u/TerrySaucer69

AGAIN, SPOILERS FOR THE BOYS

I’m not saying this is necessarily “bad”, just that I don’t like it. It might be bad, but maybe it’s been done well in something I haven’t seen, so I won’t make that claim.

YOU CAN SKIP THIS CHUNK IF YOU JUST WANT MY MAIN POINT ABOUT THE BOYS. I’ll put a Bold heading before the tldr/important part.

Some villains are just an evil bastard. They’re evil just cause they’re evil. That’s great! You can use them as just an obstacle, they can be a threat, or they can be a vehicle for themes.

Sauron is just evil. Palpatine is just evil. In both cases, they just serve as the thing to fight against. That’s great.
The Joker (typically) doesn’t have any sympathetic backstory. He’s just a crazy motherfucker. He’s terrifying and engaging and it works great.
Umbridge is less evil than those examples, but she’s still super easy to hate and isn’t sympathetic at all.

On the other hand, sympathetic villains can work great. Maybe they have a point, or maybe they are just tragic. Either works.

Killmonger has a point in Black Panther. He straight up convinces our hero. Magneto is sometimes just a nutso mutant supremacist, but he’s often portrayed as being right about humanity, even if he is too extreme about it. Thanos is wrong, but he thinks he is saving people.
On the other hand, you’ve got Darth Vader, or Macbeth, or Two Face. They are villains, but the tragedy of it is a fundamental part of their character. And, maybe they get redeemed, maybe they never get redeemed and that is tragic, or their fall is thematically important.

THE BOYS/My actual point

Homelander is not a redeemable character. He does unforgivable stuff (rape is more impactful than blowing up a planet in fiction), and it is a core storyline of the show of trying to kill Homelander.
But even so, he falls in the “sympathetic” side.
He is shown a couple times to have moments of “doubt”. Maybe it’s not significant, maybe it isn’t even proper remorse, but it is something. We get shown his backstory. We see an actual shot of a baby sitting in an underground sterile cell. We find out he was basically getting tortured/experimented on for his entire childhood.

Even if you don’t feel bad for Homelander, you should feel bad for the kid getting abused and tortured. Just like most sympathetic villains. You don’t need to feel bad for Vader, he did blow up a planet. But you should feel bad that his life went the way it did. You don’t need to forgive Magneto for like, idk, trying to blow up Manhattan, but you should feel bad that his life went the way it did.

And in the case of The Boys, this sympathy for Homelander is fundamental to the original themes of the show. Vought is the villain. Homelander is just a particularly dangerous product of the corporation. I mean, they literally have a “I was just following orders” moment.
Maybe if “John” had gotten to grow up like a normal person, he could’ve been more like Clark Kent. His son, Ryan, is set up as a direct foil to this. He had a mom who loved him, so he is strong enough to be good.

But the show just tosses that aside. Vought survives the finale, the big triumphant moment is killing the tragic manchild, and we forget all about the kid being tortured by the corporation.

If you don’t want me to be thinking about how sad it is that Homelanders life went the way it did, don’t show me it.
If you want to use the tragedy of it for something, great. But don’t just throw in a sympathetic/tragic villain for no reason.

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When we are first introduced to him, we get backstory throughout season 3 in the form of verbal information and Noir’s flashbacks. Soldier Boy is portrayed as a racist, misogynistic, violent, egotistical bastard. Great, that’s the character.

But then he shows up in person. And the character we actually see portrayed by Jensen ackles in season 3 is a rude, but mostly fine dude. He’s got PTSD, he smokes too much, he’s kinda careless with collateral damage, but relative to The Boys universe, he’s totally reasonable.
He is remorseful about exploding in NYC, he genuinely loved crimson countess, he holds up his deal with butcher/hughie, etc.
Additionally, we are told at some point that he might be basically a fake soldier. He went to Normandy after DDay for a photo shoot, he never actually saw combat, etc. But in the actual show, he is portrayed as the most competent supe next to Noir, and seems to legitimately have combat experience and genuine intelligence.

Some people have argued soldier boy gets slack from fans cause Jensen Ackles is hot (true) and charismatic (also true), but I’d disagree with this. On screen appearances will always trump exposition backstories. It doesn’t really matter that the Legend says Soldier Boy isn’t a soldier, cause we see him portrayed as an ex-soldier. And yes, we do “see” the villain soldier boy in Noir’s hallucinations/flashbacks. But, this is still trumped by the live action character. It doesn’t matter if you show the animated eagle version of soldier boy as racist and violent, if his second(?) scene in the show has him 1. Just be surprised by a gay couple and 2. Remorseful about blowing up civilians.

(I just remembered we do see live action soldier boy in the betrayal flashback, and he is a dick there. But like, he’s just a dick. That’s not enough in the Boys universe)

But this is all fine. Maybe being betrayed and tortured softened soldier boy up, maybe the backstory we saw/heard was biased, whatever. Maybe the story is “what if Captain America only became ‘good’ when he got to the modern day?”

But then we get to season 5.

Soldier Boy is back. He’s still competent, but now he’s working with Homelander. And then we find out that he was madly in love with a super nazi, and he decides to help the crazed murderer because that super Nazi would’ve been really impressed with Homelander.

Okay…
Backstory soldier boy is a fraud and monster, in it for fame and glory.
Season 3 soldier boy is a kinda problematic but redeemable ex-soldier.
Season 5 soldier boy is suddenly a villain again, but this time because he apparently loved a Nazi enough to make Homelander immortal.

He’s been a different character every season/appearance, and in my opinion, we haven’t seen anywhere near enough of a through line to justify such drastic changes.