The Homelander (John) is a character in the adult superhero comic book series The Boys created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. The Homelander is the psychopathic, narcissistic, and extremely powerful leader of The Seven—the world's premier and secretly hedonistic team of superheroes (referred to as "Supes") bred and funded by the multi-billion dollar conglomerate Vought-American. Beneath his public image as a noble hero, the Homelander recklessly abuses his powers for personal gain and cares little about the well-being of those he professes to protect. He has been described as a personification of negative perceptions of the United States. As a satirical parody of the DC Comics character Superman, the Homelander's powers include superhuman strength, speed, flight, X-ray and heat vision, and near-invulnerability. He serves as the archenemy of Billy Butcher, the leader of "The Boys", a team of CIA-sponsored vigilantes dedicated to opposing corrupt Supes.
In the Amazon Prime Video television adaptation of the same name developed by Eric Kripke, the character, simply known as Homelander, is portrayed by Antony Starr. This version is the megalomaniacal son of Soldier Boy and the father of Ryan Butcher, born as a result of Homelander raping Billy Butcher's wife Becca (a crime committed by Black Noir in the comics). Kripke has stated that he views the series' version of Homelander as a metaphor for U.S. president Donald Trump. Starr has reprised his role as the character in both spin-off instalments of the franchise, including The Boys Presents: Diabolical and Gen V, and outside media such as Death Battle!. Starr's performance has received acclaim.
Contents
Appearances
Comic book series
Homelander is a supposedly patriotic superhero who leads the superhero team The Seven. He is the most powerful superhuman created by Vought-American. The company's cover story for Homelander is that he is an alien who landed in the United States as an infant, much like Superman. In reality, he and the rest of the original roster of the Seven were grown in a secret laboratory, the progeny of genetic material taken from Stormfront, who was injected with Compound V while still a member of the Hitler Youth. Homelander spent most of his young life chained down with a hydrogen bomb strapped to him in case he tried to escape. His mother was a mentally disabled woman who died giving birth to him. Homelander remains under the financial thumb of V, as their money funds the Seven's hedonistic lifestyle. Homelander eventually tries to encourage the other superheroes to do what they want, but relents due to his fear of his boss "The Vought Guy"/"The Guy from Vought".
Until the events of the series' climax, Billy Butcher is tricked into thinking Homelander had raped his wife Becca, who then died giving birth to a superhuman baby Butcher had then killed. In Issue #40, the Boys receive a series of incriminating doctored photos seemingly showing Homelander engaging in grisly acts of murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia against men, women, and children. In private, Homelander shows signs of suffering a mental breakdown, talking to his own reflection in a mirror, and having bouts of nausea. He eventually decides that he is damned anyway for the acts depicted in the photos, and decides to give in to any intrusive thoughts that cross his mind.
From Herogasm onward, Homelander resolves to free himself and the superhero community from Vought-American's control. In Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men, he leads the other superheroes in a coup d'etat against the United States, launching an attack on the White House and killing everyone inside, including the president. During the subsequent confrontation between Homelander and Butcher, the masked Black Noir arrives in the Oval Office and reveals himself as a clone of Homelander (the first of the Seven grown after him), created solely to kill Homelander if he ever went rogue. Gradually driven insane due to not being allowed to kill Homelander, Noir reveals he committed the atrocities in the photos, including raping Butcher's wife, to trick the initially truly benevolent Homelander so that Noir would finally be allowed to fulfill his purpose. Outraged, Homelander attacks Black Noir. Black Noir and Homelander violently brutalise each other as Butcher flees, due to Homelander's lasers destroying the room. A badly wounded Noir emerges from the White House holding only a section of Homelander's arm and ribs, having torn him apart with his bare hands. Butcher then orders the waiting Marines to open fire, bringing Noir to his knees, before killing him by beating his head open with a crowbar and crushing his prefrontal cortex with his hands, hoping that Noir's memory of raping Becca is destroyed in the process.
Television series
In the television adaptation, Antony Starr plays Homelander as an adult, with Rowan Smyth playing him as a child in the first season, and Isaac Weeks playing him as a child in the fourth season. As interpreted within the television series, he is considered by some reviewers to be analogous to DC's Superman. As leader of the Seven, Homelander is viewed by the general public as an affable, sincere and acclaimed superhero and a modern icon of America; however, having been poorly raised in a laboratory environment by Vought scientist Jonah Vogelbaum, he is in fact a sociopathic narcissist who is openly contemptuous of both humans and Supes that he considers "lesser" beings. He is also highly self-righteous, nihilistic, hedonistic, delusional, possessive, paranoid, vindictive, insecure, insensitive, racist, hypocritical, reckless with his powers, and incapable of accepting the possibility of any flaw in his person or decision-making.
In 2011, eight years before the events of season one, Homelander rapes Billy Butcher's wife Becca after she is assigned as his assistant; however, he lets her live and, unbeknownst to him, she gives birth to a son named Ryan. His discovery of the lies surrounding Ryan's existence influences his decision to maim Vogelbaum and murder his pseudo-mother figure and Vought CEO Madelyn Stillwell. However, his emotional ineptitude and sociopathic traits initially alienate him from his son, and the loss of Stillwell's moderating influence on his behavior unbalances him further. He enters a sexual relationship with Stormfront despite a difficult beginning, and conspires with her to remove his son from Becca's care and turn the public against "supervillains", hoping to create public outcry for an increase of superheroes and for their induction into the United States Armed Forces. However, during Butcher's rescue attempt of Ryan and Becca, Stormfront is critically maimed by Ryan after attacking Becca. Before Homelander can hurt the boy in retaliation, Maeve blackmails Homelander into letting him go and leaving her alone.
In a series of television interviews, he is forced to denounce his relationship with Stormfront and apologize for his actions. Partly to moderate Homelander's behavior, CEO Stan Edgar and Vought's board of directors install Starlight as co-captain of the Seven. However, after learning that Stormfront has committed suicide, Homelander becomes even more unstable and lashes out in a spiteful rant during his televised birthday celebration, claiming he is the world's savior. This skyrockets his approval rating with rural white males; to remove Edgar, Homelander bribes his adoptive daughter Victoria Neuman into opening an investigation into him (ousting him from Vought on corruption allegations) with Homelander assuming control of the company himself. Before leaving, Edgar chastises Homelander and warns that he will not be there to clean up his messes. He appoints Ashley Barrett as his puppet ruler and antagonizes Starlight by reinstating the Deep as a member of the Seven, and falsely announcing that he is in a relationship with her during the finale of American Hero.
Web series
In the following 2020–2021 promotional web series, Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman, which bridges the events of the second and third seasons, Homelander continues dealing with the aftermath of Stormfront being revealed to be a Nazi, as well as filming promos for Vought's streaming service, Vought+, and to celebrate Christmas.
In the 2020 Amazon Prime Video-sponsored The Boys promotional episodes of Death Battle!, in promotion for its second season, Homelander (voiced by Yong Yea) participates in the Seven's simulated battle royale, declaring himself the winner after killing Billy Butcher (standing-in for Black Noir), before throwing aside the laser baby to fight Stormfront, a consequence of which Wiz and Boomstick are uneasy of.
In a 2022 episode, Homelander is pitted against Nolan Grayson / Omni-Man (from Invincible). Through a simulated battle, the hosts determined Omni-Man's superior strength, skill, and experience would prevail against Homelander if the two fought to the death.
In The Boys Presents: Diabolical, Starr reprises his role as Homelander from the live-action series. Homelander first appears in the final moments of the episode "An Animated Short Where Pissed-Off Supes Kill Their Parents", executing the title characters (escaped Supe teenagers with abnormal powers from the Red River Assisted Living for the Gifted Child) with his heat vision on Vought's behalf, after they kill their parents due to the events of The Boys episode "Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men". Ghost was the only survivor of the attack. Vought covered up all the deaths that were caused where one news report states that Homelander saved Ghost's mother from a "natural gas explosion" that took the life of Ghost's dad.
Homelander next appears in the episode "I'm Your Pusher", set in the same continuity as The Boys comic book series while honoring Great Wide Wonder during a promotional campaign, despite very visibly and secretly noticing that the Great Wide Wonder was not mentally after hearing his erradic heartbeat. Homelander witnesses his drug overdose (induced by Billy Butcher) lead him to crash into Ironcast during a stunt, killing them both. In order to cover up what happened, Homelander, Queen Maeve, and Jack from Jupiter blame a "Cold War satellite" controlled by the evil Galaxius for their deaths claiming it is "hidden in the light of the Sun" which the watching crowd eagerly believed as they flew away.
Development
The character was designed as an evil version of Superman and Captain America in terms of powerset and costume. His cape pulled to the left resembles the first costume of Captain Marvel a.k.a. Shazam. Homelander's backstory in the original comics is similar to that in the television adaption of The Boys.
Garth Ennis describes Homelander as: "an almost entirely negative character. He is really just a series of unpleasant urges kept in check by his own intelligence, which is enough to understand that he can have anything he wants so long as he doesn't push his luck too far." Also: "It might help to think of the Homelander as having all the self-control of… let's say… a fourteen-year-old."
The Boys producer and showrunner Eric Kripke has stated that while Homelander can "in theory" be killed, a plot twist which involved the character being killed by his clone Black Noir in the comic book version was not used in the television adaptation, where Black Noir is instead depicted as a black man and the character's psychopathic traits are amalgamated with Homelander.
Powers and abilities
In The Boys, Homelander's powers include heat vision, super strength, super speed, flight, super hearing and enhanced vocal cords. Homelander is nearly invulnerable. He also ages slower than a normal human. According to TheWrap, he is much stronger than anyone else in The Boys universe, based on the television series.
In the television series, Homelander has the same powers as his comic counterpart, with the stipulations that his X-ray vision can not see through zinc, and he ages like a normal human. In the season one finale "You Found Me", Madelyn Stillwell states that Homelander has no weaknesses, saying, "there isn't a weapon on Earth that they haven't thrown at him; they've all failed." However, in season 5, it is revealed that his powers can be temporarily neutralized by the high-level radiation of Soldier Boy's energy beam or enriched uranium.
In other media
Video games
Homelander appears in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II as a purchaseable operator in multiplayer modes, voiced by Antony Starr.
Homelander, based on Antony Starr's likeness, appears in Mortal Kombat 1 via the "Kombat Pack" DLC, voiced by Jake Green. In November 2023, prior to Homelander's addition, Starr revealed that while he would be providing his likeness for the game, he would not be voicing the character. In his arcade mode ending, Homelander starts to lay waste to America until a portal from the Mortal Kombat universe opens and a demon horde emerges from it. After destroying them and regaining public favor, he travels through the portal to take part in the Mortal Kombat tournament.
Homelander was introduced into Mortal Kombat Mobile in 2025 as a collectible character.
A cosmetic outfit based on Homelander is available for the operator Ace in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege. The bundle was released in March 2025.
Homelander appears in the VR video game The Boys: Trigger Warning, with Jake Green reprising his voice role.
Music
Metro Boomin samples a section of Homelander's speech from the third season episode "The Only Man in the Sky" in his track "On Time" from his 2022 album Heroes & Villains.
Homelander makes a cameo appearance in the music video for "Roll Out the Fallout!", a song performed by the Chalkeaters feat. Black Gryph0n & Benny Benack III.
In culture
During the 2024 Jordanian general election, fake election posters depicting Antony Starr as Homelander, edited to resemble a politician were put up across the country, said posters went viral on social media.