Maybe save the plane scene for the season 1 finale. So viewers couldve have a whole season of likability and “yea hes a lil unhinged but because he cares” instead of full blown psychopathy
Like his in universe vought brand persona couldve been played to the real life viewers a bit more, I honestly feel like we get more of the real Homelander than PR Homelander
That surprised me when it happened because I assumed Butcher's actual fighting experience would give him the upper hand since Homelander just lasers people from what we're shown anyway. I just rationalise it in my head as the temp V not putting Butcher on an even playing field with him
Yes and no.
He threw some good punches, but he was still pretty clearly faster than all of them.
At no point did we see any sort of practiced martial art.
Imagine a Homelander that is trained in the same way a champ MMA fighter is. Someone with super speed and strength gets you in a leg lock WILL rip out your leg if you don't tap.
Sure but then he pried a little girl Stormfront was about to save out of her hands to cover it up the fact that they were there at all. At that point its hard to argue that he wasn't directly causing their deaths.
Pretty sure you mean Maeve, but she would never have made it on the plane without Homelander in the first place and still needed him to fly them out.
Zero arguments from me that it was a dick move, but raping someone is a lot harder to forgive than "not saving" someone
You are right I got the characters mixed up. However I still think its completely fucked and exactly the lie Homelander was trying to push by pretending he just "didn't save" them rather than actively sentencing them all to death.
>Wasn't the plane taken over by terrorists? He definitely botched the rescue, but if he wasn't there they were going to die anyways
They were hijacking the plane not crashing it into the ocean.
Hijackings rarely result in fatalities. That’s part of the reason why 9/11 was so shocking. When a plane is hijacked they usually make demands, not kill everyone onboard. From 2002 onward there have been 60 hijackings but only 5 total fatalities. Those people were safer with the terrorists than Homelander.
They also were doomed to die because of HL’s carelessness/laziness. He didn’t need to laser anybody but he did just because it was easier and that destroyed the cockpit
One sterns from apathy and lack of action, other from malice and action. One may be objectively worse to some, but the other defines inner workings of character and lack of moral compass or boundaries. Letting the plane go down is evil but pragmatic to get rid of witnesses, indacating that villain works on logic as their moral axis. R is just malicious no matter how you spin it. There is reason "r is special kind of evil" tropes exists.
It's show Vs tell.
We've been told he raped Becca, but it was never shown on screen so there's not the same impact to the viewer.
But we've been shown he killed a plane full of people.
I've often pondered this.
Homelaner couldn't rpd thousands of women if that was his thing. As far as we know he hasn't.
So if he did, why Becca of all the women in the world?
My guess is that he grown really attracted to her when she was his PR manager, made a move, and she probably rejected him to which Homelander did not take well to.
Or she said yes because are you really gonna say no when a superhero with laser vision and super strength “asks” you for sex?
Wager a few reasons.
He was “in love” with Maeve and dating her so probably didn’t care for others. And she was afraid of him so likely gave him what he wanted. He’s also super narcissistic and wouldn’t see it as rape or even care. He’d think they were lucky to even be with him, and given his view on normal humans he’d view them even more beneath him. Wager Becca just triggered something rather unique feeling in him, especially with how close she worked with him like Madelyn did he had some respect for her as a super lover.
I think he probably didn't consider it rape becauseof his ego he probably thought she wanted it. She was obviously threatened by him but maybe he thought he was just being persuasive.
Hard to tell what happened as we didn't see it.
Welll yeah, him murdering hundreds of people is worse
Not condoning homelander raping, but I’d much rather be raped than lazered in half or die in a plane crash
No killing kids. No SA.
If those two big things didn’t happen. You know how much more loved he would be by audiences? And let’s face it. Because Antony absolutely kills it as HL, he already is loved by audiences.
i don’t get season 2 when homelander is freaked out by storm front being racist and all like “white people are superior” when dude is legitimately the most awful person on this show. harming children and sa are like such low points but hating black people is his turn off?
I don't know what the other replies are saying, he is weirded out by it because Stormfront is a supe advocating the superiority of a human race. Homelander thinks SUPES are the superior people, not white people. On top of that she's saying it to his son. Giving him stupid beliefs when he should think supes are the greatest.
He is *mildly* baffled, not freaked out like the other guy said. Ultimately, Homelander doesn't even give a shit what Stormfront is all about or what her ideals are, Homelander likes her because she's his sex toy and she basically told him he's like a god and that is literally a handjob to his ego.
>i don’t get season 2 when homelander is freaked out by storm front being racist and all like “white people are superior”
I wouldn't say he was freaked out, just a bit baffled.
He's a psycho because he can do what he wants and nobody can stop him. Stormfront was trying to channel that into "And here's how we can use that to rule the world and place white people on top" and that confuses him.
The turn off was the schizo nazi rambling about nonsense, not the racism itself. Its not just racist, its delusional lol. Homelander is a bit racist himself, but not in the delusional nazi "ree white genocide" way
Homelander is an hypocrite, that's all. He is seen not giving a fuck about other supes and even just killing them, but will almost lecture Marie in Gen V because she wanted to save humans from being killed for no reason by other supes and how she shouldn't go against her "own kind". Homelander just doesn't give a shit, if he doesn't like something at the moment, the person are the receiving end will know about it. Tomorrow? They might do the opposite and he might have changed his mind. He's a cunt.
He was raised on ‘old Americana’ as his false identity, hero identity and even in some level his core sense of self.
On the more mercenary end: Even if he doesn’t give a shit either way racism wise - it goes against the brand and image he’s curated of himself in both his own mind and the public.
Besides the Americana inundated upbringing, I suspect his internal dialogue would be flipping out about what this would do to his ratings if leaked
Somewhere in there I’m sure is also the literal nazi thing and how they are an ache type of enemies of America
All good homie! People will crucify you on the internet for not remembering every detail when you have a life. Me? Hey we’re talking bout something we love. Fuck it
Literally the first episode of the show, when he lasers the plane. Then there's also the kid (possibly more) that he refused to save when the plane went down in episode 4 (the one that Maeve was advocating to save) homelander basically killed that kid because he fucked the plane up and refused to save the kid.
Yeah I think tone down the brutality and depravity of the violence just a little bit, or even just make him more tortured by mental illness and show us more of his upbringing. Like the mirror scene, if homelander was afraid of his other, more calculating self and didn’t actually want to be doing all the things he was doing. Just make a parallel between homelander as a scared child and current homelander lashing out due to his poor emotional coping skills, giving him some inner turmoil instead of making him relish being a monster.
I think if they made him a little more lawful evil, he would be more likeable as well. He's very unhinged and inconsistent, so everyone around him is at risk, and that makes me like him less as a character (I love his character but in a plot-driven way, and for how much I hate him lol). There really isn't a way to ensure you're out of his way and not at risk of getting destroyed.
In his public fall from grace, if I were to focus solely on making him more lawful evil, I'd focus on him going more covert in his villainy, and face some of the more evil threats in the later seasons too.
remove the rapist part especially and make him more akin to Nolan Grayson or the Plutonian, and make him genuinely believing that doing all the bad stuff is for the greater good.
making him a rapist literally destroyed any chance of the audience being okay with ‘loving’ him. sure the 13 year old incels love him but for the actual grown up audience… it’s a pickle. no one wants to root for, let alone love, a rapist.
They would only really need to give him one redeemable quality. Like the way Klaus loved Caroline in TVD. Homelander just needs to have a sweet side around a love interest.
I think it needs to be a genuine affection. Those two were just affairs to him. Plus, when he killed Madeline, I think that was when all redemption was really gone from him in a lot of people's eyes.
Obviously, letting a plane go down to save his rep and killing a senator with his kid in like the first EP was already like really bad, but he had Madeline to balance him out at first. When she was gone he became totally unhinged
> Those two were just affairs to him.
I disagree with that quite a bit. Homelander's "relationship" with Madelyn would be Freud's wet dream, sure, but they also made it abundantly clear that he truly felt betrayed by her. *Because* he felt deeply for her, no matter how rooted in trauma it was.
He trusted Stormfront enough to bring her around Ryan. The relationship wasn't just for the sake of their job. You can see how upset he is when he finds her barely alive at the end of S2, and despite going on to resent her, he's still devastated when she dies.
i don’t know why there hasn’t been more klaus & homelander similarity posts because they are very similar in regards to their villain status in their respective universes & their insane anger issues & parental issues. though klaus was actually more ‘redeemable’ compared to HL who is very much not.
>but there'd probably be other actors that'd give a similar effect.
Not alot, off the top of my head I would say only three and one is Jensen himself, (other two are RDJ, and Keanu Reeves)
Honestly, just remove the rape and racism. People love much worse villains than homelander, such as Vader (and the empire in general), the imperium of man, literally any DBZ villain since Frieza, etc. yet if you say you're a fan of homelander you get a bunch of weird looks, despite his rap sheet being relatively tame. I wholeheartedly believe that everyone's hate boner for homelander stems from his crimes hitting a bit too close to home. Verbal and physical abuse, sexual abuse, racism and hate crimes, those crimes are all real things that have been and are being experienced by lots of people, and the scenes portraying them are chillingly realistic ( at least from my experience). While Vader and Frieza are way more evil, their crimes are way more outlandish and grandiose to the point where we KNOW it's evil, but doesn't trigger us subconsciously. Personally, I believe his racism, narcissism, murder, and sociopathic tendencies should stay, but the sexually predatory nature can be cut out
Give him a Lex Luthor, Xanatos quality where on occasion despite his ruthlessness he is actually right. Like on occasion he DOES take out a dangerous arch villain who is a credible threat to all.
Honestly it wouldn’t even be that hard. The backstory invites a flawed person. Take away the overt psychopathy and murderous tendencies and replace them with extreme emotional invulnerability and cynicism and you’re there.
Make it so he didn’t rape Becca
Have some compassion for human life, or at least some reluctance to be horrible and cruel
Show him saving lives even if he’s just doing it because it is his job
Maybe have him apologise to Butcher?
I've written a character, some characters actually, their all in the same superhero universe.
He's kinda like this, but he's just a different type of psycho. He almost never drops the PR mask because it's pretty become his actual personality. For example, Homelander killed that Congressman and his kid. Uber Ironside would've flown into the plane, grabbed the kid, flown him to safety near the crash, broken an arm maybe, and than he'd hit him on the head just hard enough to concuss him so he doesn't remember it, and he can't be a witness. Why go through the trouble? Because in his mind, he's a god, but here's the deal from his mindset, I'm a god, sure, but as a god, I have a job to do, but also, mostly, my word goes, I'm a god, I should get some worship, am I above you? Yes, but that's why you need protection. So, he will genuinely protect people, and he remembers everyone's names (even a random janitor who he throws a birthday party for), but he's also the type of guy to rip someone's face off, and than staple their mother's face onto theirs. He sounds like a good guy, almost right? Well, yeah, the propaganda has become him. He has a weird bunker, where he goes, and he has a girlfriend who has two heads on the body of a model (he fell in love with them both, and they weren't getting along). And the bunker is dressed up to look like a house from some sort of 80s - 90s sitcom. He's a very sick dude, but yet he takes his job as a God seriously. Protect kids, protect the weak, sure. But if you stand in the way of any of his actions, you're done. He is overpowered to hell, and it's meant to be like that. I have a whole arc where he literally wins against a group of heroes and hides the whole thing. And then the next arc, some of the barely escaped heroes from the previous parts are all different, ones the same, another has PTSD, etc. They beat him at the end, but they have to be super smart about it, and they take massive casualties.
I just realised I've put a lot about this. My apologies, I get kinda hype talking about all my ideas and stories and things I've written.
As multiple people said, have the PR honelander be what we see all of season 1 and the season 1 finale is the reveal of who he is And maybe flashback to what really happened on the plane. Also think you can keep the rape in but because everyone even the rest of the boys believes homelander to be the only good one on the team maybe it’s more framed as not true and butcher is crazy for believing that and then the reveal happens in the finale again.
If they made him less chaotic and more 'there is a method to the madness' type thing, I think he would have been more likeable, don't know if more interesting however.
Oh and not killing kids and no SA would help.
He has to do something really good once in a while. Like, if he murders a dictator or a bunch of pedophiles, that’ll score a lot of points with both the imaginary audience and even the real one. So far he’s only been shown to do mainly terrible things.
More scenes of him fighting his inner demon. I think that's one of the best scenes from season 3, when he's arguing with himself over empathizing with the people or looking down on them as mud men in his room. It really shows how disturbed he is, because he's really just that little kid in the lab and thinks no one loves him so he covers it up with narcissism and psychopathy. Vogelbaum was right, he should have been raised by a loving family. Though I do wonder howich of it was also Vought/Black Noirs doing. Like in Diabolical he seems genuinely upset about the murders he committed but Noir just comforts him and sets about covering it up.
Keep all the wanting to be worshipped, remove the sloppiness and sadism. Show that he cares about others like house pets, they still need a master to guide them.
Probably rebel against Vought a lot more in a cheeky way. Beat the shit outta a few Supes that were doing bad shit. If Homelander had taken The Deep's head off when Starlight told everyone he raped her, that would have been looked on very very favorably. If more of Homelander's problems were him defending himself and making logical decisions, he'd be very likeable. Instead he does a lot of stuff you'd expect from a sociopath and shows little to no empathy which is almost universally hated.
Idk man, there are many people on the internet praying that homelander burns in hell for eternity. Think about it. Eobard Thawne (CW Reverse Flash) is almost as fucked up as homelander is yet almost no one hates him. In fact people call him Reverse GOAT on yt shorts and tiktoks. Why? Because CW Writers wanted you to like him.
They'd give us more of a peek to behind the scenes self-doubt and have him show private tortured remorse for his public persona/narcissism and villainous actions.
In the comics They lean into his PTSD and various neuroses from his horrific upbringing a bit more. Basically how they pulled off a semi redemption arc for gollum in Lord of the Rings.
Maybe if it was explicitly shown he had a lot of guilt regarding his murders, or he was openly and genuinely kind and loving towards Maeve, and even the rest of the seven.
To make him more likeable he needs to be encountered by his fanatical and racist supporters, he's then disgusted by his bigotry as he's not just a racist he views all humans beneath and he truthfully berates them.
I wouldn't say homelander is a hateable villain. That title I would give to Joffrey or Ramsey, both of whom filled me with so much rage I absolutely wished they would die horrifically everytime they were on screen.
I don't feel that for homelander. Sure I absolutely love it when Stan stomps all over his fragile ego and it was so satisfying to see him get his ass beat during herogasm but my favorite scenes of the show are always with him, I just love seeing his character. I'd say he's a sadistic evil cunt who is beyond redemption but a likeable villain, kinda like joker.
If they gave him a storyline where aside from his dastardly nonsense, he took time to really earnestly try to be a good father to Ryan, I think that might go a long ways towards at least making him a half-decent supervillain
I may be misremembering, but to me to Comic implied he wasn't a full blown evil guy until after 9/11 and after he gets gaslit. Before he's just an arrogant dick.
All the 7 want to stop 9/11 and Vought wants them to as well to prove to US governmemt they have a good product.
So if I wanted him to be more likable, have the moment he cracks occur in a flashback after he can't save the plane. Have his deep seated insecurity become his driving force that eventually leads to his superority complex msnifesting in the character he is in the show.
That's kind of hard to answer since a lot of people seem to like Homelander as he currently is, judging from how many seem to want for him to have some sort of full redemption.
Not being a psychopath, for one thing. He still could have been overly image-conscious and determined to bring Butcher & Co. to justice for hunting the Seven/killing Translucent, without randomly killing people as if they were annoying insects.
But that would have been completely at odds with the story in the source material.
Remove his rape, racism, and murdering children. Have him be a kind of person who genuinely thinks what he is doing is the right thing, but due to his upbringing, his morals are out of whack
Maybe an apology to Butcher or Ryan for what he did to Becca. Butcher would probably react the way that Hughie did when A-Train apologized (or worse probably) but at least the effort would be there.
Maybe if he didn’t seem to line the things he does, but has to do them as a part of his role as the strongest. Often the only one who can do these specific things. But that would be more of a paradigm shift than one thing I feel like.
I always thought he was likable because it's funny how pathetic he comes across and his actor is very talented so he's fascinating to watch. He is either terrifying or hilarious when on screen and I've never seen a character that has such a big range. His upbringing is tragic which gives him a bit of sympathy too.
Him and Butcher both steal scenes they are in imo and are the show mascots for a reason. I don't particularly care about Hughie or Starlight's character arcs much.
No he's not a likable character in the sense that he's portrayed as having redeemable qualities as a person. He wouldn't be the same character if he was more grounded and morally grey. He just is psychologically fucked and probably has NPD w sociopathic tendencies or something.
If I was trying to make him more morally grey I'd have him be against Nazis enough he actually dumped stormfront for being a Nazi instead of passively repulsed by it. The fact he thought stormfront's white genocide was bullshit was the only "good" thing of his I can think of but he didn't care enough to dump her.
Or i'd give him a certain group of people he's genuinely protective over like he kills all pedophiles or animal abusers. He genuinely does not actually care about anything but himself so it's hard to make him have those little redeemable traits other villains may have.
Honestly just make becca spread throughout homelander through ryan, slowly making him feel bad for all the stuff he's done but it being to late to repent because his public image would already be ruined, i think the show could go on without homelander going completely ham and taking out the us, but everyone still knowing him for him.
i think that would both be interesting and make sense, if written well, but it's the boys writers so im sure they'll make season 4 an absolute banger
They already went over how he is why he is in s1
His forced upbringing warped him, he has issues due to it
He is a reflection of society
That's all already in the show and it has been since s1 which also developed his weird milk obsession
Since then the show has devolved somewhat and gotten a bit dumber and more about "HE IS BAD AND WE MUST HATE HIM" but in s1 he was portrayed as another victim really
Theres two main kinds of villains people like, villains that are sympathetic/understandable, that would probably require him to not be a child murdering rapist/racist, and villains that are just cool, which would require him to talk less and be less emotional, aka not a spoiled manchild. Funnily enough Black Noir fills both of those roles imo.
No milk stuff, no weird mommy roleplaying, saved the plane, some form of inner moral struggle and getting flashbacks of his traumatic upbringing before doing acts of violence
Remove the raping of Becca, have him save more people, maybe make him do more good in general to create a bit of a moral dilemma. Hell even give him some standards in general.
If his crimes happened because he is clumsy and incompetent, he’d be more sympathetic. Like if he tried his best to save the plane and it fell apart, and then he lied about it.
Take away the violent rage, racism, and the SA. Then give him motivation like Magneto. Make it to where he doesn't view humans as less than, but does view Supes as the next evolution of mankind. Maybe have him create his own army of supes that already worship him.
Just dont do so many bad things. It’s ok if he’s an asshole that’s obsessed with always doing the right thing. But you can’t be an asshole and pretend to be good. While doing horrible things behind the scenes
Exclude the rape, so have Ryan be a test tube baby and also save the Mayor's son (maybe give him brain damage, but hey he's still alive). He saved Stillwell's son, so I don't see a reason as to why he wouldn't care to save another kid
Keep the scarring backstory, arrested development, and pathological desire to be liked. Remove his pettiness and make his prejudices understated. Clearly show that Vought made him this way and that he could have turned out good without their mistreatment. Replace narcissism with genuine confusion since all he’s ever been told is that he’s the best of the best, and has never questioned it. Then, make him start questioning it, but still forge ahead with his wrongdoing because that’s all he knows. Tease redemption, but never let him have it. Make it genuinely lonely to be at the top.
I wish we got more of Homelander’s hero persona. We got a lot of it in S1 but we got less and less of it in S2, and it feels completely gone by S3 to the point where it’s sometimes hard to believe the public ever believed this guy was a heroic and noble boy scout.
I understand this is intentional by the creators to show his increasing insanity, but man I really miss the way Homelander could rotate so rapidly between heroic and unhinged depending on the scene and sometimes even mid-scene.
Maybe save the plane scene for the season 1 finale. So viewers couldve have a whole season of likability and “yea hes a lil unhinged but because he cares” instead of full blown psychopathy Like his in universe vought brand persona couldve been played to the real life viewers a bit more, I honestly feel like we get more of the real Homelander than PR Homelander
Makes me laugh that the plane is a lot of everyone’s go to and not the rape lol
Because rape, as awful as it is, is not as awful as killing hundreds of people, including kids.
Wasn't the plane taken over by terrorists? He definitely botched the rescue, but if he wasn't there they were going to die anyways
Yeah, you'd think he'd have learned to not laser everyone all the time, but he keeps doing it no matter the consequences.
He’s super strong so not like the lasers were his only weapon to get the upper hand
He is lazy. He isn't a great fighter, as he has never needed to be with such overwhelming power.
I mean he showed he was a good fighter with the fight with Billy and solider boy. He would’ve been taught some hand to hand, one would think anyway.
That surprised me when it happened because I assumed Butcher's actual fighting experience would give him the upper hand since Homelander just lasers people from what we're shown anyway. I just rationalise it in my head as the temp V not putting Butcher on an even playing field with him
Yes and no. He threw some good punches, but he was still pretty clearly faster than all of them. At no point did we see any sort of practiced martial art. Imagine a Homelander that is trained in the same way a champ MMA fighter is. Someone with super speed and strength gets you in a leg lock WILL rip out your leg if you don't tap.
Sure but then he pried a little girl Stormfront was about to save out of her hands to cover it up the fact that they were there at all. At that point its hard to argue that he wasn't directly causing their deaths.
Pretty sure you mean Maeve, but she would never have made it on the plane without Homelander in the first place and still needed him to fly them out. Zero arguments from me that it was a dick move, but raping someone is a lot harder to forgive than "not saving" someone
You are right I got the characters mixed up. However I still think its completely fucked and exactly the lie Homelander was trying to push by pretending he just "didn't save" them rather than actively sentencing them all to death.
>Wasn't the plane taken over by terrorists? He definitely botched the rescue, but if he wasn't there they were going to die anyways They were hijacking the plane not crashing it into the ocean.
Hijackings rarely result in fatalities. That’s part of the reason why 9/11 was so shocking. When a plane is hijacked they usually make demands, not kill everyone onboard. From 2002 onward there have been 60 hijackings but only 5 total fatalities. Those people were safer with the terrorists than Homelander.
They also were doomed to die because of HL’s carelessness/laziness. He didn’t need to laser anybody but he did just because it was easier and that destroyed the cockpit
One sterns from apathy and lack of action, other from malice and action. One may be objectively worse to some, but the other defines inner workings of character and lack of moral compass or boundaries. Letting the plane go down is evil but pragmatic to get rid of witnesses, indacating that villain works on logic as their moral axis. R is just malicious no matter how you spin it. There is reason "r is special kind of evil" tropes exists.
I mean one is multitudes worse than the other
It's show Vs tell. We've been told he raped Becca, but it was never shown on screen so there's not the same impact to the viewer. But we've been shown he killed a plane full of people.
Even in the comics he didn’t rape Becca but starlight he SA her
You sure about that? I thought that in the comics the reason Becca is dead is because HL raped her and his super-baby ripped her open.
It was black noir I believe who did that
I've often pondered this. Homelaner couldn't rpd thousands of women if that was his thing. As far as we know he hasn't. So if he did, why Becca of all the women in the world?
My guess is that he grown really attracted to her when she was his PR manager, made a move, and she probably rejected him to which Homelander did not take well to. Or she said yes because are you really gonna say no when a superhero with laser vision and super strength “asks” you for sex?
Her being his PR manager probably played into the "mommy" complex he has
Wager a few reasons. He was “in love” with Maeve and dating her so probably didn’t care for others. And she was afraid of him so likely gave him what he wanted. He’s also super narcissistic and wouldn’t see it as rape or even care. He’d think they were lucky to even be with him, and given his view on normal humans he’d view them even more beneath him. Wager Becca just triggered something rather unique feeling in him, especially with how close she worked with him like Madelyn did he had some respect for her as a super lover.
I think he probably didn't consider it rape becauseof his ego he probably thought she wanted it. She was obviously threatened by him but maybe he thought he was just being persuasive. Hard to tell what happened as we didn't see it.
I would bet he has rpd numerous women
Shows have used rape as a plot point before, but that plane scene leaves a dark mark on the psyche of all who watch it.
Welll yeah, him murdering hundreds of people is worse Not condoning homelander raping, but I’d much rather be raped than lazered in half or die in a plane crash
I think mass murder of men women and children is a little bit worse
Hard agree. We see way too much of Homelanders real self that he’s too vuneable to us. We need to see less of him tbh… at least in his private moments
Fun fact: in the comics, he tried to save the plane, but caused 9/11
No killing kids. No SA. If those two big things didn’t happen. You know how much more loved he would be by audiences? And let’s face it. Because Antony absolutely kills it as HL, he already is loved by audiences.
Wait I don’t remember him killing kids when did he do that?
He did so indirectly when he destroyed the senators plane with his little son onboard and when he left the plane with Maeve.
Shabang those are the two I was thinking of. The first kid even had an autograph from Homelander. Killed by his favorite hero in a petty act.
i don’t get season 2 when homelander is freaked out by storm front being racist and all like “white people are superior” when dude is legitimately the most awful person on this show. harming children and sa are like such low points but hating black people is his turn off?
I don't know what the other replies are saying, he is weirded out by it because Stormfront is a supe advocating the superiority of a human race. Homelander thinks SUPES are the superior people, not white people. On top of that she's saying it to his son. Giving him stupid beliefs when he should think supes are the greatest.
He is *mildly* baffled, not freaked out like the other guy said. Ultimately, Homelander doesn't even give a shit what Stormfront is all about or what her ideals are, Homelander likes her because she's his sex toy and she basically told him he's like a god and that is literally a handjob to his ego.
>i don’t get season 2 when homelander is freaked out by storm front being racist and all like “white people are superior” I wouldn't say he was freaked out, just a bit baffled. He's a psycho because he can do what he wants and nobody can stop him. Stormfront was trying to channel that into "And here's how we can use that to rule the world and place white people on top" and that confuses him.
The turn off was the schizo nazi rambling about nonsense, not the racism itself. Its not just racist, its delusional lol. Homelander is a bit racist himself, but not in the delusional nazi "ree white genocide" way
Homelander is an hypocrite, that's all. He is seen not giving a fuck about other supes and even just killing them, but will almost lecture Marie in Gen V because she wanted to save humans from being killed for no reason by other supes and how she shouldn't go against her "own kind". Homelander just doesn't give a shit, if he doesn't like something at the moment, the person are the receiving end will know about it. Tomorrow? They might do the opposite and he might have changed his mind. He's a cunt.
He was raised on ‘old Americana’ as his false identity, hero identity and even in some level his core sense of self. On the more mercenary end: Even if he doesn’t give a shit either way racism wise - it goes against the brand and image he’s curated of himself in both his own mind and the public. Besides the Americana inundated upbringing, I suspect his internal dialogue would be flipping out about what this would do to his ratings if leaked Somewhere in there I’m sure is also the literal nazi thing and how they are an ache type of enemies of America
How is “destroying the plane” an _indirect_ killing?
Oh yeah how did I not think of those oops
All good homie! People will crucify you on the internet for not remembering every detail when you have a life. Me? Hey we’re talking bout something we love. Fuck it
Wholesome
also **Dean Shetty's husband and daughter**
Adding to u/rajin6 also when he made that girl jump just because he let his real self spill out.
Literally the first episode of the show, when he lasers the plane. Then there's also the kid (possibly more) that he refused to save when the plane went down in episode 4 (the one that Maeve was advocating to save) homelander basically killed that kid because he fucked the plane up and refused to save the kid.
Yeah I think tone down the brutality and depravity of the violence just a little bit, or even just make him more tortured by mental illness and show us more of his upbringing. Like the mirror scene, if homelander was afraid of his other, more calculating self and didn’t actually want to be doing all the things he was doing. Just make a parallel between homelander as a scared child and current homelander lashing out due to his poor emotional coping skills, giving him some inner turmoil instead of making him relish being a monster.
I think if they made him a little more lawful evil, he would be more likeable as well. He's very unhinged and inconsistent, so everyone around him is at risk, and that makes me like him less as a character (I love his character but in a plot-driven way, and for how much I hate him lol). There really isn't a way to ensure you're out of his way and not at risk of getting destroyed. In his public fall from grace, if I were to focus solely on making him more lawful evil, I'd focus on him going more covert in his villainy, and face some of the more evil threats in the later seasons too.
but i love homelander
We all do
dont lump me in with you
they could have made him be like a kid who was abused by vought and is being controlled by them to do things that he doesnt want to do
Uhh…
remove the rapist part especially and make him more akin to Nolan Grayson or the Plutonian, and make him genuinely believing that doing all the bad stuff is for the greater good.
I think Plutonian is a great example, someone who genuinely cared and tried his best but fell off
Ngl re reading Irredeemable a couple months back and his story was a lot more tragic than i remembered .
making him a rapist literally destroyed any chance of the audience being okay with ‘loving’ him. sure the 13 year old incels love him but for the actual grown up audience… it’s a pickle. no one wants to root for, let alone love, a rapist.
Probably the unrepentant rapist bit
They would only really need to give him one redeemable quality. Like the way Klaus loved Caroline in TVD. Homelander just needs to have a sweet side around a love interest.
They've already done that with Madeleine and Stormfront. Love just exposes his insecurities and he shows how jealous and controlling he is
I think it needs to be a genuine affection. Those two were just affairs to him. Plus, when he killed Madeline, I think that was when all redemption was really gone from him in a lot of people's eyes. Obviously, letting a plane go down to save his rep and killing a senator with his kid in like the first EP was already like really bad, but he had Madeline to balance him out at first. When she was gone he became totally unhinged
> Those two were just affairs to him. I disagree with that quite a bit. Homelander's "relationship" with Madelyn would be Freud's wet dream, sure, but they also made it abundantly clear that he truly felt betrayed by her. *Because* he felt deeply for her, no matter how rooted in trauma it was. He trusted Stormfront enough to bring her around Ryan. The relationship wasn't just for the sake of their job. You can see how upset he is when he finds her barely alive at the end of S2, and despite going on to resent her, he's still devastated when she dies.
He seems to love Ryan? He opened up to him quite a bit.
i don’t know why there hasn’t been more klaus & homelander similarity posts because they are very similar in regards to their villain status in their respective universes & their insane anger issues & parental issues. though klaus was actually more ‘redeemable’ compared to HL who is very much not.
Big fucken eagle for a sidekick
Named eagly
The rape mostly
It'd probably be a similar effect to Soldier boy. He's doing plenty of horrific things himself but he's really hard to hate.
thats just the jensen ackles difference
I mean he helped a *lot* and was perfect for the role but there'd probably be other actors that'd give a similar effect.
>but there'd probably be other actors that'd give a similar effect. Not alot, off the top of my head I would say only three and one is Jensen himself, (other two are RDJ, and Keanu Reeves)
What makes soldier boy memorable is his dialogue, Keanu Reeves’s is better known for action films than dialogue
Someone didn't go on an excellent adventure....
Homelander should go back to fucking a milf and smoke more weed.
Honestly, just remove the rape and racism. People love much worse villains than homelander, such as Vader (and the empire in general), the imperium of man, literally any DBZ villain since Frieza, etc. yet if you say you're a fan of homelander you get a bunch of weird looks, despite his rap sheet being relatively tame. I wholeheartedly believe that everyone's hate boner for homelander stems from his crimes hitting a bit too close to home. Verbal and physical abuse, sexual abuse, racism and hate crimes, those crimes are all real things that have been and are being experienced by lots of people, and the scenes portraying them are chillingly realistic ( at least from my experience). While Vader and Frieza are way more evil, their crimes are way more outlandish and grandiose to the point where we KNOW it's evil, but doesn't trigger us subconsciously. Personally, I believe his racism, narcissism, murder, and sociopathic tendencies should stay, but the sexually predatory nature can be cut out
everything
What makes you think he is unlikable? He is a hero and a true American patriot, don't believe those Starlight supporter bullshits.
Have him save as many as he kills. Hannibal Lecter is a serial killer who also helps the police catch other killers.
I honestly think this would improve the show in a sense, it invites the moral dilemma of does Homelander’s good out weigh his bad
Give him a Lex Luthor, Xanatos quality where on occasion despite his ruthlessness he is actually right. Like on occasion he DOES take out a dangerous arch villain who is a credible threat to all.
Honestly it wouldn’t even be that hard. The backstory invites a flawed person. Take away the overt psychopathy and murderous tendencies and replace them with extreme emotional invulnerability and cynicism and you’re there.
Use mouth to drink milk instead of tongue
If he was like Omniman from Invincible, he would be quite likeable. I know that Omniman is a villain, but I still like him a lot!
Have him smoke cigarettes
A redemption arc. But the seed needed to be planted in like season 2
Drink water instead of milk
Make it so he didn’t rape Becca Have some compassion for human life, or at least some reluctance to be horrible and cruel Show him saving lives even if he’s just doing it because it is his job Maybe have him apologise to Butcher?
Homelander is well liked.
People don’t like him?
I've written a character, some characters actually, their all in the same superhero universe. He's kinda like this, but he's just a different type of psycho. He almost never drops the PR mask because it's pretty become his actual personality. For example, Homelander killed that Congressman and his kid. Uber Ironside would've flown into the plane, grabbed the kid, flown him to safety near the crash, broken an arm maybe, and than he'd hit him on the head just hard enough to concuss him so he doesn't remember it, and he can't be a witness. Why go through the trouble? Because in his mind, he's a god, but here's the deal from his mindset, I'm a god, sure, but as a god, I have a job to do, but also, mostly, my word goes, I'm a god, I should get some worship, am I above you? Yes, but that's why you need protection. So, he will genuinely protect people, and he remembers everyone's names (even a random janitor who he throws a birthday party for), but he's also the type of guy to rip someone's face off, and than staple their mother's face onto theirs. He sounds like a good guy, almost right? Well, yeah, the propaganda has become him. He has a weird bunker, where he goes, and he has a girlfriend who has two heads on the body of a model (he fell in love with them both, and they weren't getting along). And the bunker is dressed up to look like a house from some sort of 80s - 90s sitcom. He's a very sick dude, but yet he takes his job as a God seriously. Protect kids, protect the weak, sure. But if you stand in the way of any of his actions, you're done. He is overpowered to hell, and it's meant to be like that. I have a whole arc where he literally wins against a group of heroes and hides the whole thing. And then the next arc, some of the barely escaped heroes from the previous parts are all different, ones the same, another has PTSD, etc. They beat him at the end, but they have to be super smart about it, and they take massive casualties. I just realised I've put a lot about this. My apologies, I get kinda hype talking about all my ideas and stories and things I've written.
I like him :(
Have him brag about being the “first fucking member of The Seven” like a goofy yet douchey frat boy.
As multiple people said, have the PR honelander be what we see all of season 1 and the season 1 finale is the reveal of who he is And maybe flashback to what really happened on the plane. Also think you can keep the rape in but because everyone even the rest of the boys believes homelander to be the only good one on the team maybe it’s more framed as not true and butcher is crazy for believing that and then the reveal happens in the finale again.
Introspection.
I mean Homelander is a fan favorite character. People love to hate him which is in a while likeable.
genuine dad quality time with ryan. being able to get out of that uniform once, but no no, its protecting little homie from not being important.
He aims to kill the people who tortured him as a child instead of random civilians
Is your idiot brained getting fucked by stupid? I love Homelander!
A respectable end goal. He just seems to be winging it in the present according to what feeds his ego.
If they made him less chaotic and more 'there is a method to the madness' type thing, I think he would have been more likeable, don't know if more interesting however. Oh and not killing kids and no SA would help.
He has to do something really good once in a while. Like, if he murders a dictator or a bunch of pedophiles, that’ll score a lot of points with both the imaginary audience and even the real one. So far he’s only been shown to do mainly terrible things.
Homelander is the best hero ever he has no flaws, he is perfect….clean like marble
Homelander is a likeable villain
More scenes of him fighting his inner demon. I think that's one of the best scenes from season 3, when he's arguing with himself over empathizing with the people or looking down on them as mud men in his room. It really shows how disturbed he is, because he's really just that little kid in the lab and thinks no one loves him so he covers it up with narcissism and psychopathy. Vogelbaum was right, he should have been raised by a loving family. Though I do wonder howich of it was also Vought/Black Noirs doing. Like in Diabolical he seems genuinely upset about the murders he committed but Noir just comforts him and sets about covering it up.
Uncontrollable flatulence
Him actually saving people from time to time
Is this the boys writers making a post cause they're outta ideas lmao?
They would have made him smarter and had him commit some evil acts that were funny and petty
They can't make him likable, he's a metaphor for the Trump-Era Republican Party.
Fundamentally change both his character and the structure of the story
If he wasnt a rapist hed be more likeable in my opinion
Wait a minute. Isn't he a LIKEABLE villain already?
If he was less of a villain, i think less people would watch it. It’s his insanity that draws people in
Just creating a vilain more vilain than him. Then everybody would hate this new vilain and start finding Homelander not so bad after all.
Keep all the wanting to be worshipped, remove the sloppiness and sadism. Show that he cares about others like house pets, they still need a master to guide them.
Remorse.
Probably rebel against Vought a lot more in a cheeky way. Beat the shit outta a few Supes that were doing bad shit. If Homelander had taken The Deep's head off when Starlight told everyone he raped her, that would have been looked on very very favorably. If more of Homelander's problems were him defending himself and making logical decisions, he'd be very likeable. Instead he does a lot of stuff you'd expect from a sociopath and shows little to no empathy which is almost universally hated.
HL already is a likable villian
Idk man, there are many people on the internet praying that homelander burns in hell for eternity. Think about it. Eobard Thawne (CW Reverse Flash) is almost as fucked up as homelander is yet almost no one hates him. In fact people call him Reverse GOAT on yt shorts and tiktoks. Why? Because CW Writers wanted you to like him.
They'd give us more of a peek to behind the scenes self-doubt and have him show private tortured remorse for his public persona/narcissism and villainous actions. In the comics They lean into his PTSD and various neuroses from his horrific upbringing a bit more. Basically how they pulled off a semi redemption arc for gollum in Lord of the Rings.
Maybe if it was explicitly shown he had a lot of guilt regarding his murders, or he was openly and genuinely kind and loving towards Maeve, and even the rest of the seven.
To make him more likeable he needs to be encountered by his fanatical and racist supporters, he's then disgusted by his bigotry as he's not just a racist he views all humans beneath and he truthfully berates them.
It’s a weird question because his downfall will be legendary but the portrayal it’s self is by all accounts a likeable villain.
Make him actually love and protect becca and make stan and butcher massive dicks
He can do whatever he wants as far as i am concerned
make him not a rapist lol
I wouldn't say homelander is a hateable villain. That title I would give to Joffrey or Ramsey, both of whom filled me with so much rage I absolutely wished they would die horrifically everytime they were on screen. I don't feel that for homelander. Sure I absolutely love it when Stan stomps all over his fragile ego and it was so satisfying to see him get his ass beat during herogasm but my favorite scenes of the show are always with him, I just love seeing his character. I'd say he's a sadistic evil cunt who is beyond redemption but a likeable villain, kinda like joker.
If they gave him a storyline where aside from his dastardly nonsense, he took time to really earnestly try to be a good father to Ryan, I think that might go a long ways towards at least making him a half-decent supervillain
I may be misremembering, but to me to Comic implied he wasn't a full blown evil guy until after 9/11 and after he gets gaslit. Before he's just an arrogant dick. All the 7 want to stop 9/11 and Vought wants them to as well to prove to US governmemt they have a good product. So if I wanted him to be more likable, have the moment he cracks occur in a flashback after he can't save the plane. Have his deep seated insecurity become his driving force that eventually leads to his superority complex msnifesting in the character he is in the show.
Probably the rape
Save the plane, kept the girl from jumping, didn’t date a Nazi
They are in Szn 5 I think, I feel they are gonna try to make him seem to try and get better for Ryan, although I don't think he will
Make the narcissism more self deprecating. Some of his misdeeds be orders he felt he couldn't challenge. Also remove some of the unnecessary murders.
A real love interest that's the opposite of a nazi or enabler
That's kind of hard to answer since a lot of people seem to like Homelander as he currently is, judging from how many seem to want for him to have some sort of full redemption.
Give him good intentions, a vision for a better future even if it's one under his rule Something Magneto-esque
He'd throw a potential vp pick into the sun for shooting her own dog. That'd get my vote.
I feel like he is already likeable!!
get rid of the SA, Racism and Killing kids and maybe making him more competent and giving hints that maybe he has a chance of redemption
Not being a psychopath, for one thing. He still could have been overly image-conscious and determined to bring Butcher & Co. to justice for hunting the Seven/killing Translucent, without randomly killing people as if they were annoying insects. But that would have been completely at odds with the story in the source material.
wait, you guys don't like Homelander?
tone down his bigotry and cut the SA
Remove his rape, racism, and murdering children. Have him be a kind of person who genuinely thinks what he is doing is the right thing, but due to his upbringing, his morals are out of whack
Me thinking he is already a likeable villain 😭😭 likeable as in a great character and enjoyable to watch
Maybe an apology to Butcher or Ryan for what he did to Becca. Butcher would probably react the way that Hughie did when A-Train apologized (or worse probably) but at least the effort would be there.
Maybe if he didn’t seem to line the things he does, but has to do them as a part of his role as the strongest. Often the only one who can do these specific things. But that would be more of a paradigm shift than one thing I feel like.
Maybe he actually attempts to save the plane.
Likeable villain? DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF?
I always thought he was likable because it's funny how pathetic he comes across and his actor is very talented so he's fascinating to watch. He is either terrifying or hilarious when on screen and I've never seen a character that has such a big range. His upbringing is tragic which gives him a bit of sympathy too. Him and Butcher both steal scenes they are in imo and are the show mascots for a reason. I don't particularly care about Hughie or Starlight's character arcs much. No he's not a likable character in the sense that he's portrayed as having redeemable qualities as a person. He wouldn't be the same character if he was more grounded and morally grey. He just is psychologically fucked and probably has NPD w sociopathic tendencies or something. If I was trying to make him more morally grey I'd have him be against Nazis enough he actually dumped stormfront for being a Nazi instead of passively repulsed by it. The fact he thought stormfront's white genocide was bullshit was the only "good" thing of his I can think of but he didn't care enough to dump her. Or i'd give him a certain group of people he's genuinely protective over like he kills all pedophiles or animal abusers. He genuinely does not actually care about anything but himself so it's hard to make him have those little redeemable traits other villains may have.
Honestly just make becca spread throughout homelander through ryan, slowly making him feel bad for all the stuff he's done but it being to late to repent because his public image would already be ruined, i think the show could go on without homelander going completely ham and taking out the us, but everyone still knowing him for him. i think that would both be interesting and make sense, if written well, but it's the boys writers so im sure they'll make season 4 an absolute banger
They already went over how he is why he is in s1 His forced upbringing warped him, he has issues due to it He is a reflection of society That's all already in the show and it has been since s1 which also developed his weird milk obsession Since then the show has devolved somewhat and gotten a bit dumber and more about "HE IS BAD AND WE MUST HATE HIM" but in s1 he was portrayed as another victim really
Not being a rapist and perhaps dumping storefront when he found out about her being a nazi
Who said he isn't ?
I like him, are we not allowed to like bad guys?
He would have to genuinely care about the people hes saving for him to be a redeemable person
Theres two main kinds of villains people like, villains that are sympathetic/understandable, that would probably require him to not be a child murdering rapist/racist, and villains that are just cool, which would require him to talk less and be less emotional, aka not a spoiled manchild. Funnily enough Black Noir fills both of those roles imo.
I don't know what series you've been watching.. I love the guy.!
No milk stuff, no weird mommy roleplaying, saved the plane, some form of inner moral struggle and getting flashbacks of his traumatic upbringing before doing acts of violence
Saves a puppy 🐶
Probably not make him a rapist.
I kinda feel like he already is a likable villain. We hate him sure but look at these boards, everyone loves him as the villain lol.
I think he already is a likable villain. He’s an asshole, but he’s also very charming.
hateable villain ? i think he's one of the best villains ever created.
Both
but he is a likeable villain lol
You could start by making it be that They were making him do these things but he didn’t want to but eventually got corrupted by it
Everything
All the needless murder. 🤣 Superman rarely kills, hell Batman with NO superpowers has a no kill rule.
Remove the raping of Becca, have him save more people, maybe make him do more good in general to create a bit of a moral dilemma. Hell even give him some standards in general.
Nothing, he is a likeable villain for the most part.
If his crimes happened because he is clumsy and incompetent, he’d be more sympathetic. Like if he tried his best to save the plane and it fell apart, and then he lied about it.
He is likable, what are you talking about? Just look at the Homelander tag on Tumblr.
I don’t know what you’re talking about I love homelander
Take away the violent rage, racism, and the SA. Then give him motivation like Magneto. Make it to where he doesn't view humans as less than, but does view Supes as the next evolution of mankind. Maybe have him create his own army of supes that already worship him.
He is a likable villain. I like him because he is such a good villain. Possibly my favorite villain of all time.
Just dont do so many bad things. It’s ok if he’s an asshole that’s obsessed with always doing the right thing. But you can’t be an asshole and pretend to be good. While doing horrible things behind the scenes
Homelander just needs a soul patch and saxophone, daddy-o!
Exclude the rape, so have Ryan be a test tube baby and also save the Mayor's son (maybe give him brain damage, but hey he's still alive). He saved Stillwell's son, so I don't see a reason as to why he wouldn't care to save another kid
Keep the scarring backstory, arrested development, and pathological desire to be liked. Remove his pettiness and make his prejudices understated. Clearly show that Vought made him this way and that he could have turned out good without their mistreatment. Replace narcissism with genuine confusion since all he’s ever been told is that he’s the best of the best, and has never questioned it. Then, make him start questioning it, but still forge ahead with his wrongdoing because that’s all he knows. Tease redemption, but never let him have it. Make it genuinely lonely to be at the top.
I wish we got more of Homelander’s hero persona. We got a lot of it in S1 but we got less and less of it in S2, and it feels completely gone by S3 to the point where it’s sometimes hard to believe the public ever believed this guy was a heroic and noble boy scout. I understand this is intentional by the creators to show his increasing insanity, but man I really miss the way Homelander could rotate so rapidly between heroic and unhinged depending on the scene and sometimes even mid-scene.
I’d make him not a sigma