It seems to be a deliberate choice that Annie rarely gets into a fight, and when she does, she often needs someone to help her win the battle.
• Action Girlfriend: To Hughie. Annie is a Supe, while he is your average nerdy Joe with no powers. This gets both deconstructed and reconstructed in Season 3. Hughie starts to consume V-compound to gain temporary powers for both to protect Annie but also because he feels frustrated at his role as the boyfriend with no powers to a superheroine. He grows out of his own insecurities by the end of the Season and stops consuming V compound and chooses instead to help Starlight fight Soldier Boy.
• Adaptational Angst Downgrade: In the comics, she was gang raped by Homelander, A-Train, and Black Noir, who forced her to perform oral sex. In the show, she was forced to perform oral sex on The Deep and nobody else.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the comics, Starlight's origins are a bit darker. When she was born, she blinded her parents, the nurse and the midwife. She was given to foster parents who worked for Vought. In the show, Annie was injected with Compound V after being born, but still got raised by her birth mother, while her father left them when she was very young.
• Adaptational Badass: Downplayed, she's a lot more assertive in this version of the series and her arc into a feminist icon was fulfilled much faster in the series than it was in the comics. In the comics, she was much more afraid and she kept quiet about the attack until she became more assertive towards A-Train. In later issues, she nearly blinded A-Train after he tried to rape her.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: Annie has straight hair in the comics, but here she's fashioned it into a wavy cut. In season 2, she has to wear a wig that is longer and wavier than her actual hairstyle to sex her up.
• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed. Annie is still the most heroic member out of the Seven, but is more committed to taking down Vought and becomes a secret member of The Boys by the start of Season 2, while comic book Starlight took a while to fully commit to turning on the corporation.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Downplayed. While both Starlights are spoiled sweet and nice, show Starlight is more aggressive and prone to do morally questionable things, like blackmailing and killing an innocent man because she needed his car to save Hughie's life when the guy became suspicious.
• Adaptational Modesty: Zig-Zagged.
  • Her starting outfit, like in the comics, is a Minidress of Power. In the comics, it went all the way up to her neck, but the skirt was a bit shorter and less bulky. In the show, it stops just above her cleavage, but the skirt is longer and a bulkier, making it overall about as modest as her original comics outfit.
  • Her second outfit in the comics was just her original minidress plus Navel-Deep Neckline. In the show, her second outfit is significantly sexed up, doing away with the minidress aspect entirely and moving closer to a Leotard of Power with a zipper typically only fastened to the middle of her breasts (though she can zip it up to her throat, as shown when she's having a drink with Hughie). A lot less cleavage than the comics, but a lot more leg and derriere.
• Adaptational Seriousness: In the comics, Starlight is something of a Butt-Monkey who endures more humiliating things than in the show and has less agency in the Vought. She is mouth-raped by all male members of the Seven except for the Deep, her period comes while being pleased by Hughie, and is forced to wear a hero gear that is basically just strings barely covering her nipples, among other things. She never goes through all that stuff in the show, and she is a far more dignified and assertive character.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Annie is not capable of flight, unlike her comic version. She's got superstrength and is tough enough to survive a .50 caliber bullet without need of a hospital. However, in the season 3 finale when she absorbs more energy than ever before she starts hovering above the ground, although it's unclear if this is a permanent change.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Annie has Innocent Blue Eyes in the comics, while in the show they are hazel-colored, courtesy of Erin Moriarty. This is a reversal to Hughie, who has brown eyes in the comics but blue eyes in the show.
• Affirmative Action Girl: She is welcomed into the Seven as the second female member besides Queen Maeve following Lamplighter's retirement.
• Angelic Beauty: Starlight's whole image is deliberately meant to play on the modern interpretation of angels.
• Anti-Hero: Whilst generally considered the most straight forward heroic character, Annie grows cynical and immoral in Season 2, after losing any hope that the right way will work against Vought and Homelander.
• Arch-Enemy: While her enmity with Homelander is not as personal as Butcher's, Starlight is the second person Homelander goes the most after. In Season 2, he constantly threatens her and sadistically makes her chose between killing Hughie or lose her own life at his hands. In Season 3, after getting pushed too far by everyone, Homelander decides to tightens his grip on The Seven and Vought, and uses his power to systematically dismantle Starlight's life and crush any dissent. He returns back to his threats, forces Starlight to accept The Deep, her rapist, back onto the team, and to further humiliate and control her, he coerces her into a fake romantic relationship with him. When he discovers Starlight's involvement in a potential coup with Maeve, he brutally murders her friend, Supersonic, and warns her that if she doesn't comply, Hughie will share his fate, making it abundantly clear that her defiance will have deadly consequences. She hates him almost as much as Butcher.
• Ascended Fanboy: As a child, Annie was a huge fan of the Seven, especially the Deep (on whom she had a celebrity crush) and Queen Maeve (her role model growing up). She gets her wish granted, but God, at what cost given what is awaiting Annie.
• Authority in Name Only: Stan Edgar names Starlight as co-captain of the Seven, but in reality she doesn't have any real authority because of Homelander. He constantly threatens her and jeopardizes any change she wants to bring.
• Awkward Kiss: In Season Three, Homelander forces Annie to fake a romantic relationship with him. She takes the reign by initiating a kiss, taking Homelander by surprise. Annie is not pleased that she has to kiss him at all, and she clenches her fist strongly to cope with making out with him. Even the Deep and Drummer Boy are weirded out by the kiss, and the fact a young Starlight can be heard singing Baby One More Time in the background makes the entire scene even more disturbing.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Annie is in her early twenties when she joins the Seven, making her the youngest member of their team at that point. Erin Moriarty herself is the youngest member of the main cast.
• Badass Adorable: This is the image that Starlight would rather cultivate for herself and the girls that are inspired by her, rather than the overly sexualized one Vought chose for her.
• Badass Cape: Her official costume has a white and golden cape.
• Badass in Distress: In Season 2, Annie is knocked out by Black Noir for unknown reasons while meeting at a coffee bar with her mom. She later wakes up in a locked room somewhat dimly lit with glowing green lights reminiscent to glow sticks. She discovers that they're not electrical-based, and the door is too solid for her to destroyed and evadate. She is later rescued by Hughie and Lamp Lighter.
• Beauty Contest: When she was a young child her mother would force Annie to participate in beauty contests. She did won the "little miss hero pageant" in Des Moines at some point in her childhood.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Starlight got assaulted by Homelander, shot by Billy Butcher and beaten to a bloody pulp by Black Noir, and she still looked good even after, with no visible wounds.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: She is the resident pretty blondie who happens to be the only genuinely heroic member of The Seven. Downplayed in that the rest of the Seven are conventionally attractive as well while Maeve is good-hearted too, deep down, she just simply completely gave up stopping Homelander and the corruption of Vought.
• Blackmail: In Season 2, she secretly records in a hotel room letting someone hack his arm off in exchange for money, and later uses the video to blackmail him into going in the labs on 67th to steal for her a sample of Compound V. She manages to do this to A-Train too.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Annie really wanted to be a genuine hero, and thought Vought is the best opportunity to fulfill her dreams, only to discover that Vought is a corrupted MegaCorp selling big fat lies about their manufactured heroes.
  Annie: I gave my whole life for nothing.
  Donna: That's not true.
  Annie: Mom. The good guys don't win, the bad guys don't get punished. What we do means nothing. It's just all for money and... I am in the middle of all of it.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: After she is sexually assaulted by the Deep and couldn't face her mom about it, Hughie immediately notices her distress and allows her to vent out her frustration. He is the only person to treat Annie like a human being with compassion and care instead of an expendable superhero and celebrity by her co-workers and enemies, hence why Annie later falls in love with him despite her fellow supes and mother's confusion.
• Being Good Sucks: The most important lesson Annie learns while being part of the Seven is that there's a heavy price to being a genuine hero. She even voices her dilemma, at the Believe Expo, expressing her frustration at Vought and the world in general.
  • She is hit again with this again in Season 3. She tries her best to reform Vought from the inside-out, only to love important people in the process to Homelander. The massacre that happens at the Herogasm party finally makes her completely give up on trying to reform Vought.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sure, Starlight is not very imposing, but she is not above blackmailing people and killing an innocent man and feeling no remorse over it.
• Blinded by the Light: She can use her powers to blind people.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: She and MM bond for the first time over their fathers and sugar.
• Break the Cutie: First she's coerced into giving the Deep a blowjob. Then she attends a Christian carnival and is disillusioned by the homophobic propaganda and rejection of other religions, as well as being pressured to be a sexless role model for young girls (immediately after having her outfit sexed up against her will). To top it all off, she realises that her mother was using her as a meal ticket and her father left out of stark disapproval for the whole arrangement.
• Breakout Character: In-Universe, Starlight is so popular that the Halloween costumes inspired by her reaches Homelander's levels of popularity. Annie is even called the Hero of the Year and is chosen to host a new reality show called American Hero, alongside Homelander. And because she has a high score, Stan Edgar even names her as a co-captain for the Seven.
• Broken Bird: Starlight starts as an optimistic young heroine, and she tries to keep it together even after realizing what she's got herself into. But after all the months spent at Vought, she finally feels the weight of all the humiliating things she had to endure, and ends up as jaded and hopeless, not believing anymore in God or heroism. By the end of Season 2, when things finally go in her favor, Annie regains some of her hopeful persona and former beliefs about God, but she is left hardened by her experiences.
• Broken-System Dogmatist: By Season 3, her efforts at being an Internal Reformist have turned her into one. Annie is so devoted to trying to fix the Seven and Vought that she can't accept that the rot in both organizations runs to the bone, and that her efforts are becoming meaningless. In particular, she gets extremely angry over Hughie getting in the way of her Chronic Hero Syndrome, even though she's starting to get into situations she really cannot manage.
• Call-Back: The dancers that Homelander wants to accompany Starlight while she sings to him in his birthday wear outfits based on the 'sexy' one she hated wearing before returning to her older one.
• Calling the Old Man Out: When a drunk Maeve accuses Starlight in episode 6 of faking her goodie two-shows persona for popularity and money, Annie counters by revealing her past idolization of Maeve. She describes how Maeve's heroic acts once inspired her, with Annie re-reading stories of Maeve's bravery. Annie ends her speech by telling Maeve that she now believes that all those acts of heroism were probably fabricated by Vought's PR team. Maeve feels so humiliated about Annie questioning her heroism, that she cannot utter a single word back to Starlight.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Annie is shown whenever she consumes high amounts of alcohol to get heavily intoxicated and throw up. This puts her in contrast with Queen Maeve who is shown having a high alcohol tolerance as a constantly drunken woman.
• The Captain: More like co-captain in Starlight's case. At the start of season 3, Stan Edgar appoints her as Homelander's partner in order to keep Homelander in check, but also because she is extremely popular.
• The Cape: What she aspires to be, and what she eventually decides to be after learning how much her teammates subvert it, Vought and consequences be damned.
• Cassandra Truth: At Herogasm, she tries unsuccessfully to convince Blue Hawk to help her evacuate the place because Soldier Boy will be there and a lot of people are going to die. He dismisses her worries because he fully believed Homelander saying there is no real danger and that everything is just propaganda to keep the Americans in their houses. Soldier Boy does makes an appearance and he accidentally kills a lot of people after being triggered by hearing Russian music.
• Celeb Crush: Annie had an innocent childhood crush on the Deep until the day he destroyed all her excitement and illusions about him.
• Character Tics: Annie tends to clench her fist under extreme stress to keep herself calm.
• Chest Insignia: Starlight's Mini Dress Of Power adorned with three golden stars.
• Clark Kenting: Annie doesn't make much of an effort to hide her civilian identity, but nearly nobody recognizes her when she is out of costume. Hughie introduces her to one of his friends as Annie, while he doesn't recognize her, he feels she looks familiar.
• Contractual Purity: In-Universe example. She's forced to pretend she's a virgin in order to appeal to her religious base even though she doesn't want to lie about it. Hughie convinces her to defy it and tell the truth on national television.
• Coming of Age Story: The late bloomer variety, before her initiation into The Seven, Annie was sexually naive and idealistic about justice. After being forced to perform oral sex on The Deep, Annie tumbles into adulthood after learning the inherent depravity of supes, the blatant hypocrisy and injustice brought in by Vought International, and the story has shaken her faith in a higher power. As she's forced to stay quiet about the assault, portray herself as virginal, and hold herself to an unrealistic standard. Starlight makes her first adult decision by breaking character during a seminar to reveal how she was sexually assaulted by The Deep. Like Hughie, Starlight's loss of innocence doesn't harden her in the way it was intended to, as it makes her ruthless, violent, and manipulative. At the same time, it's her relationship with Hughie that helps her mature properly and stay hopeful as she navigates the corruption of Vought and the reality of the superhero world.
• The Confidant: To Mother's Milk. Through her, the audience learns more about his past such as why he hates Soldier Boy so much.
• Contagious Heroism: She serves as a source of inspiration for Maeve, who lost all the hope until Annie. Maeve even lampshades how Annie saved her from her self destructives ways in the day she met her throwing up in the bathroom.
• Corrupt the Cutie:
  • She has a moment of weakness when she can no longer keep up against all the things thrown at her by her Vought masters or events playing around her, succumbing to her corporate orders and heavy drinking during a company-organised event. Maeve calls her out on this, explaining she used to be just like Starlight and she doesn't have to follow Maeve's steps.
  • In Season 2, she's working as The Mole for The Boys, and being under constant fear of discovery and death has made her more self-centered and ruthless. She blackmails a former friend into stealing a vial of Compound V and, after accidentally killing a civilian who was trying to stop The Boys stealing his car, admits that she's not as upset as she would have been before.
• The Conscience: She tries to be this for Vought and Hughie, but they ignore her. The only person she convinces to not take a darker path is M.M.
• Cosmic Motifs: Stars, from her superhero alias to her costume.
• Crisis of Faith: After witnessing what the Seven are really like and being frustrated for being so helpless against them, Annie starts to doubts there is any benevolent God out there.
• Cute Bruiser: The youngest member and the shortest. She has impressionable Super-Strength.
• Daddy's Girl: Before his disappearance, Annie was very close to her father; he would take her to Dunkin' on the sly to eat chocolate cream-filled doughnuts and unlike her mother, he would listen what his daughter had to say.
• Dark Mistress: Enforced on her by Homelander when he claims her as his new girlfriend only to punish her for being his co-captain. After being given away by A-train to Homelander, she is expected to worship him; otherwise, Hughie or anyone close to her will pay the price. On her side, according to Erin Moriarty, Starlight takes the role because she see it as "a challenge to rise to".
• Deadpan Snarker: Annie has enough crackwise talent to impress even someone like Butcher.
  Butcher: I appreciate what you've done back there.
  Annie: Oh, thanks. Your approval means everything to me.
  Butcher: And some sarcasm to stick the landing. Nice one.
• Defector from Decadence: She tries to tear Vought down with Hughie during Season 2.
  • She does it for good at the end of Herogasm events, but not before warning the people of the danger that Homelander is.
• Disappeared Dad: Her father walked out when she was a little girl after losing their life savings to bad investments. After learning the truth about the source of her powers, Starlight comes to realize the real reason was he was tired of his Stage Mom wife and lying to his daughter.
• Dork Knight: Annie is one of the nicest Supes and the closest thing to The Cape the show has. She is very popular with masses because of her humbleness and dorkness, and was elected to be part of the Seven for this reasons.
• Drink-Based Characterization: She consumes various alcohol drinks, but has a thing for whiskey.
• Dude Magnet: Annie is attractive and young, and draws the attention of both good and bad guys more than anyone in the show, which in the case of the latter, is never a good thing for her.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: At the beginning of season 2, Annie is shown being very lively in public, but whenever she is alone, her expression switches to a lifeless and depressive stare, betraying the Stepford Smiler she is to the public. She tries to force a genuine smile while looking in the mirror, but quickly reverts to her apathetic self, too disappointed by the corruption that surrounds her.

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• Elemental Powers: A variation. It's electricity, because she needs electric devices to power up and use her light powers.
• Embodiment of Virtue: Out of the Seven, Starlight is the only one depicted as being constantly heroic. She shows many times how committed she is to the idea of heroism, and taking all kinds of risks to make sure some sort of justice is done. She even inspired Maeve hope again for a better future.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Annie is genuinely perplexed and left speechless when Hughie chooses Soldier Boy and Butcher over her, after begging him to not affiliate himself with them.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Starlight is the most prominent blond character after Homelander. She is wildly popular with the masses, and Vought tries to monetize this and force Starlight in the typical role of the blonde woman being the main source of fanservice in a cast ensemble.
• Fake Relationship: In Season 3, Homelander declares Annie is his new girlfriend for PR reasons, after announcing the new members of the Seven. She is shocked at first, but goes for it and kisses Homelander to his surprise, in order to buy time for the Boys to find the weapon needed to kill Homelander.
• Fantastic Racism: Is on the receiving end from Butcher. She calls him out on his behaviour and compares his attitude to Homelander's.
• The Fettered: According to Erin Moriarty, in season 3, the more Hughie and the other characters become more morally corrupted, willing to leave casualties to accomplish their goals, the more Starlight is determined to keep her morality intact, not willing to cross the line like the others just for the greater good. This ends up being Deconstructed because the reason everyone else is getting more corrupted is that her methods are losing their strength—Vought has rigged the system so that they have plenty of loopholes to escape justice, and her efforts to reign in Homelander by threatening his image fall apart once Homelander decides that he's perfectly willing to take that loss if it means putting Annie in "her place".
• Fire-Forged Friends: In Season 2, Annie, Butcher and Hughie go on a secret mission which takes them to the mysterious Sage Grove Center. Despite their initial animosity — Annie confronts Butcher about his hatred for Supes and him shooting her — they must cooperate once Hughie ends up deadly injured. Annie's determination to save Hughie, even resorting to violence (murdering a bystander to steal his car), earns her Butcher's grudging respect. They eventually bond over their shared care for Hughie.
• First-Name Basis: So far in the show, the only people to call Annie by her first name are those who she is especially close with: her mother, Donna, and her boyfriend, Hughie. Everyone else who actually knows her real name refer to her as Starlight, including the rest of the Boys despite her befriending most of them.
• Flawless Token: Annie is by far more heroic than almost every character, especially among the Seven. In season 3, she constantly tries to persuade Hughie from following Butcher, and she is shown unwilling to cross the line for the greater good, while everyone else is shown to resorting to increasingly immoral methods to deal with Homelander.
• Foil: To Homelander. Both invoke Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold and market themselves as all-American superheroes, but while Homelander subverts it by being an utter asshole behind his friendly and wholesome demeanor, Starlight plays it straight by being a genuine Nice Girl. Both prefer to use their ranged attacks, but while Homelander carelessly uses his heat vision to explode bad guys like water balloons because he dislikes literally getting his hands dirty, Starlight controls the use of her light beams to no lethal effect while her Super-Strength could easily do more harm than she intends. Starlight genuinely wants to be The Cape but has to fight an uphill battle against being pigeonholed as just a pretty face, while Homelander keeps up the appearance of The Cape while basically being the Big Bad. Both can and will invoke Glowing Eyes of Doom, but while Homelander uses Red Eyes, Take Warning to terrorize people, Starlight uses her softer, golden glow to warn people Good Is Not Soft. When Starlight has sex with Hughie, her eyes glow as she climaxes, bathing them in warm, romantic golden light. When Homelander glows his eyes in front of Stillwell, he's preparing to melt her face off.
• Frame-Up:
  • In Season 2, Homelander utilizes a press conference to publicly brand Starlight as a traitor and a mole who conspired to kill Translucid. He announces her capture, effectively destroying her reputation and painting her as a villain. Luckily, her reputation is restored in the next episode.
  • Happens again at the end of Season 3 with even stronger accusations. Annie is framed by Vought and Homelander as the mastermind behind a pedophile ring for terrorists through her Starlight foundation, a charity for orphaned children. This elaborate deception serves the purpose of deflecting the public outrage from Herogasm and to maintain control of the narrative.
• Friend to All Children: Annie is very preoccupied to have a heroic image that is appealing mainly at children, of course also genuinely carrying for their well-being. She is visibly disturbed by the brainwashing done at them at EXPO, she is shown to be very close to her underage fans and get upset when a man asks her to show him her tits in front of her little girl. She also started a foundation for homeless youth.
• The Ghost: She is briefly mentioned in Gen V, where Indira Shetty tries to advertise Marie Monreau as black Starlight.
• Girl Next Door: She is just a simple Wide-Eyed Idealist farm girl from Iowa. Her arc is all about the struggle to maintain her values versus what her new life forces on her. Vought's PR department goes to great lengths to present Starlight as this for her brand.
• Girls Love Chocolate: Annie loves candybars and doughnuts filled with chocolate.
• Girly Bruiser: Annie is generally girly, but she is a strong-willed fighter with good combat skills.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Annie is known for her sweetness and traditionally feminine attire, sporting a skirt or a leotard as part of her superhero costume. However, she also enjoys more masculine activities like kickboxing and heavy drinking for fun.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Her eyes glow with a warm, golden light when she activates her powers, providing a gentler, more hopeful contrast with Homelander. Though she will also use the eye glow for intimidation when necessary; Starlight may be good, even nice, but she's still not soft.
• Gold and White Are Divine: Her gold and white outfits fit well with her light based powers, (initial) Christian beliefs and moral disposition.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: There are a lot of gold sections on her armor and she's a prominent and powerful superhero.
• Good Counterpart: Is this to Homelander. Both are blonds and the most popular heroes in the world, but Starlight has a genuine desire to do good, and her being a Christian is not act to cover up for an insane God Complex like in Homelander's case.
  Antony Starr: The good girl of the show, the ultimate good of the show, and the ultimate bad of the show, forced into that situation where they are both putting on facades.
• Good Running Evil: Played With. She is named co-captain of the Seven by Stan Edgar in Season 3, and he personally gives her a pep talk to take this as a real opportunity to reform the Seven. She tries her hardest to reform the team through the season, but with every try, there is Homelander humiliating her at every opportunity for "invading his space".
• Grew a Spine: While Annie always went against Homelander, she always did it behind his back, never having the courage to face him directly given the power imbalance between them. After almost three full seasons, she finally grows a backbone and tells him she is not afraid anymore of him, joining Butcher and Stan Edgar as the people Homelander cannot frighten at all.
• Guest Fighter: Appears as an Operator in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II during a limited time event.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Contrasting with Homelander, she has this appearance and actually is a good person.
• Hair-Contrast Duo:
  • Starlight has Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold, is naïve and friendly, while Maeve is a moody and alluring redhead with a jaded outlook in life.
  • The contrast is even bigger with Stormfront in Season 2. Stormfront is a snarky Aloof Dark-Haired Girl who presents herself as a '90s Anti-Hero.
• Hand Blast: Starlight shoots her light beams from her hands.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: According to Alex she used to be this; she went even drunk to a concert to perform and puked on the scene in front of the people.
• Has a Type: Judging by her current boyfriend and ex-boyfriend and her utter contempt for assholes like The Deep, A-Train, Butcher, and Homelander, Starlight is only interested in kindhearted and supportive dark-haired men.
• Healing Factor: Downplayed. She can recover within a day from being shot with high caliber bullets and having her skin penetrated by a diamond drill.
• The Heart: The most sensitive and feminine female member for both the Seven and the Boys.
• Heel Realization: Is coming to one of these, which is why Hughie thinks about recruiting her for the team.
• Heroic BSoD: Annie starts to hyperventilate after learning that her own mother allowed Vought to pump the Compound V in her when she was a baby.
• Hero Does Public Service: Annie owns a nonprofit foundation called Starlight House for homeless and at-risk youth.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • In Season 2, upon being discovered as a double agent, Annie gets framed as a traitor of the Seven in front of the large public. Her pristine reputation is restored by the end of the season.
  • When Annie exposes Vought and Homelander's true nature to the public, Homelander starts wildly accusing her of trafficking children to terrorists.
• Hero-Worshipper: Annie's favorite superhero was always Queen Maeve. According to her, she used to read her Maeve's autobiography in it was worn out because she wanted to be Maeve.
• Hidden Depths: Annie proved to have a decent singing voice during Translucent's funeral.
• High-Heel Power: While not only female supe with heels, she certainly wore the highest and most impractical heels in season 2.
• Hollywood Atheist: She says to Gecko she's realized there's no God or anyone else watching over humanity, and compares this with Homelander (an evil false "hero" who resembles Superman) implying she's lost faith after her prior bad experiences. Though after seeing Billy Butcher perform an incredibly selfless act at the end of Season 2, she half-heartedly starts reconsidering her stance on the subject.
• Hollywood Thin: As a child star, Annie had to follow a strict diet on her mother's orders to fit the "Hollywood standard" for how famous women should look. She was implied to be even bulimic.
• Holier Than Thou: She adopts this attitude in Season 3. Her indeed justified resistance against "doing whatever it takes" mentality can come across as this to other characters in morally grey situations. She initially has the same plan with Maeve: team up with other Supes to hold down Homelander, knowing it will result in them getting killed. Butcher and Hughie decide to team up with Soldier Boy since the weapon that killed him never existed, yet they are in the wrong in her eyes.
• Honor Before Reason: Even as the others becomes more desperate, ruthless, and cynical, Annie January refuses to lower herself to take immoral decisions just because Vought, Neuman and others are asking her to.
• Humble Heroine: Annie really doesn't care too much about publicity. All she wants is to help and save people. Upon arriving in The Seven, Ashley lets her know that the people liked her because her audition speech was modest and humble.
• Ideal Hero: While Starlight zigzags this trope because of the challenges she faces through the seasons, she is the closest thing the show has to this. She embodies many classic ideal hero traits: courage, kindness, mercy, and humility. She actively fights crime and is a role model for children and the public. However, the show deconstructs this trope by subjecting Starlight to immense challenges that force her to compromise her ideals. Heck, despite everything she endured in the first seasons, she still tries to reform Vought in season 3, believing she can still undo some of its corruptibility and keep in check Homelander. She only gives up after witnessing the massacre of the Herogasm. The teaser trailer for season 4 indicates that despite her giving up her heroic persona, Starlight still has an active loyal fanbase that believes in her noble goals.
• Identity Breakdown: Annie experiences a mental breakdown upon discovering the truth about the source of her powers, the revelation that she, along with other people, was secretly administered Compound V as babies and her own parents agreed to it. She confronts her mother for not only lying but actively manipulating her whole life. The betrayal and the realization that her entire existence was predetermined for someone else's benefit leaves Annie questioning who she truly is.
• I Am a Monster: She calls herself a freak after she learns the truth behind her powers.
• I Know Karate: She might have a wide range of handy superpowers, but her combat skills are nothing more than effect of intense training, going on since she was a child.
• Iconic Outfit: While Starlight prefers her skirt In-Universe, her leotard is more famous and cosplayed by people.
• Immodest Orgasm: Not conspicuously audibly, but her Glowing Eyes of Doom flare up when she climaxes.
• Immune to Bullets: Downplayed. She survives a couple of close-range .50 caliber bullets to the chest without major injury, but she's still knocked on her ass and stunned for a minute afterwards. Her skin is tough enough that Frenchie needs a diamond edged saw to penetrate her skin to extract the tracker under her skin.
• In-Series Nickname: She is referred by various characters as "America's sweetheart", for her pristine reputation and huge popularity for her sweet behavior.
• Innocence Lost: Starlight arrives at Vought completely unware that the Seven are one of the scummiest people in her life. She genuinely expected them to match the inspiring paragon of virtue image they project to the people, outright admiring them, until she discovers the Deep is nothing more than a rapist, Homelander is a sociopath, Queen Maeve is completely apathetic, Translucid to be an egocentric pervert and that none of them care about being heroes.
• Internal Reformist: After seeing just how fucked-up many Supes can be, and how much Vought is willing to cover for them, Starlight decides to use her influence to change the Seven (and by extension Vought) from within to be more genuinely heroic. Season 3 ends up taking a sledgehammer to this idea—for one thing, Vought has been playing at controlling America for a long time, with at least one representative among their Supes so that any legal issues can be quashed. Additionally, Starlight's efforts to reign in Homelander end up failing because Homelander has gotten so fed up with being on a leash that he's willing to lose his reputation just to spite everyone trying to keep him down. Annie ends up taking this even harder than Hughie, who is going through similar issues, because she is unwilling to resort to illicit methods to counter Vought and Homelander's duplicity.
• It Gets Easier: After getting an innocent man killed by accident, Annie confesses to Butcher that she "maybe once in a while, [she] would've cried over him, but now he was just another person in [their] way".
• Junior Counterpart: To Maeve. In Season One, Annie is the bright-eyed newly arrived idealist who wants nothing more than to be a genuine hero, which is why she applied to be part of the Seven. Unfortunately, Annie is hit by the harsh reality when she discovers that Vought is just a corrupt MegaCorp that fabrics fake heroes, the Seven being no exception. Broken by the humiliating events she endures since joining the Seven, Annie reaches a point where Vought burns all of her heroics, transform slowly in an apathetic woman who just does what she is told, and starts to consume alcohol to cope with her life at Vought. Maeve is no slow to observe the remarkable similarities between her and Annie. In fact, she talks to Annie about the similarities between them — how she was once a 23 years old young woman who wanted to be a hero until she started to gave away pieces of herself — trying to save what was left of Annie's idealism and stop her from taking same self-destructive path as her.
  • Even their childhoods are somewhat similar. Both of them were pumped V-compound as babies by their Stage Parens and forced to participate in all kinds of competitions and perform in pageants.
• Karma Houdini: In Season 2, Starlight kills an innocent man by accident, when he would become suspicious of her and Butcher. She never faced any sort of repercussions for this and the incident was never brought up again.
• Kid-Appeal Character: In-Universe, Annie wants her superhero persona to be a role model for children and be appealing to them, which is shown in several occasions such a little girl asking an autograph from her or teen girls cosplaying as Starlight. When she is forced to adopts her hypersexualized new costume, she is displeased because it stands against the image she tries to build.
• Knight in Sour Armor: In Season two, she becomes almost as cynical as Maeve about heroism, which is shown when she complains to her mother about her inability to do anything about the Seven and Vought. She even gives up her faith at seeing that no matter what anyone tries, Vought just cannot be defeated. She still tries to do something about it only because of Hughie. But even then, the immoral methods that she uses to help the Boys, are in stark contrast with the ethical superhero she was in Season One. She looses her cynicism at the end of the Season, once Stormfront is defeated and Homelander is finally kept in check.
• Leg Focus: In Season 2, somehow, Vought managed to force Starlight to wear the sleeveless leotard with long boots that all the time to rank-up her fanservice potential. As a result, in Season 2, there are much more camera close-ups of her legs and rear than the other seasons.
• Leotard of Power: Annie's second costume is a sleeveless leotard with a deep low cut. She refused to wear it in the first season because she felt it doesn't represent her; but by Season 2, it became her default hero gear. She ultimately manages to ditch it for good by Season 3, using her own popularity as a bargain chip, and goes back to her original, modest outfit.
• Light 'em Up: She can produce blinding light. Notably, she apparently can only use photons from electric devices, meaning she's essentially powerless in broad daylight if there's nothing electronic around her.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: As a foil to both Queen Maeve and Stormfront, Starlight contrasts them both in different ways:
  • In the first season, Starlight is the Naïve Newcomer with a very idealistic world view, to Queen's Maeve alcoholic Cynical Mentor. Annie wears a kid-friendly Minidress of Power that invokes the Gold and White Are Divine motif, whereas Maeve's dress is the Lady Legionnaire Wear type, colored with rusty red and dark brown. Nevertheless, Maeve is a case of Dark Is Not Evil, since she is a victim of circumstances and tries to advise Annie to not end up like her.
  • In season 2, Annie wears a fanservice-y Leotard of Power, but keeping her gold and white theme color. Now, the team has a newcomer, Stormfront, who is fully clothed in black and burgundy gear. Unlike Maeve, Stormfront is rather Dark Is Evil, wearing some hidden Nazi motifs on her costume, like her eagle belt buckle resembling an SS insignia.
• Light Is Good: She's the Seven's Token Good Teammate, wears a suit that's white and gold, and her projectile superpowers are beams of Hard Light.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Hughie tries to keep Annie safe, and goes as far as having secrets from her and not informing her about his and the Boys's plans with Soldier Boy. And than, Butcher tries to keep her away from Hughie, when all she wants to warn him about how dangerous is V24.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: While Annie is already feminine, Vought forces her to wear a wig, which is longer than her actual haircut, with her new Striperiffic costume, all to maximize her image as a sexy heroine.
• Loss of Identity: The depravity of Vought and realizing her mother abused her shatters her beliefs and who she was at the beginning of the series. Her arc in Season 1 is coming to terms with the real world outside her small town, throwing away everything her mother taught her, and then finding out who she is and who she really wants to be.
• Loved by All: By the start of season 3, Annie is polling at 96, which is a Vought record that nobody ever had. She also has around 193 million followers on Instagram. Her popularity is what helped to clean Vought's image after the whole Stormfront fiasco.

M-Y

• Male Gaze: In Season 2 mostly after donning a Leotard of Power, high heels and heavy make-up to appeal the male audience. Many of the camera shots are done on her bust, legs, and backside. Stormfront even talks about how their costumes are clearly produced to rank up their sexual appeal rather than be practical.
• Meaningful Name: Annie's name is a diminutive of 'Anna', a name of Hebrew origins and it means 'gracious' and 'merciful'. She happens to be one of the nicest characters in the show and a genuinely heroic person who wants to do good. Among The Seven, she is the only one retaining her compassion, reminding even to Maeve that she used to be like Annie, inspiring her once again to believe in her own goodness.
• Minnesota Nice: Starlight is native to Des Moines, a city from the state of Iowa, which borders Minnesota and is part of the Midwest region. She exhibits the stereotypical niceness, standing out in a show with cynical take on the superhero genre as one of the most moral characters and The Cape among all of its superpowered characters. Stan Edgar does mistake her as a farm girl from Kansas.
• Minidress of Power: As in the comics, this is her first costume. It's a bit more modest than most examples of the trope.
• The Mole: As of the end of Season 1, she assists the Boys when she can while retaining her position in the Seven. Furthermore, she's the one who leaked Compound V to the press in Season 2.
• Moral Myopia: She suffers a little bit from this in Season 3. She rightfully calls out Hughie and the others about turning into murderers and crossing the line, whose decisions will affect many innocent people, but she completely ignores that she did similar things in the previous season. Was violent, killed an innocent man, lied multiple times and blackmailed Gecko; things she acknowledges she never had any remorse over. Of course she has a good point about the necessity of doing the right thing without constantly sacrificing one's moral integrity, but she accuses other people of doing very immoral things, while she did them herself.
• Morality Pet: To Queen Maeve, whose long-buried and almost broken idealism is brought back by Annie. It is outright lampshaded by Homelander, when Maeve stands up and defends Annie against his accusations, something he doesn't remember Maeve ever doing in all of the time they've known each other.
• Ms. Fanservice: Enforced by Vought by making Annie wear a Leotard of Power with high heels. But even on her Minidress of Power, she is still easy on the eyes.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: Starlight's leotard features a low V-neck that can be unzipped to her waistline. Deconstructed when a guy asks her to show him her tits right in front of a little girl who was asking for her autograph.
• Nerves of Steel: When accused of working with Hughie and nearly being strangled, she manages to lie to Homelander's face. She gets even braver in Season 3, as she manages to successfully trick Homelander into confessing to Supersonic's murder over a livestream, and she shows zero fear even when Homelander threatens to go after Hughie next.
• Naïve Newcomer: Though she's not a complete Pollyanna, Starlight is forced to get used to The Seven's overall depravity very, very quickly.
• Nice Girl: She's all-around sweet, kind and everything a superhero is expected to be. Hughie even calls her this to her face.
• Nigh-Invulnerable:
  • She takes two shots from an anti-materiel rifle to the chest. She's knocked down and winded with mild cuts, but that's about it. She also survives a punch from A-Train at Super-Speed without so much as a broken rib, though she is stunned.
  • Though it has limits, as Frenchie eventually saws through her skin with a tempered and modified power saw to get her tracking chip out. Then again, needing a power saw that is most likely used on diamonds to just get through the skin still is impressive.
• No Guy Wants an Amazon: On her first date with Hughie, she tells him this story about a guy she used to crush on really hard in high school. He invited her at a party where she defended him from an older man and got repaid by being ghosted.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: In Season 3, she joins the club of "Not scared of Homelander" alongside Butcher and Stan Edgar.
• Not So Above It All: While Annie is in general carries herself in a quite dignified way and is morally upstanding, she is not above drinking for fun from time to time. Before her, Kimiko never touched an ounce of alcohol in her life.
• Not Quite Flight: In Season's Three final, Annie levitates for a few seconds while she absorbs the electricity. Is it yet to be seen if she can develop this into a proper ability.
• Odd Friendship:
  • With the very man who hates the Supes more than anything in the world. Butcher really comes to appreciate Annie's presence after going in a mission with him and witnessing how far she is willing to go just to help his team.
  • With Mother's Milk. They become close during the events of Season 3. MM is comfortable enough to confide in Annie why he hates Soldier Boy so much.
• Off the Rails: At Believe Expo, she was supposed to give a speech about how she and other superheroes were chosen by God to protect the world, but shortly after she started speaking, she decided she would tell the audience she wasn't going to lie to them, and says she has no answers on the mysteries of the universe any more than anyone else at the festival, and adds that anyone who claims to do so is a liar. She also reveals that she was sexually assaulted shortly after she joined The Seven, and calls out the festival's organizers for fleecing the attendees out of a small fortune.
• One of the Boys: Quite literally, as of the finale of the third season. She joins the mostly-male team after becoming disillusioned with The Seven.
• Only Friend: To Maeve, because they are the only females and people with a moral compass in the Seven.
• Only Sane Employee: It comes with the territory when you are the only one who cares about truly saving people while being part of a team with psychopaths and apathetic people.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: For someone who made fun of The Deep for being a joke (though she had very personal reasons to), Starlight is this to the rest of the Seven.
  • Her light powers have yet to show damage output that can't be accomplished by a couple of strongmen with a sledgehammer, and are reduced to little more than flashbangs against Supe opponents. And while reportedly strong enough to bench rear end of a car, that's nothing compared to some other members of her team. Homelander, Queen Maeve, and Black Noir as shown in the penultimate episode of Season 2 so thoroughly outclass her that she is non-existent in comparison.
  • Stormfront has a more damaging and versatile ranged attack, significantly better maneuverability through her flight, and slightly superior physical strength.
  • In the Season 3 finale, Soldier Boy nearly knocks her unconscious with a single backhanded shield bash. When Hughie turns on the lights up a notch and she absorbs them, making her power up to a level unseen before, it looks like she'll subvert this by finally putting up a decent fight. Instead she fires one blast that does absolutely nothing to Soldier Boy, and then collapses from the effort. So much for that.
• Plot Armour: Homelander somehow never tries to kill Annie and just let her roam free, knowing that she meets up with the Boys quite frequent and openly plotting with them against him, despite him killing people for a lot less. While he does threatens her and even kills people she is close to, he never goes after her or try to imprison her for plotting.
• Power Floats: During the fight against Soldier Boy in Vought Tower, Hughie maxes the power on all of the television set lights for her to absorb. Doing so makes her start to rise off the ground until she discharges all of it.
• Power Incontinence: Downplayed. Under extreme stress, she can cause short-circuits to electronics. When The Deep was sexually harassing her, she accidentally cracked several TV screens.
• Powerful and Helpless: Annie encounters this situation in both season 2 an 3.
  • In the second season, she spends most of the time being a hopeless jerkass, conformed to the idea there is nothing she can do to curb Vought's corruption and stop Homelander or at least keep him on a leash. Until the season's finale, Annie almost completely gave up her own faith and was on her way to become a cynical drunken woman like Maeve.
    Annie: The good guys don't win, the bad guys don't get punished. What we do means nothing. It's just all for money and... I am in the middle of all of it.
  • In the third season she tries to reform Vought from the inside, but it all ends with her just leaving the Seven for good after the Herogasm attack.
    Annie: [on her Instagram] And one more thing. I'm not Starlight anymore. My name is Annie January... and I fucking quit.
• Precision F-Strike: "Eat my shit, you Nazi bitch!".
• Promiscuity After Rape: Vought PR team prepared for Starlight a Leotard of Power to tell her inspiring feminist story about how she is not afraid to be herself even after being mouth-raped by The Deep. Except Starlight's experience didn't made her feel suddenly more sexual.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: She seems to think so, as the only instance where she defaulted to using her more damaging and brutal Super-Strength instead of the less damaging light bursts was when she was faced with a pair of attempted rapists. Considering her personal connection to the matter, this makes sense.
• Relationship Revolving Door: By the end of Season 1, Annie and Hughie break up, but they make up again in Season 2, only to get distanced again in Season 3 because they have different ideas about how to take own Homelander.
• Religious Bruiser: She is a competent superhero and the only Christian in the Seven.
• Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Annie spends most of Season 2 being dolled-up and wearing her Leotard of Power, at Vought's "insistence". In many shots, she appears doing publicity spots for different cosmetics, by making sexy poses. She is not exactly pleased about the change, despite her insistence in season 1 to wear her original costume. She manages to return to her Minidress of Power by the end of Season 2.
• Resign in Protest: After everything that has happened since she is at Vought and especially the massacre she witnessed at Herogasm, Annie is finally burnt-out and outs them and Homelander for what they are on social media. She ends her transmission by telling her viewers that she's quitting working for Vought.
• Ruder and Cruder: In the comics, Starlight refused to swear, spelling out naughty words if she was required to repeat them. In the series, she will swear of her own volition, though still noticeably more rarely than other characters (such as Butcher, for whom "cunt" is a punctuation mark).
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • In Season 1, Annie disregards Vought's rules about going on her own, by going on her own and doing what she always wanted to do: save people. She saves a woman who is being assaulted, and while Vought are angry at her, as soon as she receives positive responds from the public, Vought similarly takes advantage of it.
  • After the events at Herogasm, Annie finally musters the courage to expose Vought's lies about Homelander and Soldier Boy, regardless of what they might do to her for telling the truth, and quits being a superhero altogether.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Herogasm, she completely diches Vought and the Seven and joins the Boys.
• Second Love: To Hughie. She helps him move past the pain of Robin's death and her presence helps keep him from becoming obsessed with revenge. When he's on the run in Season 2, he can only calm down when he sees her or talks to her, and in one phone message tells her he loves her.
• Secret Identity: Among the Seven, only Starlight is confirmed to be maintaining a secret identity, though she does a pretty lackadaisical job.
• Series Mascot: In-Universe, due to her huge popularity, she gets promoted to becoming one of the faces — the other being, obviously, Homelander — for Vought to repair their image after the Stormfront fiasco.
• Sexual Extortion:
  • She is coerced offscreen to give The Deep oral sex so he'll ensure she gets into The Seven. After she publicizes the fact, a number of women also come forward to say they suffered the same thing from him in the past.
  • A downplayed version occurs later, when the publicists ask her to wear a costume that is more revealing. When she refuses, they threaten to not only fire her, but make sure she doesn't do any more superheroics anywhere else. She agrees to the changes, but is not happy about it.
  • Annie pulls a reverse version on her handlers after publicizing her encounter with The Deep. Her newfound feminist cred allows her to switch back to her old costume without any corporate protest. By season 2 though, she's gotten so comfortable within Vought that she voluntarily wears the second costume.
• Sexual Karma: After trying to break away from the more extremist views of her church, Annie has tender, romantic sex with Hughie.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: When Hughie met Annie for the first time, she in her civilian attire. Second time he meets her, she is in her leotard gear and is shocked to see Annie dressed as such. He points out how big is the contrast.
• Sherlock Scan: Annie was capable enough to conclude that Mother's Milk has OCD only by noticing his compulsive patterns, like doing certain things three times and and carrying antiseptic wipes.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: At the end of season 3, Annie completely gives up her Starlight hero persona, and dumps her costume in the garbage in front of the Boys. She opts to just dress up casually from now on, signifying her joining officially their team.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She loves Hughie because he is a compassionate man who tries to do good, just like her. And she would love Hughie to stay this way very much, instead of teaming up with a murderer, Soldier Boy, to be precise.
• Sixth Ranger: By season 2, she's become the unofficial sixth member of the Boys. She formally joins them at the end of season 3, having become completely disillusioned with Vought.
• Star Power: Of the Aesthetic variety. Her name and costume have star motifs, but she can use the photons only from electric devices.
• Stellar Name: Starlight.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: When she returns to the Believe Expo, she realizes her experiences with Hughie and the Seven have changed her too much to fit in anymore.
• Stripperiffic: She has to wear a leotard of powers, for no other reasons than to be eye-candy. Stormfront uses the hyperbole of people even seeing inside of Annie's uterus to make a point how sexualized her costume is.
• Strong and Skilled: She has super strength and is a skilled combatant who has been practicing Taekwondo and Kickboxing since her adolescence.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: Annie is an Action Girlfriend with Super-Strength, light attacks, and is a skilled martial artist. Hughie is a guy with no powers, but is technology savvy thanks to his job in a tech store.
• Superheroes Wear Capes: While hardly the only supe with a cape, she is the only one among them who is actually heroic. Homelander and Stomfront also wear capes, but they are among the most vile characters in the show, making Starlight wearing a cape even more significant, as her cape is an actual symbol of superheroism.
• Super-Strength: She's introduced doing one-handed chin-ups, lifting the rear of a car over her head (though she struggles), and cratering a cinderblock wall with her bare hands.
• Super-Toughness: Has this as part of her powers. Exactly how tough is unclear, but she's able to survive blows from Black Noir who is close to Homelander's levels of strength.
• Taking You with Me: If A-Train tries to expose her traitorous actions, she'll make sure to ruin his reputation right back so that they'll both get punished.
• Tamer and Chaster: In the comics, Annie was multiple times fully nude and had explicit sex scenes with Hughie. Here, not only we see just her back on her intimate times, but all of her sex scenes are PG-13 at most.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Not her, but the people around her. Homelander kills Alex and threatens to kill Hughie too if Starlight doesn't comply.
• Throwing Out the Script: She does this at Believe EXPO, where Madelyn is expecting her to read the speech she wrote for her. Annie choses to be sincere with the people and publicly declares that she was mouth-raped.
• Token Good Teammate: Being brand new to the Seven, Starlight is not nearly as jaded, apathetic or corrupt as the heroes really are, and she finds herself opposed to just about everything they do.
• Token Religious Teammate: She is the only one in the Seven who is explicitly Christian.
• Took a Level in Cynic: Annie started as an Wide-Eyed Idealist, whose only reason to enter in The Seven was so she could help as many people as possible. But once she is accepted in by Vought, her first experience is to be mouth-raped by her own idol. Then she has to live in constant fear of Homelander, has no choice but the become a Slave to PR, learns that her own mother has lied to her about the origins of her powers. Generally being isolated in a team full of superpowered jerkasses or downright psychopaths, has led Annie to become very disillusioned with the world and her own beliefs. As result, she loses her faith in God, lets herself be corrupted by Vought and believes that the good guys will never win and the bad guys will never get punished. By the end of Season 2 though, she returns to her faith. In Season 3, she sides with MM and refuses to work with Soldier Boy.
• Tragic Keepsake: After her father left her and her mother when she was a child, Annie kept his pipe hidden under a floorboard from her room, hoping he will come back one day.
• Tritagonist: Starlight, to Hughie's Protagonist and Butcher's Deuteragonist. Their stories are initially unrelated to each other and advance in parallel with each having their own reasons to oppose the Seven, comparable screen-time that is mostly spent apart by both and a more-or-less equal role in the climax of each season. Prior to the climax each character resolves their own conflicts with little involvement apart from moral support from the other.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Downplayed. Hughie is comely, but he is constantly referred as skinny and a twink, while Starlight is the most fanserviced female character in the show and has plenty of suitors. Maeve even makes fun of her for dating Hughie because he looks to her like someone asking to be "dog rawed".
• Unequal Pairing: She has superpowers and gets into a relationship with the regular guy Hughie. The Season 3 opener uses Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" as the couple's theme which is kind of fitting for their power differential (though it also references social status, her being a world-famous celebrity and him a tech store (later white collar) worker.
• Unkempt Beauty: As Starlight she wears her Stripperiffic superhero costume with a wig and a lot of makeup, but more than any other member of the Seven she will go out in public in street clothes and is rarely, if ever, recognized. She's no less pretty, but the contrast is noticeable.
• Uptown Girl: Starlight is a Supe who used to be child star, and is part of the world's most famous group of superheroes. She falls in love with the humble working class Hughie. Downplayed in that she's from Des Moines, Iowa, and while Des Moines is a large city, among American stereotypes Iowa is about as far from "uptown" as you can get.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: She tries to defend Hughie from A-Train.
• Walking Techbane: Her primary powers involve producing bright lights with concussive force, but using them has an effect on local electronics. It's most notable when she gets angry, rather than being in direct combat. She explains that she draws in ambient electricity to power her light blasts, with the result that electrical devices nearby go a bit wonky.
• Weak, but Skilled: While Starlight doesn't pack as strong a punch with either her fists or light beams as her teammates, she has a decent amount of versatility and training to makes her a more well-rounded supe than most, especially when she uses her skills to help the Boys.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Her light powers need electricity to fuel them. This causes trouble when she encounters a Supe who can emit an EMP.
  Butcher: Well you got a pretty shite superpower then, don't you?!
• The Worf Effect: The strongest person consistently on the side of the good guys, and so often beaten down by more powerful supes to prove how serious the situation is. She's been on the wrong end of curb-stomps against A-Train, Black Noir, Stormfront, Homelander, and Soldier Boy, and has never actually won a fight on her own on-screen aside from a pair of regular thugs.
• Weakness Turns Her On: Annie loves Hughie the way he is, scrawny and dorky, but Hughie considers that a Hughie with super powers, even if temporary, is more desirable and better for Annie, even when she tells him is enough if he is just there for her.
• Working with the Ex: Supersonic is invited to participate in the American Hero televised competition for the next Seven members, where Starlight, is the host. They are on very good terms, which makes Hughie a bit jealous and unsure of himself. He becomes a member of the Seven.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning: Sort of, her light powers are yellow in color, but still fueled by electricity from electric devices, and she uses them against Stormfront, who has blue lightning.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: It happens between Butcher and Annie of all people. After getting an Innocent Bystander killed to save Hughie's life, Butcher tries to comfort Annie, earning a sarcastic 'Your approval means everything to me' from her, to which Butcher can only say 'Nice one". She then proceeds to justify getting more and more detached with the killing. Annie realizes Butcher's silence is him approving of her becoming less and less moral (something that she doesn't want to be), and she angrily tells him she doesn't want his 'look of quiet respect or approval', complete with 'We are nothing alike'. Butcher doesn't answer, but he still proudly smirks.

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