The Boys Are Getting Closer To Homelander Becoming A Fully Fledged Unleashed Sociopath

According to Eric Kripke, the showrunner of The Boys, the series is leading up to Homelander (Antony Starr) fully unraveling and becoming a psychopath

The Boys is a humorous and dark superhero series that debuted on Amazon Prime in 2019. Season 3 is currently in session and has received critical acclaim as well as a fourth season renewal. Homelander (Antony Starr) is the Seven's commander, and his downward slide is seen from the start of The Boys. Homelander is the world's strongest superhero, and he presents himself as a noble and heroic figure. However, underlying narcissism, arrogance, paranoia, insensitivity, and irresponsibility lurk underneath the surface. When it comes to gaining what he wants, he doesn't care about the number of lives lost.

Kripke previews the future of The Boys in an interview with Writers Guild of America West, revealing that the series is building up Homelander's psychopathic inclinations. The Boys will enter a new age as the tainted superhero slides more into his worst traits. Here's what Kripke has to say:

You could track the meta-mythology of the series essentially as the slow unraveling of Homelander. So the writers know—and Antony [Starr, who plays Homelander] is a big part of this as well—that, eventually, whenever the series reaches its climax, this guy is going to go full sociopath, and he has to be stopped before some kind of apocalyptic event. That’s what we’re building towards.

So then the question, when you back into that as a writer [is] what are the guardrails that are stopping him from doing that? Who is he, as a person, that he doesn’t just go off and destroy the world today? What are the things that he needs? And then how do we slowly peel those away from him one after the other, after the other?

So he isn’t so much evolving as he’s devolving, I would say. Right now, he still needs love. He still needs the adoration of fans and the approval and love of his son. There are all of these things that he requires that, if he became a true monster, he wouldn’t have. So we’re spending all the seasons teaching him that he doesn’t need those things one after another, after another. And then once he finally realizes he doesn’t want love or approval from anybody, then obviously, that’s when the big end game starts.

Homelander has done some pretty heinous things throughout The Boys' rule, so it's not difficult to envision him going entirely renegade and wreaking havoc on the planet. Homelander is a rapist and a murderer, to name a few of his crimes, and once allowed an entire plane full of people crash land owing to his irresponsibility. Despite all of Homelander's atrocities in The Boys, they are constantly pushed under the rug. He still doesn't want the rest of the world to see him for who he truly is. When he reaches the point when he no longer cares, viewers will see an even more frightening side of Homelander. Homelander's mental degeneration has been readily visible thus far in season 3 of The Boys. He's starting to feel the effects of the events that are unfolding, and he may even feel threatened. Meanwhile, Homelander's abilities have been compared to those of DC's Superman on several occasions. As a result, if Homelander went rogue, he might wreak devastation on Earth, and what would stop him? Only a demented clone of Homelander, Black Noir, was known to be capable of killing Homelander in the Boys comic novels. However, because The Boys don't seem to be paying attention to this comic book narrative, it's unclear how Homelander can be stopped.

Source: Writers Guild of America West