Homelander

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Garth Ennis, who created Homelander together with the artist Darick Robertson, offered a blunt way to picture him. In Ennis's words: "It might help to think of the Homelander as having all the self-control of… let's say… a fourteen-year-old." That teenager can fly, fire heat vision from his eyes, and lead the Seven, a team of superheroes funded by a company called Vought-American. His real name is John Gillman, but the world knows him by his hero name.

  In the comic book series The Boys, Homelander is a secondary antagonist. Across the wider franchise he is the central villain, and his sworn enemy is Billy Butcher. In the Amazon Prime Video adaptation, the actor Antony Starr plays him, and both the performance and the character have won critical acclaim.

  Three questions run through this story. What kind of laboratory produces a man like this? How does someone who cares so little about people become the public's favorite hero? And what does it take to stop a man who seems to have no weakness?

  112136971

• 2. Grown, Not Born

  ›

  In the original comics, Vought-American tells the public that Homelander is an alien who landed in the United States as an infant, much like Superman. The truth is colder. He and the rest of the original Seven were grown in a secret laboratory from genetic material taken from Stormfront. She had been injected with Compound V while still a member of the Hitler Youth. Homelander's mother, a mentally disabled woman, died giving birth to him. He spent much of his young life chained down, with a hydrogen bomb strapped to him in case he tried to escape.

  Jonah Vogelbaum, a Vought scientist, raised him in the television version, and the laboratory upbringing is blamed for the sociopathic narcissist he became. The spin-off Diabolical fills in the picture. In its episode "One Plus One Equals Two", flashbacks show Vought scientists systematically torturing the boy to test the limits of his powers. As an adult, the young hero still falsely claims to have had a happy childhood as a baseball prodigy.

  Madelyn Stillwell, his superior in that episode, manipulates him and warns him about Black Noir, whom she calls the "Homelander before Homelander". His first mission as a superhero is a hostage situation at a chemical plant, with Noir expected to arrive after him. Homelander tries a peaceful resolution. Then he accidentally kills a hostage and wounds the eco-terrorist leader when he lasers the man's broken gun. The group berates him for his recklessness, and in a psychotic episode he kills the remaining eco-terrorists and all but one hostage.

  When Black Noir arrives, Homelander resolves to kill him to hide what happened. Noir tricks him into blowing up the compound, then wins his trust by mercy killing the last witness. Noir also writes the speech that Homelander gives the press, claiming the eco-terrorists had a bomb. Everyone believes it. Back at Vought headquarters, Homelander tells Stillwell that she was wrong about Noir.

  1321223940

• 3. The Comic Collapse

  ›

  Issue #40 of the comics delivers a set of doctored photographs to the Boys. They seem to show Homelander committing murder, cannibalism and necrophilia against men, women and children. Until the climax, Billy Butcher also believes that Homelander assaulted his wife Becca, who died giving birth to a superhuman baby that Butcher then killed. Both beliefs are lies. In private, Homelander talks to his own reflection in a mirror and suffers bouts of nausea. He concludes that he is damned anyway, and decides to act on every intrusive thought.

  Before this, he had tried to encourage the other superheroes to do what they wanted. He backed down out of fear of his boss, known as "The Vought Guy" or "The Guy from Vought", because Vought's money paid for the Seven's hedonistic lifestyle. From the storyline Herogasm onward, he resolves to free himself and the superhero community from Vought-American's control.

  In Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men, Homelander leads the other superheroes in a coup against the United States. They attack the White House and kill everyone inside, including the president. In the Oval Office, a masked Black Noir confronts Homelander and Butcher and reveals himself as a clone. He was the first of the Seven grown after Homelander, made for one purpose: to kill Homelander if he ever went rogue.

  Noir was denied that purpose for years, and it slowly drove him insane. He confesses that he created the atrocities in the photographs, including the assault on Becca, to turn the once truly benevolent Homelander into a monster. Homelander attacks him, and the two brutalize each other while Butcher flees. Noir later emerges from the White House holding a section of Homelander's arm and ribs, having torn him apart with his bare hands. Butcher then orders the waiting Marines to open fire. He finishes Noir with a crowbar, hoping the violence will also destroy Noir's memory of what he did to Becca.

  113202122

• 4. A Son and a Father

  ›

  In 2011, eight years before the events of season one, Homelander assaulted Becca, Billy Butcher's wife, after she was assigned as his assistant. He let her live. Unknown to him, she gave birth to a son named Ryan. When Homelander discovered the lies surrounding Ryan's existence, he maimed Vogelbaum and murdered Stillwell, the Vought CEO who was his pseudo-mother figure. Without her moderating influence he grew more unstable, and his emotional ineptitude kept his son at a distance.

  Stormfront, with whom he began a relationship after a difficult start, became his partner in a political scheme. They planned to take Ryan from Becca's care and turn the public against "supervillains". The hope was to create an outcry for more superheroes and bring them into the United States Armed Forces. The plan collapsed during Butcher's rescue attempt, when Ryan maimed Stormfront after she attacked Becca. Before Homelander could retaliate, Maeve blackmailed him into letting the boy go.

  Soldier Boy changed everything when he called Homelander and revealed that he was his father. Homelander confirmed the claim with Black Noir and then savagely murdered him. He later collected Ryan from Mallory's house after intimidating her. Homelander then proposed that he, his son and Soldier Boy could be a family. Soldier Boy disowned him instead, calling him a weak, damaged, attention-seeking disappointment. He also tried to kill or depower him, as part of his deal with Butcher.

  At Vought Tower, after Homelander had won Ryan back from Butcher, a pro-Starlight protestor hit the boy in the face with a soft drink can. Homelander killed the man with his heat vision. To his own surprise, his supporters and Stormfront's supporters applauded, and Ryan was impressed. In the fourth season, that bond is tested when Homelander overhears how his son talks about his mother and Butcher. He flies into a rage, wrecks the apartment and scolds Ryan until the boy leaves.

  231926642

• 5. The Face of America

  ›

  Eric Kripke, who developed the television adaptation, has said he views its Homelander as a metaphor for U.S. president Donald Trump. Critics have gone broader, calling the character a personification of negative perceptions of the United States. The gap between image and reality drives the series. The public sees an affable, sincere and acclaimed hero, a modern icon of America. In private, he is openly contemptuous of both humans and the Supes he considers lesser beings.

  After Stormfront's exposure, a series of television interviews forced Homelander to denounce her and apologize for his actions. Stan Edgar, the Vought CEO, and the board then installed Starlight as co-captain of the Seven, partly to restrain him. News of Stormfront's suicide broke that restraint. At his televised birthday celebration, he lashed out in a spiteful rant and claimed to be the world's savior. His approval rating soared among rural white males.

  To remove Edgar, Homelander bribed Victoria Neuman into opening an investigation that drove Edgar out of Vought on corruption allegations. Homelander took control of the company himself. On his way out, Edgar chastised him and warned that he would not be around to clean up his messes. Homelander named Ashley Barrett as his puppet ruler, reinstated the Deep in the Seven, and falsely announced a relationship with Starlight during the finale of American Hero.

  Starlight answered by denouncing both Homelander and Vought in a livestream and abandoning her superhero persona. Homelander claimed he had ended the relationship himself. He also accused her of human trafficking through her charitable foundation, the Starlight House. The smear shows how he runs a company the same way he plays a hero, by controlling the story.

  5345556

• 6. Reign and Reckoning

  ›

  By the fourth season, Homelander faces a murder trial and lacks purpose, having gained "everything he's ever wanted." He recruits the ultra-intelligent Sister Sage and sets out to take control of the government, believing that humans are inferior and have "too much control." When the trial ends in his exoneration, he orders three of his fans killed, which starts a brawl. He also stages Ryan's first "rescue", a Vought publicity stunt that forces the boy to use his power to kill the "criminal" actor.

  A breakdown follows an attempt on Hughie's life and a fight with Ryan over his contact with Butcher. Homelander hallucinates a version of himself that says he must purge his "human" side. He visits the laboratory where he was raised and tortures, humiliates and kills the people who tested on him. Only Dr. Barbara Findley survives, locked up among the corpses of the staff. Afterward, he begins to connect with and support his son.

  Politics then takes over. Homelander plans with Sage and Neuman to turn congressmen against the presidential candidate Robert Singer. He kills Webweaver, whom he wrongly suspects of being the mole, and expels Sage after learning she hid that A-Train was the mole. He outs Neuman as a Supe and orders the Seven to kill anyone at Vought who might hold power over him. Then Sage reveals that it was all part of her plan, and the new president, Steven Calhoun, swears loyalty to him. Calhoun declares martial law and deputizes Homelander and his superhuman army.

  A year later, Homelander is imposing an increasingly authoritarian rule, sending political dissidents to internment camps and purging the government. He frees Soldier Boy to help him find V1, the formula that could make him immortal. Soldier Boy gives it to his son anyway, believing that Stormfront would have wanted it. Sage, seeing immortality as a threat to her goal of total isolation and peace, defects to the Boys. Homelander puts Soldier Boy into stasis and executes Calhoun. He also kills Frenchie while hunting for Sage, who helped the Boys copy Soldier Boy's nuclear depowering beam through Kimiko.

  Homelander hallucinates Stillwell as an angel who promises him godhood, and he prepares to declare himself a god before the whole world. He also recruits psychics as "thought police" to hunt and execute heretics. In the final confrontation, the Boys kill Oh Father and the Deep. Butcher and Ryan restrain Homelander so that Kimiko can hit him with the beam. Powerless, he is easily beaten by Butcher and tries to bargain, offering to give Butcher Vought among other pleas. Butcher ignores him and kills him with a crowbar. A camera recording Homelander's planned speech broadcasts the scene worldwide.

  422726645

• 7. Power and Design

  ›

  Homelander was designed as an evil version of Superman and Captain America, in both powerset and costume. His cape, pulled to the left, resembles the first costume of Captain Marvel, also known as Shazam. Showrunner Eric Kripke has said that Homelander can "in theory" be killed. For the television series, Kripke dropped the comic's twist of a Black Noir clone killing him. Noir became a black man instead, and the character's psychopathic traits were merged into Homelander.

  In the comics, Homelander has heat vision, super strength, super speed, flight, super hearing and enhanced vocal cords, and is nearly invulnerable. X-ray vision lets him see through anything, and Compound V makes him age more slowly than a normal human. He is much stronger than anyone else in The Boys universe.

  The television version shares those powers, with two limits: his X-ray vision cannot see through zinc, and he ages like a normal human. In the season one finale, "You Found Me", Madelyn Stillwell tells him he has no weaknesses. "There isn't a weapon on Earth that they haven't thrown at him; they've all failed." Season 5 proves otherwise, revealing that the high-level radiation from Soldier Boy's energy beam, or enriched uranium, can temporarily neutralize his powers.

  1410172443

• 8. Beyond the Series

  ›

  Homelander arrives at Godolkin University in the first-season finale of Gen V, called there by Ashley Barrett. Marie Moreau begins to speak to him, but he does the "wait a minute" gesture and asks what kind of Supe attacks her own kind. Then he tells her loudly to "stay back" and blasts her with heat vision for the spectators. He names Cate Dunlap and Sam Riordan, the real attackers, as the heroes of the day. Marie and her group are locked up. The Gen V episode "Cooking Lessons" reveals that Homelander and Marie are the only success stories of Project Odessa, a Vought experiment to create "god-like" superhumans.

  The promotional web series Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman ran in 2020-2021 and bridged the second and third seasons. In it, Homelander films promotions for Vought's streaming service, Vought+, and celebrates Christmas while dealing with the fallout of Stormfront being revealed as a Nazi. In The Boys Presents: Diabolical, Starr reprises the role. Homelander executes escaped teenage Supes from the Red River Assisted Living for the Gifted Child with his heat vision on Vought's behalf. Ghost is the only survivor, and Vought covers up the deaths.

  Another Diabolical episode, "I'm Your Pusher", is set in the comics continuity. Homelander honors Great Wide Wonder at a promotional event and notices from the hero's erratic heartbeat that something is wrong. A drug overdose induced by Billy Butcher sends Great Wide Wonder crashing into Ironcast during a stunt, and both die. Homelander, Queen Maeve and Jack from Jupiter blame a "Cold War satellite" controlled by the evil Galaxius, and the crowd eagerly believes them.

  In the 2020 promotional episodes of Death Battle!, sponsored by Amazon Prime Video, Homelander is voiced by Yong Yea. He wins the Seven's simulated battle royale, and a 2022 episode puts him against Nolan Grayson, also known as Omni-Man, from Invincible. The hosts judge that Omni-Man's strength, skill and experience would win a fight to the death.

  In video games, Homelander appears as a purchasable multiplayer operator in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, voiced by Antony Starr. In Mortal Kombat 1 he arrives through the Kombat Pack DLC with Starr's likeness. In November 2023, Starr said he would not voice the character, and Jake Green did. Homelander joined Mortal Kombat Mobile as a collectible character in 2025. A cosmetic outfit for the operator Ace in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege was released in March 2025. Jake Green also voices him again in the VR game The Boys: Trigger Warning.

  Music has borrowed him too. Metro Boomin sampled a speech from the third-season episode "The Only Man in the Sky" in "On Time", from his 2022 album Heroes & Villains. Homelander also makes a cameo in the music video for "Roll Out the Fallout!", performed by The Chalkeaters with Black Gryph0n and Benny Benack III.

  3029383546