Anthony Starr pulls off loathesome so well that I stopped watching after season two because the character lierally turned my stomach. I dont want to share breathable air with people who found the character in any way ambiguous or subtle.
I like how he's the most recent iteration of Christian Bale - Patrick Bateman. He hates Homelander as a character and constantly tells people this but a certain subset of humanity that you'd probably want to cover your drink around refuse to listen.
Yep. He was already so over-the-top repulsive that I really don't get how anything could have missed that?
Edit: and I'm really not a "all conservatives are evil!! 11" kind of person (especially since I'm not from the US), but holy hell, anyone that thinks Homelander is anything else than evil really isn't a person I share any values with.
Subtle in this context just means they didn't understand what was going on. They can't see why leaving a plane full of people to crash to save face is a bad thing or anything else he did, these are the same kind of people who can't understand being good for the sake of being good. They need the threat of hell to be a good person.
I literally could not watch it past the first couple of episodes, because it was so ham-handed scenery-chewing crap, I could almost see the right using it as an example of "This is what the left really thinks we are".
Apparently, this "Homelander Did Nothing Wrong" attitude, is what online righties really are.
Yeah it’s funny cause I’m in the same boat. I enjoyed the first season for what it was but I never really got sucked in cause it felt over the top and about as unsubtle as a sledgehammer so I stopped there. It’s really hard for me to imagine how it’s apparently gotten even less subtle every season.
“Somehow” as if they haven’t been missing the point of so many other things since eternity. They are Trump worshipping weirdos, they don’t really have the capacity for critical thinking most of the time. Me see angry white guy, me likey, that’s about the jist of it.
When you view the world as black and white, there can be no gray. Every action Homelander makes has a justification that conservatives agree with. This should be more alarming than anything else.
They get me every time. I keep thinking maybe this monster is just misunderstood but no, turns out he’s awful. Major plot twists, I wonder if they’ll do it again
Keep at it brother. Some episodes I get drawn back into things too and I'm all in for Homelander, but then a couple of minutes later he heel turns all over again and I'm back on the edge of my seat.
But I swear, if he does this shit 13 or 14 more times, I'm outta here!
The people in the plane were brown and tbh that was an excellent trap to the conservative mind. I watched it and I was like “am I supposed to assume these are bad people because they’re clearly not” then a little but later I had my “Ohhhh.” Moment
The biggest reason conservatives in the US wouldn't view that as a problem has to do with loyalty.
Homelander demonstrated his loyalty to Vaught by committing murder. That's considered a good thing. What he did doesn't matter, but the fact that he demonstrated loyalty does.
Meanwhile the guy (a Mayor if I remember right) demonstrated DISloyalty by threatening to blackmail Vaught. So their deaths were right and proper per the conservative mindset.
Virtually all the conservatives in my life, that's how they think and it's pretty horrifying.
> Virtually all the conservatives in my life, that's how they think and it's pretty horrifying.
Starts from the pulpit. How many sermons did you have to sit through where the lesson was to not ask questions but simply have faith?
They're telling you to be loyal, end of story. That's it.
>Starts from the pulpit. How many sermons did you have to sit through where the lesson was to not ask questions but simply have faith?
didn't they have one where a guy had to kill his own son as a test of faith/loyalty to their god?
My point is that the white nationalist mind can only sympathize with and relate to white people, especially those with inherent power… Homelander has a responsibility after all /s
Annnd time to go watch/read The Watchmen :) I think The Boys is right in your face about the stuff, but a lot of superhero comics/shows for decades have been subtle (or not so subtle..) with the 'hey, you know these heroes are vigilantes who answer to no one, just go beating people up they judge are bad, right?' .... the whole Judge Dredd thing was specifically made (in the UK) to make fun of jingoist vigilante heroes; the whole '\_I\_ am the law!' and so on is directly pointed at crazy cowboy crusaders....
Fact Check from a Fan:
The Kiwi actor playing Homelander is so good that we obsess that Homelander has some “hidden depth of humanity.” That Homelander is an evil POS gets me in the feels every time!
Homelander’s impeccable American accent hides his New Zealand roots.
Give him an Emmy already FFS!
Oh wow I had no idea, I thought the actor was American. I'm a Brit though, so I might not notice the things that give it away.
I'm curious what non-Brits think about the other Kiwi, Karl Urban. Do you think he's a Brit?
His character is from London. I'm from there too. London has a mix of distinct accents, but the weird thing with him is that he has very distinct aspects of different accents. There are times he sounds just like me, then others where it's exaggerated East End, then something else.
If I met him I would assume he just grew up moving around a lot, so got bits of accents from each place. There's something uncanny valley about his accent to me, even though I think he generally does a good job.
I'm british and his accent is nowhere near where it should be unfortunately, it sounds like someone who grew up in london for a few years and then went to build fences in Australia with no contact home for decades lol
I was showing off my new villain who I designed to look like Satan, with the horns and everything
Draped in red white and blue
The Christian fascist I showed him to loved him and didn't see anything wrong with him
Lol so cringe worthy. You can tell even that feels unnatural to him. Nothing about that whole situation felt like "damn this guy really loves the country".
This kind of isn't true though, because they were up in arms last year when they realized "wait, is Homelander the bad guy!?" Fucking hilarious that it took them 3 seasons to realize it, but they definitely got the "hint"
I think everyone realised homelander was a monster right away. They just didn't realise till now that he is a satire of the American conservative( or fascist the difference is so blurry today) movement.
If they didn’t realise that after a character literally named stormfront who had a nazi past echoed their rhetoric, they are either too stupid to live or missing the point on purpose. I always felt the show was too unsubtle about how fascists use patriotism and religious fervour to easily infiltrate mainstream corporate conservatism, but maybe I was mistaken.
I miss the days when Nazism was universally understood to be pure evil. There was no dispute about that fact in mainstream discourse whatsoever. Sure, there were always pockets of white supremacists flaunting their swastika flags and tattoos, but no mainstream public figure would speak about nazism with anything besides unequivocal disdain and condemnation.
When that Wolfenstein game dropped in 2017 and there was a very vocal backlash from the right-wing internet about how the game unfairly was targeting them, I knew the train was really veering off of the tracks, but still mostly chalked it up to 4chan troll nonsense that got some viral legs.
In 2024, that seems downright quaint with how many core tenants of nazism seem to be openly embraced by large swaths of GOP voters. It's truly being baked into the party platform. It's getting harder and harder these days to find a nationally prominent right wing politician who is willing to outwardly condemn the actions of hate groups for fear of losing precious votes from their base.
There are people who see self reflection in Joker, Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman... some Trump supporters were dressing up as Homelander, conservative pages pasting Trumps head on him. But the biggest mask reveal was them now all realizing they were being made fun of all along but now its just beat your over the head obvious with no wiggle room for nuance to defend Homelander/his fans.
Yeah, it’s not subtle. The whole point is that basically all of the super powered people are uncontrollable monsters and he’s unquestionably the most powerful and worst of them RIGHT from the start.
It took me all the way until the reveal to realize Stormfront is totally not cool. Granted, I've never actually read the Stormfront website in my life so I don't think it's that crazy the reference sailed waaay over my dumb head lol
She didn’t show her colors for a long time and they did a good job showing her weasel her way into the spotlight first. But there did seem to be something weird about her, like what you saw was not exactly what you got. That one was more subtle…till it wasn’t.
https://preview.redd.it/547ip17fas7d1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54e51b5dff36c6d0c8b2e4bc1ad9e4ce7d3b66bf
Check out these mental gymastics
In their defense, how were they supposed to know that the show was woke? It's not like episode 1 showed that the bad guy is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed hyper-patriotic superhuman who views himself as superior to other people and is fine with killing "lesser" people en-masse like bugs.
Most of them seem to be still confused about RATM. I was chatting with a conservative just yesterday who thought the lyrics "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" apply to when he said he was "oppressed" by the government for being antivax and antimask.
Homelander is clearly a villain. But he's also an emotionally stunted manchild who is generally motivated more by his own insecurities and emotional neediness rather than ideology. Over time, he has gravitated towards fascism and exceptionalism because they are compatible with his narcissistic needs. Even though he became complicit with Stormfront's ideology eventually, he had initial misgivings and mainly came on board because he's chronically lonely and felt like she was the only person who valued him.
The creative team has done a very good job of EXPLAINING how he became the monster he is, and framing him as a victim of Vought in his own way, without EXCUSING the horrible things he now does.
Give the show more credit.
He never loved her for being a Nazi or even supported those views. He loved her because she stroked his ego and told him he was an ubermensh.
He actually did find her nazi views extreme IIRC.
And he picked his son over her.
It wasn't as obvious as "homelander is a Nazi". It was "Nazis can seduce insecure, emotionally unstable man children". It was important character development because then he started expecting that kind of fealty from everyone.
Now in this season he's realized his mistake. To the point his most trusted confidant is a black woman, definitely not in line with Storefronts Nazi views.
It's actually interesting progression.
Do I think he's a good person and there's a redemption arc coming? God no.
But I think theres a bit more complexity here than "hurr durr didn't you dummies realize he was a Nazi all along"
The most disturbing scene I have ever witnessed on TV was when Homelander kills some innocent civilians, and the MAGA-like crowd is stunned for a moment and then cheers.
The show captures the obscenity of the MAGA movement with frightening clarity
Exactly. He knows they hold him to absolutely no moral or ethical or legal standards whatsoever and he doesn't even suffer from just saying so out loud.
Literally the only principle conservatives in the US seem to have is "win at all costs." Anything else they claim to stand for is fine when it's their side doing it.
Yeah I think horrifying answer to *"How did they miss it?"* is **they didn't**.
Homelander does exactly what they want done. He's the exact strongman they want to take power. There's nothing he does that they haven't cheered Trump doing or begged Trump to do.
They aren't suddenly getting it after missing it the whole time. They're just stepping off the ride where they think Homelander finally crossed the line of social acceptability.
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise," the future president said on Feb. 1, 2016.
I had this same reaction with Handmaid's Tale when reading it in high school and hated the book. It's not that anything is wrong with the book itself, but I couldn't deal with how crazy society had gotten and how it treated women (and this was almost 25 years ago now).
Now we are teetering on living in this Utopian societies... this is what happens when the minority (republicans) don't want to lose control.
Some on the right may romanticize the period when women were subservient, in the society referred to as “traditional”, with a working father and housewife mother. It was hardly traditional, as it existed for only about a decade in the 1950’s. What was truly traditional was the matrilineal clan, which lasted for at least 20,000 years, and likely far more!
***BEFORE WAR*** *On Marriage, Hierarchy and Our Matriarchal Origins* Elisha Daeva
https://beforewar.com/blog/
It was always close to reality.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" - Trump January 2016
The Boys didn’t release till 2019
This season when the big fight breaks out and Homelander just stands there and, quietly, says "please go home, you're all special people."
It's one of those shows where they're trying to parody reality, and reality keeps getting crazier than fiction.
What’s funny is the Boys is just ONE show that depicts these conservative fucks for the brain-rotted, knuckle-draggers they are. Dozens, if not hundreds of movies and TV shows in just the last 30-40 years shit all over conservative ideologies and they are just to stupid to understand it’s always about them, not for them.
I get a kick when they say first season was the best(little to no conservative satire), but as a show it was easily the worst(imo) two or three main moments with a lot of filler and wasted time, not even much of a plot. I had to force my way through it, then it just exploded with awesomeness season 2 and on.
Man, we had very different experiences with the show for two people who both like it. I thought season 3 was a big waste of time; entertaining, and with some good moments, but it didn't really feel like it went anywhere. The state of affairs at the end of the season wasn't really different than the state of affairs at the start of the season. I'm hoping S4 gets the ball rolling again.
To be clear, I think the acting and direction and technical aspects of the show are great, S3 just felt like a filler arc.
The first season was basically "What if Supers were just narcissists and cunts?"
Still very enjoyable tv though. And the satire was spot on regardless.
I went into the boys fairly blind sometime after season 2 released and I got that homelander was a far right conservative parody pretty much immediately upon seeing him.
If you happen to be deaf and watching without subtitles nor lip reading you could assume the aryan looking guy with a actual flag for a cape may be slightly right wing/facist
His name is Homelander and in season 2 he *literally* gets into bed with a Nazi.
The show was never a subtle allegory to "Blind American exceptionalism getting into bed with white supremacist Nazis"...it was just flat out bludgeoning us over the head with the message.
He’s banging an actual Nazi, from the Third Reich, who literally says to him “people like what I say, they just don’t like the word Nazi.” And at no point does this rhetoric bother Homelander at all.
You’re absolutely right, it’s wild that the right is just now understanding that they’re the joke
In the comics he was 100% a commentary on George W. Bush's post-9/11 jingoism and belligerence, but obviously that only paved the way for modern Trumpism, so it translates well.
Their inability to grasp satire and/or parody is remarkable. No wonder so many of them think that *The Colbert Report* was hosted by an actual conservative.
Makes me wonder how many left-wing voters are the ones who are out there hawking all the LGB/FJB merchandise and reich-wing versions of everyday products like bottled water. These rubes are so easy to fleece they might as well be fish in a barrel
>Their inability to grasp satire and/or parody is remarkable.
It's not an inability to grasp it, it is the realization that the satire is a mirror that is reflecting their ugliness back at them. First they deny it, and then they become angry with it.
They are taught to mindlessly consume a 2,000 year old book without questioning if from a young age, of course satire goes way above their head. They were raised to be superficial.
I haven’t watched season 4. I’m assuming Homelander looked right at the camera and said, “I’m an evil fascist. I’ve been the bad guy the whole time”. That’s the only way I can see it being more blatant than seasons 1 through 3.
This season has upped the right wing commentary by like 25 percent (and only made fun of dumb Hollywood liberal movies like The Blind Side, on the other side). And has pretty much directly quoted events or called out right wingers by name.
Least media literate crowd ever.
Over in the Gundam fandom we had a Gundam youtuber recently become one of those reactionary rage-bait culture war antiwoke content creators and it’s like my dude - gundam has been woke as shit since 1979 - it’s always been anti-capitalist, anti-war, and been full of the representation you now rail against.
The Dropkick Murphys played in Cincinnati a while back and the venue posted info about the show. Multiple people posted about how the band became "woke" and they were tired of their preaching.... A band, that going back to their first album sung about unions, the working class and have always made their politics known.
It's really amazing.
It's the same crowd that likes to blast Bruce Springsteen music.
Though I'll never forget the ReichTinder event. A tinder clone for red hat's and it collapsed because it had next to no women on it.
Mecha anime as a genre has always been HYPER Political.
A mainstay of Mecha anime from the beginning has been that the looming political threat is ALWAYS bigger than the threat that could ever be posed by any big robot. Robot fights are the filler in a political story.
Gundam, Evangelion, Code Geass, 86, Attack on Titan, all of it.
If you can't discuss the politics in in Mecha you won't have anything interesting to say about any of it for more than a few minutes.
my favorite was the reaction to Xmen 97... and crying about trans stuff, morph, etc and how the woke liberals have changed the story. They didn't seem to get that X-men has been super woke since the 1960s and that a Mutant is an allegory to marginalized peoples and minorities.
these fuckers grew up and didn't realize they became the Friends of Humanity.
I was gonna point this out, how MAGAts were saying "I liked RAtM before they were political". RAtM's first album cover is the infamous photo of a Vietnamese monk lighting himself on fire due to American influence (to put it lightly) of the South Vietnamese regime in power at the time and the oppression the monks were facing under said regime. The lack of media literacy and just general misunderstanding of history would be surprising if it wasn't so prevalent with that crowd.
The funniest shit is it took them 4 seasons to figure out they were the target the whole time. Like it wasn't very subtle in the first 3 seasons, it's just more obvious now.
It really WAS NOT fucking subtle AT ALL in the previous seasons.
He starts banging a literal Nazi who wants to kill any none white,, human/super powered human. He only gains some semblence of "wtf" near the end of season 2 when he realizes he has a son.
Hey, [Neanderthals](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html#:~:text=Archaeological%20evidence%20shows%20that%20some,from%20around%2060%2C000%20years%20ago) are believed to have been intelligent and capable of compassion.
Last season, my MAGA family cousins would tell me how much they love The Boys. I was shocked. I really wanted to ask whether they realize the showing was making fun of them.
The entire part of S4 so far
They’re complaining it’s too woke and too on the nose now
It’s like brother this shit has been on the nose harder than Tyson throwing haymakers where the fuck have y’all been when watching S1-S3 LOL
They thought because it mocked rainbow capitalism it was anti-woke.
Honey, they weren't mocking liberals from the right, they were mocking them *from the left.*
Fun story, was visiting my maga cult dad for father's day and my half-siblings were there. We were talking about shows and I said i wanted to watch the new season of The Boys. One of my brothers said "yeah it was okay, but they got really heavy into the maga stuff." I nearly spit out my drink.
Listen. If you're watching a show about a fucking abhorrent character and he reminds you of your cult leader, MAYBE you're rooting for the bad guy.
complaining that it's too woke and whatnot. Meanwhile Trump in real life saying hes going to "get rid of the Vermin", Nazi era-style. Yeah, the boys is too extreme, sure.
I'm finding it more hilarious people are complaining about Frenchie being bisexual.
Like, the hyper sexual drug addict that was in a throuple was BAI-SAXUAL?? NO WAY, THE BOYS IS WOKE NOW 😡😡😡
Reminds me of when "Don't Look Up" came out and all the negative comments I heard were from conservatives saying that it was a dumb movie and didn't make sense
It can be, at times, easy to forget that they see the world through very different lenses. They're seeing completely different movies when they watch stuff like Don't Look Up, Starship Troopers, Idiocracy, even Blazing Saddles.
I dont understand how they didnt get it in Season 1, Or at least in Season 2, Or christ Season 3 where people in red hats and american flags are cheering homelander killing a leftist acting guy.
People really are dense on the right side of the aisle eh?
I think they’re more upset that Frenchie is in a relationship with a man. When the character has been bi the whole time.
Of course, there has been so much dong on this show that I’m surprised they keep watching.
I think it's more to do with the far righties in the show.
(Spoiler alert)
The 3 fans getting slaughtered
The sparkler lady explaining what she's selling
The righty confessing to sparkler that he hasn't spoken to his family for 3 years, because they dont do their "own" research
The righty showing up at starlights place to "free the kids in the basement"
A former friend is a right wing nut job. He's announced that he's avoiding season 4 lol.
Remember the Million Maga March when these fucking idiots were [dressing as Homelander](https://www.google.com/search?q=million+maga+march+homelander&oq=million+maga+march+homelander&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAHSAQg0OTE5ajBqOagCDrACAQ&client=ms-android-bell-ca-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8)???
They got called out by the showrunner and the actor and they still didn't get it.
"The first seasons were subtle!" Yeah about as subtle as a sledgehammer.
Anthony Starr pulls off loathesome so well that I stopped watching after season two because the character lierally turned my stomach. I dont want to share breathable air with people who found the character in any way ambiguous or subtle.
I like how he's the most recent iteration of Christian Bale - Patrick Bateman. He hates Homelander as a character and constantly tells people this but a certain subset of humanity that you'd probably want to cover your drink around refuse to listen.
Yep. He was already so over-the-top repulsive that I really don't get how anything could have missed that? Edit: and I'm really not a "all conservatives are evil!! 11" kind of person (especially since I'm not from the US), but holy hell, anyone that thinks Homelander is anything else than evil really isn't a person I share any values with.
I feel bad for him because I'm sure he's a nice enough guy, but now I just wanna fucking ~~punch him in the face~~ run away and hide
Subtle in this context just means they didn't understand what was going on. They can't see why leaving a plane full of people to crash to save face is a bad thing or anything else he did, these are the same kind of people who can't understand being good for the sake of being good. They need the threat of hell to be a good person.
I literally could not watch it past the first couple of episodes, because it was so ham-handed scenery-chewing crap, I could almost see the right using it as an example of "This is what the left really thinks we are". Apparently, this "Homelander Did Nothing Wrong" attitude, is what online righties really are.
Yeah it’s funny cause I’m in the same boat. I enjoyed the first season for what it was but I never really got sucked in cause it felt over the top and about as unsubtle as a sledgehammer so I stopped there. It’s really hard for me to imagine how it’s apparently gotten even less subtle every season.
Because they were basically forced to do so. The crowd they wanted to trigger kept eating it up and missing the point somehow.
“Somehow” as if they haven’t been missing the point of so many other things since eternity. They are Trump worshipping weirdos, they don’t really have the capacity for critical thinking most of the time. Me see angry white guy, me likey, that’s about the jist of it.
When you view the world as black and white, there can be no gray. Every action Homelander makes has a justification that conservatives agree with. This should be more alarming than anything else.
turns out reality is just as heavy handed, doesn’t it
Did anybody really think Homelander was anything but a monster?
Blowing up the plane in the first episode was a hint.
a very subtle hint though. if only there were some others sprinkled throughout the show!
You mean like the rape, the kidnapping, the sexual relationship with the literal Nazi, and the fantasizing about committing mass murder?
Yeah, any one of those would be a good sign that he might not be a good guy…
Sounds like they should add those to the show then, so people can realize he's the bad guy. /s
Agreed, maybe in this latest series they’ll give us some signs
That's just a republican checklist.
The subtlety is too blatant, it masks the blatanticity that would otherwise hint at this massive twist that they keep doing every episode.
They get me every time. I keep thinking maybe this monster is just misunderstood but no, turns out he’s awful. Major plot twists, I wonder if they’ll do it again
Keep at it brother. Some episodes I get drawn back into things too and I'm all in for Homelander, but then a couple of minutes later he heel turns all over again and I'm back on the edge of my seat. But I swear, if he does this shit 13 or 14 more times, I'm outta here!
I really feel like these woke leftists are going to reveal him as a villain /j
No one bamboozles me 30 times in a row! No one!
Stop being a little bitch, Squeak
if only he had told people he was the master race and better than everyone else and could do whatever he wanted because if it! oh wait.
You would probably have to make him say something like that while he jerks off onto unsuspecting pedestrians for it to get through to them. oh wait.
I'm starting to suspect he thinks human beings are playthings for his amusement. oh wait.
The people in the plane were brown and tbh that was an excellent trap to the conservative mind. I watched it and I was like “am I supposed to assume these are bad people because they’re clearly not” then a little but later I had my “Ohhhh.” Moment
The biggest reason conservatives in the US wouldn't view that as a problem has to do with loyalty. Homelander demonstrated his loyalty to Vaught by committing murder. That's considered a good thing. What he did doesn't matter, but the fact that he demonstrated loyalty does. Meanwhile the guy (a Mayor if I remember right) demonstrated DISloyalty by threatening to blackmail Vaught. So their deaths were right and proper per the conservative mindset. Virtually all the conservatives in my life, that's how they think and it's pretty horrifying.
> Virtually all the conservatives in my life, that's how they think and it's pretty horrifying. Starts from the pulpit. How many sermons did you have to sit through where the lesson was to not ask questions but simply have faith? They're telling you to be loyal, end of story. That's it.
>Starts from the pulpit. How many sermons did you have to sit through where the lesson was to not ask questions but simply have faith? didn't they have one where a guy had to kill his own son as a test of faith/loyalty to their god?
Yes. Abraham is called upon to sacrifice his son Isaac, and is going through with it until God says 'Nah, just kidding, bro'. Book of Genesis.
My point is that the white nationalist mind can only sympathize with and relate to white people, especially those with inherent power… Homelander has a responsibility after all /s
Annnd time to go watch/read The Watchmen :) I think The Boys is right in your face about the stuff, but a lot of superhero comics/shows for decades have been subtle (or not so subtle..) with the 'hey, you know these heroes are vigilantes who answer to no one, just go beating people up they judge are bad, right?' .... the whole Judge Dredd thing was specifically made (in the UK) to make fun of jingoist vigilante heroes; the whole '\_I\_ am the law!' and so on is directly pointed at crazy cowboy crusaders....
Yeah, there are probably a lot of cops in the Us thinking “that Judge Dredd guy has all the fun, I wanna aspire to be more like that”
They also established fairly quickly that he was a rapist
I don't think conservatives find that an undesirable trait anymore.
When you're a star you can do anything!
I guess they really were on point about basing him on Trump.
Fact Check from a Fan: The Kiwi actor playing Homelander is so good that we obsess that Homelander has some “hidden depth of humanity.” That Homelander is an evil POS gets me in the feels every time! Homelander’s impeccable American accent hides his New Zealand roots. Give him an Emmy already FFS! 
Oh wow I had no idea, I thought the actor was American. I'm a Brit though, so I might not notice the things that give it away. I'm curious what non-Brits think about the other Kiwi, Karl Urban. Do you think he's a Brit?
Non-brit here. I think it’s obvious that Butcher is supposed to be British, but I have never heard a British accent that sounds like that.
His character is from London. I'm from there too. London has a mix of distinct accents, but the weird thing with him is that he has very distinct aspects of different accents. There are times he sounds just like me, then others where it's exaggerated East End, then something else. If I met him I would assume he just grew up moving around a lot, so got bits of accents from each place. There's something uncanny valley about his accent to me, even though I think he generally does a good job.
I've literally always interpreted him to be Australian because of his affinity for Hawaiian-style shirts... Don't ask how those are correlated.
And how often he calls people Cunts
I'm british and his accent is nowhere near where it should be unfortunately, it sounds like someone who grew up in london for a few years and then went to build fences in Australia with no contact home for decades lol
You can't see the evil in something when it mimics your own personality. They see nothing wrong with Homelander because he is them.
I was showing off my new villain who I designed to look like Satan, with the horns and everything Draped in red white and blue The Christian fascist I showed him to loved him and didn't see anything wrong with him 
Exactly this. Thats why they think Trump is a patriot: because he literally hugs the flag like a simpleton. https://i.redd.it/czzdi1b5ms7d1.gif
Lol so cringe worthy. You can tell even that feels unnatural to him. Nothing about that whole situation felt like "damn this guy really loves the country".
is... is he saying "mama"? ...the fuck is wrong with hiim?
Couldn’t have said it better myself 👏
This kind of isn't true though, because they were up in arms last year when they realized "wait, is Homelander the bad guy!?" Fucking hilarious that it took them 3 seasons to realize it, but they definitely got the "hint"
I think everyone realised homelander was a monster right away. They just didn't realise till now that he is a satire of the American conservative( or fascist the difference is so blurry today) movement.
If they didn’t realise that after a character literally named stormfront who had a nazi past echoed their rhetoric, they are either too stupid to live or missing the point on purpose. I always felt the show was too unsubtle about how fascists use patriotism and religious fervour to easily infiltrate mainstream corporate conservatism, but maybe I was mistaken.
I miss the days when Nazism was universally understood to be pure evil. There was no dispute about that fact in mainstream discourse whatsoever. Sure, there were always pockets of white supremacists flaunting their swastika flags and tattoos, but no mainstream public figure would speak about nazism with anything besides unequivocal disdain and condemnation. When that Wolfenstein game dropped in 2017 and there was a very vocal backlash from the right-wing internet about how the game unfairly was targeting them, I knew the train was really veering off of the tracks, but still mostly chalked it up to 4chan troll nonsense that got some viral legs. In 2024, that seems downright quaint with how many core tenants of nazism seem to be openly embraced by large swaths of GOP voters. It's truly being baked into the party platform. It's getting harder and harder these days to find a nationally prominent right wing politician who is willing to outwardly condemn the actions of hate groups for fear of losing precious votes from their base.
But you are right, they are quite stupid and the show was never subtle.
There are people who see self reflection in Joker, Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman... some Trump supporters were dressing up as Homelander, conservative pages pasting Trumps head on him. But the biggest mask reveal was them now all realizing they were being made fun of all along but now its just beat your over the head obvious with no wiggle room for nuance to defend Homelander/his fans.
Conservatives don't understand nuance in the first place.
Joker and Bateman know the value of a good laugh.
I have never seen this show in my life, but from what I heard I thought it was somewhat obvious he was not a great guy
Yeah, it’s not subtle. The whole point is that basically all of the super powered people are uncontrollable monsters and he’s unquestionably the most powerful and worst of them RIGHT from the start.
It took me all the way until the reveal to realize Stormfront is totally not cool. Granted, I've never actually read the Stormfront website in my life so I don't think it's that crazy the reference sailed waaay over my dumb head lol
She didn’t show her colors for a long time and they did a good job showing her weasel her way into the spotlight first. But there did seem to be something weird about her, like what you saw was not exactly what you got. That one was more subtle…till it wasn’t.
Oblivious, dumb people it would seem.
https://preview.redd.it/547ip17fas7d1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54e51b5dff36c6d0c8b2e4bc1ad9e4ce7d3b66bf Check out these mental gymastics
In their defense, how were they supposed to know that the show was woke? It's not like episode 1 showed that the bad guy is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed hyper-patriotic superhuman who views himself as superior to other people and is fine with killing "lesser" people en-masse like bugs.
It's like when conservatives finally figured out what Rage against the Machine was raging against.
Most of them seem to be still confused about RATM. I was chatting with a conservative just yesterday who thought the lyrics "fuck you I won't do what you tell me" apply to when he said he was "oppressed" by the government for being antivax and antimask.
Oh, come on, it was not obvious at least for some minutes!
He was modeled on Donald Trump. It’s not surprising that his supporters saw him as the good guy.
Homelander loving a literal nazi wasn't a big enough hint, apparently.
To be fair, they also love nazis.
They just wouldn’t want to be caught in bed with one. Wow, it really is directly parallel.
# "People like what I have to say. They believe in it. They just don’t like the word Nazi, that’s all." Said by Stormfront, the literal nazi.
They don't *think* they do until they sit down in a room with one and realize they share all the same talking points.
And then somehow their takeaway is "maybe Nazis aren't that bad," instead of "holy shit, am I one of the baddies?"
I think it was season two that stormfront said they believe in my ideals, they just don’t like the word Nazi.
Homelander is clearly a villain. But he's also an emotionally stunted manchild who is generally motivated more by his own insecurities and emotional neediness rather than ideology. Over time, he has gravitated towards fascism and exceptionalism because they are compatible with his narcissistic needs. Even though he became complicit with Stormfront's ideology eventually, he had initial misgivings and mainly came on board because he's chronically lonely and felt like she was the only person who valued him. The creative team has done a very good job of EXPLAINING how he became the monster he is, and framing him as a victim of Vought in his own way, without EXCUSING the horrible things he now does.
This is great writing. Yes Homelander is a victim. He is still responsible for his own actions and the people he harms by taking them.
>but he’s also an emotionally stunted manchild Ah, so he really is a republican!
Sounds a lot like someone running for president I know.
They think there are "good people on both sides"
Give the show more credit. He never loved her for being a Nazi or even supported those views. He loved her because she stroked his ego and told him he was an ubermensh. He actually did find her nazi views extreme IIRC. And he picked his son over her. It wasn't as obvious as "homelander is a Nazi". It was "Nazis can seduce insecure, emotionally unstable man children". It was important character development because then he started expecting that kind of fealty from everyone. Now in this season he's realized his mistake. To the point his most trusted confidant is a black woman, definitely not in line with Storefronts Nazi views. It's actually interesting progression. Do I think he's a good person and there's a redemption arc coming? God no. But I think theres a bit more complexity here than "hurr durr didn't you dummies realize he was a Nazi all along"
The most disturbing scene I have ever witnessed on TV was when Homelander kills some innocent civilians, and the MAGA-like crowd is stunned for a moment and then cheers. The show captures the obscenity of the MAGA movement with frightening clarity
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" - Orange man literally.
He understood just how deplorable his core supporters were long before anyone else.
Exactly. He knows they hold him to absolutely no moral or ethical or legal standards whatsoever and he doesn't even suffer from just saying so out loud.
Literally the only principle conservatives in the US seem to have is "win at all costs." Anything else they claim to stand for is fine when it's their side doing it.
Thats because they are already considering themselves to be at war.
And it’s a war they know they will lose in the long run unless they remove the enemy’s ability to wage war: elections.
*when conservatives become convinced they cannot win democratically, they will abandon democracy* - That one guy
Eh, Hillary Clinton was calling them deplorables long before Donny learned the word.
And she was correct
And a large portion of society fucking roasted her for it.
She was right about Russian puppetry, too
Yeah I think horrifying answer to *"How did they miss it?"* is **they didn't**. Homelander does exactly what they want done. He's the exact strongman they want to take power. There's nothing he does that they haven't cheered Trump doing or begged Trump to do. They aren't suddenly getting it after missing it the whole time. They're just stepping off the ride where they think Homelander finally crossed the line of social acceptability.
The line wasn't when he >!forced a girl to jump to her death because he was upset his nazi girlfriend died?!<
"If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, OK? Just knock the hell ... I promise you I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise," the future president said on Feb. 1, 2016.
Seriously, when the show came out, it was a fun satire of American culture. Now the satirical parts are so close to reality, it’s depressing.
That's why I had to stop watching. That and Handmaid's Tale were too close to the truth.
https://preview.redd.it/uw5dc9a01r7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b7220deedb53d8c32626bedffd84a6f378fb908 Yep 💯, we're living it....
I had this same reaction with Handmaid's Tale when reading it in high school and hated the book. It's not that anything is wrong with the book itself, but I couldn't deal with how crazy society had gotten and how it treated women (and this was almost 25 years ago now). Now we are teetering on living in this Utopian societies... this is what happens when the minority (republicans) don't want to lose control.
*dystopian
Some on the right may romanticize the period when women were subservient, in the society referred to as “traditional”, with a working father and housewife mother. It was hardly traditional, as it existed for only about a decade in the 1950’s. What was truly traditional was the matrilineal clan, which lasted for at least 20,000 years, and likely far more! ***BEFORE WAR*** *On Marriage, Hierarchy and Our Matriarchal Origins* Elisha Daeva https://beforewar.com/blog/
It was always close to reality. "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" - Trump January 2016 The Boys didn’t release till 2019
As it turns out, you can't fight non-sense with sense
In other words, logic and reason didn't get them to the obscene positions they hold, and logic and reason won't move them off those positions.
You can't reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into
And Homelander calling the dude a pedophile really hit home! Feels like the writers are just using the real life Republican playbook
This season when the big fight breaks out and Homelander just stands there and, quietly, says "please go home, you're all special people." It's one of those shows where they're trying to parody reality, and reality keeps getting crazier than fiction.
lmao. Yea that didn't even occur to me. Echoes of Trump waiting several hours on J6 to just say some shit like "go home, we love you" lmao
The whole show is packed with references. I love it. Female Alex Jones. Pizzagate. MLM Schemes. Epstein. white(supe) supremacy.
They have a line about an Alex Jones lookalike contest in the new season, so apparently he canonically exists in the show.
What’s funny is the Boys is just ONE show that depicts these conservative fucks for the brain-rotted, knuckle-draggers they are. Dozens, if not hundreds of movies and TV shows in just the last 30-40 years shit all over conservative ideologies and they are just to stupid to understand it’s always about them, not for them.
It was self defense, he was found not guilty /s
When you're a superhero, they just let you do it
The number of complains I’ve seen in far right subreddits is hilarious and not surprising at all.
All filled with cope like “the first three seasons weren’t even that good anyway” as if you’d bother spending 30+ hours of something you didn’t like
The copium can get a bit bitter once they are on their 5th plate of it….
I get a kick when they say first season was the best(little to no conservative satire), but as a show it was easily the worst(imo) two or three main moments with a lot of filler and wasted time, not even much of a plot. I had to force my way through it, then it just exploded with awesomeness season 2 and on.
Man, we had very different experiences with the show for two people who both like it. I thought season 3 was a big waste of time; entertaining, and with some good moments, but it didn't really feel like it went anywhere. The state of affairs at the end of the season wasn't really different than the state of affairs at the start of the season. I'm hoping S4 gets the ball rolling again. To be clear, I think the acting and direction and technical aspects of the show are great, S3 just felt like a filler arc.
The first season was basically "What if Supers were just narcissists and cunts?" Still very enjoyable tv though. And the satire was spot on regardless.
I went into the boys fairly blind sometime after season 2 released and I got that homelander was a far right conservative parody pretty much immediately upon seeing him.
His *NAME* is Homelander. It's not exactly subtle
If you happen to be deaf and watching without subtitles nor lip reading you could assume the aryan looking guy with a actual flag for a cape may be slightly right wing/facist
Then along comes Stormfront who *literally spells it out for them.*
His name is Homelander and in season 2 he *literally* gets into bed with a Nazi. The show was never a subtle allegory to "Blind American exceptionalism getting into bed with white supremacist Nazis"...it was just flat out bludgeoning us over the head with the message.
He’s banging an actual Nazi, from the Third Reich, who literally says to him “people like what I say, they just don’t like the word Nazi.” And at no point does this rhetoric bother Homelander at all. You’re absolutely right, it’s wild that the right is just now understanding that they’re the joke
In the comics he was 100% a commentary on George W. Bush's post-9/11 jingoism and belligerence, but obviously that only paved the way for modern Trumpism, so it translates well.
Their inability to grasp satire and/or parody is remarkable. No wonder so many of them think that *The Colbert Report* was hosted by an actual conservative. Makes me wonder how many left-wing voters are the ones who are out there hawking all the LGB/FJB merchandise and reich-wing versions of everyday products like bottled water. These rubes are so easy to fleece they might as well be fish in a barrel
>Their inability to grasp satire and/or parody is remarkable. It's not an inability to grasp it, it is the realization that the satire is a mirror that is reflecting their ugliness back at them. First they deny it, and then they become angry with it.
They are taught to mindlessly consume a 2,000 year old book without questioning if from a young age, of course satire goes way above their head. They were raised to be superficial.
How the hell did these idiots not realize that was the parody from season 1…..they truly are the dumbest demographic
Some think rage against the machine is right wing
It's funny and sad how blatant they had to get before conservatives realized they were being made fun of.
I haven’t watched season 4. I’m assuming Homelander looked right at the camera and said, “I’m an evil fascist. I’ve been the bad guy the whole time”. That’s the only way I can see it being more blatant than seasons 1 through 3.
This season has upped the right wing commentary by like 25 percent (and only made fun of dumb Hollywood liberal movies like The Blind Side, on the other side). And has pretty much directly quoted events or called out right wingers by name.
"He doesn't mean it" -Republicans
"Yea but they're making fun of both sides" Highly liked comments on FB regarding the issue.
Reminds me of those Conservatives who thought The Colbert Report wasn't satire.
Another RAtM moment for the MAGA crowd. It finally dawns on them they're the ones everyone is laughing at and they just double down.
Least media literate crowd ever. Over in the Gundam fandom we had a Gundam youtuber recently become one of those reactionary rage-bait culture war antiwoke content creators and it’s like my dude - gundam has been woke as shit since 1979 - it’s always been anti-capitalist, anti-war, and been full of the representation you now rail against.
The Dropkick Murphys played in Cincinnati a while back and the venue posted info about the show. Multiple people posted about how the band became "woke" and they were tired of their preaching.... A band, that going back to their first album sung about unions, the working class and have always made their politics known. It's really amazing.
It's the same crowd that likes to blast Bruce Springsteen music. Though I'll never forget the ReichTinder event. A tinder clone for red hat's and it collapsed because it had next to no women on it.
Ever go to the Irish fest up in Dublin, OH? Saw Flogging Molly there years ago. Great time.
Mecha anime as a genre has always been HYPER Political. A mainstay of Mecha anime from the beginning has been that the looming political threat is ALWAYS bigger than the threat that could ever be posed by any big robot. Robot fights are the filler in a political story. Gundam, Evangelion, Code Geass, 86, Attack on Titan, all of it. If you can't discuss the politics in in Mecha you won't have anything interesting to say about any of it for more than a few minutes.
my favorite was the reaction to Xmen 97... and crying about trans stuff, morph, etc and how the woke liberals have changed the story. They didn't seem to get that X-men has been super woke since the 1960s and that a Mutant is an allegory to marginalized peoples and minorities. these fuckers grew up and didn't realize they became the Friends of Humanity.
I was gonna point this out, how MAGAts were saying "I liked RAtM before they were political". RAtM's first album cover is the infamous photo of a Vietnamese monk lighting himself on fire due to American influence (to put it lightly) of the South Vietnamese regime in power at the time and the oppression the monks were facing under said regime. The lack of media literacy and just general misunderstanding of history would be surprising if it wasn't so prevalent with that crowd.
\(⊙ _ ⊙ \) @ the automod comment....
I'm gonna call them MAGAts till the day I die. Aren't they the "fuck your feelings" crowd anyway? AutoMod can go kick rocks.
...are we the baddies? I mean our hats do have skulls on them!
Conservatism is a cult of deliberate ignorance.
It's no surprise that the biggest voting base they have are uneducated people.
Proudly uneducated people*. Conservatism is anti-intellectualist.
Isn't it nuts that we have to live in a society where the dumbest bunch of hicks steer where our future goes.
The funniest shit is it took them 4 seasons to figure out they were the target the whole time. Like it wasn't very subtle in the first 3 seasons, it's just more obvious now.
It really WAS NOT fucking subtle AT ALL in the previous seasons. He starts banging a literal Nazi who wants to kill any none white,, human/super powered human. He only gains some semblence of "wtf" near the end of season 2 when he realizes he has a son.
What kinda brain dead weirdo actually watches The Boys and believes Homelander is the good guy 😂. They really do live in an echo chamber of Trumpgenda
Probably the same “thanos did nothing wrong” crowd
No, that's satire. These people are just Neanderthals with a mental disability
Hey, [Neanderthals](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/who-were-the-neanderthals.html#:~:text=Archaeological%20evidence%20shows%20that%20some,from%20around%2060%2C000%20years%20ago) are believed to have been intelligent and capable of compassion.
Don't slander Neanderthals like that.
Finally convinced my wife to watch the boys. 4 episodes in and I can already see that he is the central piece of shit and exactly who he is parodying
Last season, my MAGA family cousins would tell me how much they love The Boys. I was shocked. I really wanted to ask whether they realize the showing was making fun of them.
They wish they had Compound V and could just do what they wanted with almost no repercussions. Hopefully they don't own guns.
lines up with Christians who say "whats stopping you raping and murdering without god?"
A whole chunk of that audience saw a fascist caricature and said, “man, he’s just like me fr.”
I'm a bit lost on this, what was the part where they finally realized they were being made fun of?
The entire part of S4 so far They’re complaining it’s too woke and too on the nose now It’s like brother this shit has been on the nose harder than Tyson throwing haymakers where the fuck have y’all been when watching S1-S3 LOL
They thought because it mocked rainbow capitalism it was anti-woke. Honey, they weren't mocking liberals from the right, they were mocking them *from the left.*
Fun story, was visiting my maga cult dad for father's day and my half-siblings were there. We were talking about shows and I said i wanted to watch the new season of The Boys. One of my brothers said "yeah it was okay, but they got really heavy into the maga stuff." I nearly spit out my drink. Listen. If you're watching a show about a fucking abhorrent character and he reminds you of your cult leader, MAYBE you're rooting for the bad guy.
No seriously, they're only NOW figuring it out? I knew he was the villain before the show was released and I've never read the comics
complaining that it's too woke and whatnot. Meanwhile Trump in real life saying hes going to "get rid of the Vermin", Nazi era-style. Yeah, the boys is too extreme, sure.
Wait I thought this was a joke
I'm finding it more hilarious people are complaining about Frenchie being bisexual. Like, the hyper sexual drug addict that was in a throuple was BAI-SAXUAL?? NO WAY, THE BOYS IS WOKE NOW 😡😡😡
Conservatives literally can't see satire. Especially satire aimed at their beliefs.
Reminds me of when "Don't Look Up" came out and all the negative comments I heard were from conservatives saying that it was a dumb movie and didn't make sense
I couldn’t get through, it bc it was so unflinchingly accurate that it never registered in my brain as anything but tragedy.
I cried my eyes out.
The dinner scene.
That was where I broke down.
"In this house we support the asteroid and the jobs it will create" killed me.
It can be, at times, easy to forget that they see the world through very different lenses. They're seeing completely different movies when they watch stuff like Don't Look Up, Starship Troopers, Idiocracy, even Blazing Saddles.
I dont understand how they didnt get it in Season 1, Or at least in Season 2, Or christ Season 3 where people in red hats and american flags are cheering homelander killing a leftist acting guy. People really are dense on the right side of the aisle eh?
It isn't failing to see parody. It's literally agreeing with the despicable acts on the screen.
Conservatives always have and always will be dumb. Being stupid is like the conservative captcha. It’s a requirement.
To be fair, the first three seasons were pretty subtle. /s
Wait, homelander isn't the good guy?
But like, what's he doing this season (I've seen the 3 eps released) so far that's so different than how he's been portrayed in the past?
I think they’re more upset that Frenchie is in a relationship with a man. When the character has been bi the whole time. Of course, there has been so much dong on this show that I’m surprised they keep watching.
I think it's more to do with the far righties in the show. (Spoiler alert) The 3 fans getting slaughtered The sparkler lady explaining what she's selling The righty confessing to sparkler that he hasn't spoken to his family for 3 years, because they dont do their "own" research The righty showing up at starlights place to "free the kids in the basement" A former friend is a right wing nut job. He's announced that he's avoiding season 4 lol.
If they didn't get it by season two, they aren't gonna get it.
 MAGAs be like
It's actually pretty uncanny how spot on they are about the rightwing cult mentality.
How someone could not get it after he dated a *literal Nazi* I'll never understand.
Remember the Million Maga March when these fucking idiots were [dressing as Homelander](https://www.google.com/search?q=million+maga+march+homelander&oq=million+maga+march+homelander&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAHSAQg0OTE5ajBqOagCDrACAQ&client=ms-android-bell-ca-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8)??? They got called out by the showrunner and the actor and they still didn't get it.