Black Noir

• 1. Introduction

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  Black Noir is the name shared by three characters in The Boys, a story created in comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. Eric Kripke later developed it for television. In both versions, Noir belongs to the Seven, a hedonistic and reckless superhero team sponsored by the corporation Vought-American. He is played as a silent ninja, a parody of Batman, Snake Eyes and Deathstroke. A man who never speaks invites questions. Who is under the mask? Why does the corporation work so hard to keep him mysterious? And why do the comic and the television series answer those questions so differently?

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• 2. The Silent Mask

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  In the comics, Black Noir has been on the Seven since the team began, and Vought-American deliberately leaves his reasons for being there unexplained. He is covered in black spandex from head to toe, never shows his face and almost never speaks. Body language does the talking. Noir moves only when he must.

  His teammates find this unnerving. Starlight visibly backs away when he confronts her over her refusal to wear a new, revealing costume. Until that moment she had stood her ground against everyone else.

  Vought-American's Victory Comics division turns the mystery into a selling point. It casts him as a shadowy vigilante who takes on the worst enemies in the worst situations. Only two things are supposedly known about him. He is the one superhuman who can beat Homelander at arm-wrestling, and that is true. He is a fighter jet pilot, and that is false.

  His strength is not in doubt. Mother's Milk says Noir could "bench a dozen Mack Trucks", and he is stronger than Homelander himself. Still, the act slips in a few places. He survives a free fall of a thousand meters during 9/11 and walks out of a burning, exploding fighter jet unharmed. He also lets out a soft, maniacal giggle at the sight of Starlight's new costume.

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• 3. Bred to Replace

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  The secret behind the giggle is that Black Noir is an improved clone of Homelander. He has every one of Homelander's powers, including heat vision, flight, durability and enhanced vocal cords. He was bred, raised and educated for a single purpose, which was to kill Homelander if he ever went rogue. The only other option was nuking him, and that was judged too dangerous and bad for business. Only people at the level of the Guy from Vought, and Noir himself, know the truth.

  The arrangement has a flaw. Noir spends his life beside the man he was made to kill, and the order never comes. That stress drives him insane. Because the two look alike enough to pass for one another, Noir starts committing crimes while impersonating Homelander. His hope is that Vought will finally order him to act.

  Homelander once nearly works out the resemblance, during a nasty prank on Queen Maeve. The Boys come close at the eleventh hour too. Until the series climax, readers are led to believe Homelander committed a terrible crime against Becky, Billy Butcher's wife. Noir did it.

  Noir's impersonation also produces a set of incriminating photographs showing grisly murders. The Boys send copies to the Seven and to Vought, threatening to publish them if Vought ever tries to weaponize supes. The threat works, but it also damages Homelander. He cannot remember the acts, so he talks to his reflection and is sickened by the images. Frenchie, watching in secret, suspects dissociative identity disorder. Homelander decides he is "damned" and starts acting on every dark impulse.

  During the Herogasm event, Noir gives Wee Hughie a thumbs-up on his rear and whispers "good soldier" to him. Soon after, Homelander leads the other superheroes in a coup against the United States. They attack the White House and kill everyone inside, including the Vice President, whom Vought controls.

  Butcher flies to Washington with Hughie. Mother's Milk has worked out most of the truth but cannot warn them in time. In the Oval Office, an unmasked and grinning Noir walks in and tells both men everything. He says he committed the atrocities, and the crime against Becky, to earn permission to do the job he was made for.

  Homelander lunges at him. Noir smiles wider and tears him apart, ignoring his own wounds. Homelander manages to injure him badly before dying. Delirious, Noir staggers out after Butcher, and the Marines around the White House open fire with heavy machine guns and tank cannon. Butcher ends him with a crowbar, hoping to destroy the memory of what Noir did to Becky.

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• 4. Earving the Enforcer

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  The television series builds a very different man. Nathan Mitchell plays the first Black Noir, and Fritzy-Klevans Destine plays him in flashbacks. This Noir is a normal person given Compound V, which grants strength, a regenerative healing factor and a ninja-like silence. His abilities are far lesser than in the comics. Knives and pistol bullets can cut his skin.

  In the first season he stands toe-to-toe with the Female in a fight. He also plays classical music on a piano with no apparent effort.

  By the second season, he is the loyal enforcer of Vought CEO Stanford "Stan" Edgar, who directs every move he makes in combat. Noir kills the super-terrorist Naqib and hunts for Billy Butcher and the Boys. Away from the fighting, he shows small human touches. He gives Naqib's son a teddy bear and befriends a Vought programmer. He cries when he learns that his powers came from Compound V injections Vought gave him as a child, with his parents' consent.

  His downfall at that point is an allergy to tree nuts. The detail nods to Superman and kryptonite, and it also matches Mitchell's own real-life tree nut allergy. While Noir is trying to catch the rogue Starlight, Queen Maeve forces an Almond Joy into his mouth and kicks his Epi-pen out of reach. He falls into a coma.

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• 5. Payback in Nicaragua

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  In 1984, Vought sent a team called Payback on a joint operation with the CIA and the Contras. Their target was the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Third-season flashbacks show that Noir was a man named Earving, and that he had joined Payback, the team that came before the Seven. Payback's leader, Soldier Boy, sabotaged the careers of his teammates and physically abused them.

  Edgar had a secret plan for that mission. He wanted Payback to trade Soldier Boy to the Soviet Union so that Vought could replace him with Homelander. Homelander had been conceived using Soldier Boy's sperm.

  Throughout, Earving complained about the helmet that hid his face. He wanted to be the "Eddie Murphy" of superheroes. Edgar told him that Vought thought a publicly black superhero was neither profitable nor acceptable at the time.

  When Nicaraguan and Russian soldiers attacked their camp, Earving led Payback in cornering Soldier Boy and finally subduing him. Soldier Boy left him disfigured, mute and brain damaged.

  In the present, Noir wakes from his coma and learns Soldier Boy is back in America. He cuts a tracking chip out of his arm and hides in an abandoned Buster Beaver's Pizza Restaurant. The mascots there are imaginary friends, and they reenact Soldier Boy's abuse to push him to face his tormentor instead of running.

  Back at Vought, Homelander kills him for hiding that Soldier Boy is Homelander's biological father. As Earving dies, he sees Buster Beaver and the others mourning him and telling him they are proud.

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• 6. Beyond the Main Series

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  Several side projects fill in the character's life around the main episodes. The 2021-2022 promotional web series Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman covers the gap between the second and third seasons. In it, Noir has woken from his coma. Vought sends him to track down Supes who escaped from a psychiatric hospital and to film promos for its streaming service, Vought+. His film Black Noir: Insurrection is due to be released there.

  In 2020, Amazon Prime Video sponsored promotional episodes of Death Battle! tied to The Boys. Noir hands his place in the Seven's battle royale to Billy Butcher and becomes a host instead, alongside Wiz and Boomstick. He talks to them through head and hand gestures.

  The Boys Presents: Diabolical adds a prequel in the episode "One Plus One Equals Two". Here Noir is the "Homelander before Homelander", a figure Madelyn Stillwell had wanted to supplant, and she describes him as built to destroy Homelander. He finds an 18-year-old Homelander after the young hero accidentally killed several hostages and eco-terrorists on his first mission. Noir evades Homelander's attempts to kill him and tricks him into destroying the compound they are standing in. He then mercy-kills the last surviving hostage so Homelander cannot kill them both.

  Having won Homelander's trust, Noir writes a speech for him to give the press outside. It claims the eco-terrorists had a bomb that Homelander tried to stop.

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• 7. Justin Takes the Mask

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  In July 2022, Eric Kripke confirmed that Nathan Mitchell would return as a replacement Black Noir for the fourth season. He called the new character "whole new" and a "really interesting and hilarious character".

  The new Noir, Justin, is an aspiring actor wearing the same masked costume. Unlike his predecessor, he talks in private and is both excitable and nervous about the job. He can fly, but he has narcolepsy. He admits he is uneasy with the violence he is ordered to carry out.

  In the fourth season, he joins the Deep and A-Train in killing three Homelander sympathizers. They leave the bodies near a riot between the sympathizers and the Starlighters. After being left out of Tek Knight's party, he confides in the Deep. The Deep tells him he must kill to match his predecessor, and mentions an earlier assignment in Asia.

  Homelander then sends the two to attack the Boys at their headquarters. Justin nods off mid-fight, then flies and speaks, which surprises Butcher. When A-Train switches sides, Justin and the Deep are driven back. By the finale he kills "Also Ashley", the personal assistant of Ashley Barrett. The Deep protests that he killed the wrong Ashley, and Justin shows no remorse.

  In the Gen V season two episode "Trojan", he intercepts Polarity as Polarity takes Doug Brightbill to the hospital. He kills Doug, captures Polarity and takes a selfie with him. Later, while Polarity sits in a cell, Justin chats about the Alien franchise until Sister Sage dismisses him.

  In season 5, Justin goes "method" and turns silent like his predecessor. He co-hosts the manosphere podcast Manhandled with the Deep. Homelander sends him, the Deep, Cindy and DogKnott to capture Stan Edgar, who knows about V1. That original form of Compound V would grant immortality and immunity to the Boys' Supe-killing virus.

  Justin captures Edgar, but the Deep detonates a halothane grenade in Justin's Cybertruck to knock him out and claim the credit. That starts a rift. Justin also secretly acts in stage productions, and the Deep kills his director, Adam Bourke, using an eel hidden in a toilet.

  When the Deep must promote a Vought Petroleum pipeline in Alaska, Justin sabotages it. The resulting oil spill leads marine creatures to blame the Deep. After Justin brags about it in their podcast room, the Deep strangles and stabs him to death.

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• 8. Kripke's Choices

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  In September 2020, Eric Kripke confirmed that the television series would not use the comic's clone twist. Homelander often compares Noir to himself, which looked like foreshadowing, but Kripke chose to write Noir as his own character. He blended the comic Noir's psychopathic traits into Homelander. The failsafe role went to Ryan Butcher, Homelander's son, mainly played by Cameron Crovetti. Ryan loosely adapts the Supe baby that Butcher kills in the comics after it kills his wife during its birth.

  Kripke defended the mystery. "Every so often, it comes up like, 'We should really learn who he is.' And I'm like, 'But should we know? Isn't it more interesting that we just never really quite understand how he got that way?'"

  The Buster Beaver sequence grew out of a pitch. Kripke wanted to show Noir's "Dark Night of the Soul" even though Noir cannot speak. Someone suggested a cabin, and he added flying animated Snow White creatures. Then a colleague proposed a Chuck E. Cheese-style pizza chain, and the idea settled there. The animation company 6 Point Harness drew the characters at the level of real Disney hand-drawn animation. Kripke says they are implied to have been with Noir through the whole series, adding, "And that just brings me no end of pleasure."

  To promote the third season, Amazon Prime Video licensed Black Noir action figures from MAFEX, NECA and the Japanese company MediCom Toy Incorporated.

  Critics have treated the character and Mitchell's performance as a breakout. Black Noir II drew praise for his sudden, funny dialogue. Commentators compare the character to slasher villains such as Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, and to the Marvel antihero Deadpool.

  In October 2020, Mitchell said he would like a "Mr. Bean-style comedy" solo series about the character. The tentative title was The Secret Life of Black Noir.

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