The Boys Finally Spelled It Out For The Homelander Stans

Amazon's The Boys Season 4 is dropping this summer, and in advance of this long-awaited follow-up to the last season, they've dropped a teaser poster that finally spells out what demographic they've been criticizing this whole time.

Amazon's teaser poster of The Boys s4 featuring Homelander with the slogan Make America Super Again

The slogan "Make America Super Again" is a very obvious satire on Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan, and apparently this is what it took for some people to start understanding the more political side to this show. Most people believe The Boys is merely making fun of superheroes and superhero franchises, and while that's partly true, it's not even close to the main point of the series.

A large portion of the show is a direct satire on big entertainment companies, which is what superhero manufacturer, Vought International, represents. The show's earlier seasons made fun of celebrity culture, the manufactured aspect of pop culture and celebrities, the exploitation of the industry, and the two-faced nature of many of these superhero celebrities. It's also generally a criticism of large corporations ("We are a pharmaceutical company," as Stan Edgar says) that thrive on exploitation, commodification, and propaganda.

One of the earliest storylines directly referenced the Me Too era that overtook the second half of the 2010s as Seven member The Deep sexually assaulted newcomer Starlight. Even after he was eventually exposed for his behavior, he was allowed to come back to the Seven thanks to Homelander.

Another such moment was the big church-sponsored Believe Expo meant to uphold Christianity as the only legitimate religion and convince the nation that superheroes came from a higher power rather than a serum parents signed up their children to get or that the company would inject into children without consent.

This even caused some Christians to accuse the show of being discriminatory towards their religion and complain that only their religion is ever targeted by Hollywood and by the public. But I've found the people in Hollywood who criticize institutionalized Christianity are usually Christians or former Christians themselves.

It's obvious from the way Starlight's relationship with the religion is portrayed in the show that this writing came from someone with personal experience realizing the religious community they grew up in wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Of course, such criticisms are never a criticism of the religions themselves but rather a criticism of how many human beings and institutions use faith as propaganda to control others.

But speaking of propaganda, season 2 of the show featured a female hero named Stormfront who turned out to be a secret Nazi weaving her way into the US political sphere with help from Homelander. Stormfront mentioned "white genocide" to his son Ryan as a way of trying to indoctrinate him into her way of thinking.

Ironically, many prejudiced bigots in the United States still refuse to associate themselves with Nazi Germany and modern day neo-Nazis despite carrying many similar values and beliefs. Homelander, when not in the spotlight, has some straight-up bigoted moments such as rejecting a Muslim super on the basis of her religion and referring to a disabled person as a "cripple" after hurting him. However, he's ultimately concerned about himself and his own superiority. Like many politicians, the only doctrine he follows is whatever keeps him at the top of the totem pole.

Season 3 showed Homelander's own self-serving and power-craving nature really kick into high gear after Stormfront kills herself, as he takes his icon status and influence to a new level. After losing some status due to his association with her, and thereby losing control and influence at Vought, he flew off the handle on public TV, expressing his beliefs and criticizing Vought for trying to control him.

The exact demographic being criticized here are white men who feel like they're losing their privilege, as we see many members of the public, including MM's daughter's step-father Todd, believing that Homelander completely represents them. They very obviously mimic how the early Trump supporters would behave when he ran for office in 2016, with both groups seeing their idols as brave to be able to speak as they do and thinking they're the exact change that their society needs.

These supporters also sound a lot like some fans of the show who somehow, after three seasons, continued to see Homelander as this misunderstood antihero rather than the straight up villain that the show never attempted to hide. I guess lasering the plane at the end of the pilot episode, letting a different plane full of people die, forcing a girl off a building and calling it suicide, raping an employee and using violence to get their child from her, aligning himself with a Nazi, and killing someone who called him a fascist were all just moments of weakness.

Such fans see Homelander as vigilante Captain America, and because his characterization includes significant backstory to illuminate why he's so messed up, they're unable to see the layer of satire that links him to Trump. Now with this poster, Amazon really can't make it any clearer what kind of character Homelander is supposed to be, and that's without even acknowledging his psychopathic nature. After getting away with publicly killing his critic in the end of season 3, Homelander appears to be fully embracing himself out in the open.

Going forward, it seems like the show might really lean into the familiar celebrity to politician crossover as suggested by the season 4 tagline. Whether Homelander himself becomes a political figure or he simply becomes the spokesperson for his candidate of choice, I feel like we'll see him tap into his dedicated new fanbase and cater his propaganda directly to them since these people are so easy to control. Either way, it's not like he actually needs to know politics in order to hop on that train.

I also expect we'll see a lot more from the relationship between Homelander and Ryan. Boys like Ryan without proper parental figures can fall prey to negative influences, disinformation, and propaganda that injects them with problematic thought processes.

They often latch onto male social media content creators on YouTube and TikTok that promote such beliefs and create widespread cultlike mentality among this demographic that politicians, influencers, and corporations can more easily take advantage of. After Ryan chose his father over Butcher and then smirked after Homelander killed the guy in the season finale, it's possible that this is the direction they're taking his character, though he's undoubtedly still infused with all the good instilled by Becca.

Season 3 also showed Annie exposing Vought's lies about Soldier Boy and quitting as Starlight to join The Boys full time, Hughie overcoming his feelings of inferiority when it came to his relationship with her, Kimiko losing her powers like she wanted but regretting it and regaining them, Butcher knocking on death's door after taking so much of the compound, MM reconciling with his daughter and telling her about Soldier Boy, and the soldier himself now in Grace Mallory's clutches after removing Maeve's powers, so there's a lot to explore going forward.

Ironically, despite the show's mockery of superhero franchises with their million sequels and spin-offs, The Boys has its own spin-off that came out last year, Gen V. Showrunner Eric Kripke did say that you don't have to watch one to watch the other, which is certainly a good decision after the MCU's attempt to force everyone to watch their 50 films and 300 TV shows on Disney+.

But...I'm still not watching it. You can only stretch something out so much. Even if they want to keep making spin-off after spin-off (including The Boys: Mexico), I'm hoping Kripke sticks to his original five-season plan for the main show. He disclosed in a recent interview that he can see the show going past that, but Homelander can't still be running around after a fifth season given where his arc has taken him so far, and Butcher's story has always been about taking down Homelander.

The Boys losing to Homelander and Vought after five seasons would make the show feel dragged out, and eventually, they'll run out of vendettas to square, backstories to reconcile, and bad guys to take down. So regardless of how season 4 comes to an end, season 5 should really be the last.

Feb 8, 2025 Update: So this show kinda sucks. Read why: The Boys Kinda Sucks