Warning! Spoilers ahead for The Boys!There’s no shortage of unsettling moments inThe Boys, but one involving its central antagonist,Homelander,stands out as one of its most perturbing. Over the course of the series,Homelander starts to lose itand the Seven’s leader commits a number of horrific acts, up to and including the slaughter of innocent people.
Midway through the series, Homelander starts to crack.Much like Green Goblinin theSpider-Manfilm, he has a conversation with his ‘evil side’, until Homelander subverts it by saying people don’t really act like that. Rather than embracing a cliché,Homelander simply accepts thatthe darkness inside him is 100% his fault and no one else’s.
Homelander Ditches a Cliché and Embraces His Inner Evil
The BoysTwists a Common Trope to Make Something More Unsettling
InThe Boys #49by Garth Ennis and Russ Braun, Homelander is shaking off a meeting with Vought International’s Jasper Stillwell and Jessica Bradley. As bad as the meeting went, what’s truly getting to Homelander are the photos that show him committinghorrific acts like the cannibalization of infants. He mulls things over by talking to himself in the mirror.
But Homelander isn’t just airing out thoughts in private, he’s having a full-on back-and-forth conversation with his reflection. It’s clear that he’s going for a classic cliché and trying to talk to his ‘evil side’ to get a better perspective of how he could be doing such horrible things and not remembering them.
It’s clear that he’s going for a classic cliché and trying to talk to his ‘evil side’…
The ‘evil side’ tells Homelander that people are just toys and that everything he’s doing is to show up Stillwell and show him what Homelander is truly capable of. Homelander manages to enrage himself and nearly breaks the mirror. Meanwhile, Frenchie and the Female spy on Homelander, bewilderedby the odd soliloquy Homelander is performing.
Homelander’s bad side tries to get him to think about what he did to Butcher’s wife. But as he racks his brain, Homelander suddenly stops. He knows there isn’t an evil persona inside him and that whatever he’s done,it’s all on Homelander and not some fictional ‘evil side’that’s secretly dwelling within him.
Talking to the Mirror is a Classic Fiction Trope
An Easy Way of Showing Off Someone’s Worst Side
The Boyslampoons a lot of things when it comes to superhero storytelling. One thing that’s used quite a bit is the trope of someone speaking to their darker half in the mirror. It’s an effective way of showing off both sides of a complex character as well as showing how tortured they are by their negative side.
This kind of thingfrequently happens inHulkstories, where Bruce Banner sees his green-hued counterpart instead of his reflection every time he looks in the mirror. And as mentioned earlier, theSpider-Manmovie had a fantastic scene where Norman Osborn spoke with his inner demon, the Green Goblin, after it manifested as Norman’s mirror image.
The Boys, of course, is a more cynical and subversive take on superhero stories.
The Boys, of course, is a more cynical and subversive take on superhero stories. So, rather than go along and utilize the trope as other comic book stories have, Ennis and Braun have Homelander stop the conversation with the mirror midway andhave him declare how stupid the whole thing is.
Homelander Accepted His Dark Half Without a Struggle
Homelander is no saint, of course, but what’s tragic about this scene is that he’s not guilty of everything he thinks he’s done. The most horrific stuff, namely the cannibalization,is actually Black Noir framing and gaslighting Homelander. As much of a monster as Homelander is, he was shocked to his core seeing himself do that.
Homelander was desperate to believe that there was some explanation to the photos, even reaching for a cliché like a split, evil alter ego. So he tried this conversation with his reflection to see if he could become the lie to absolve himself. But deep inside, Homelander knows that this isn’t how people work.
Homelander knows that this isn’t how people work.
Homelander had no choice other than to accept that it was him in the photos. After all, he’d already done other horrible acts, like killing a family. So it wasn’t that hard for him to accept he’d do other awful things, even if he didn’t remember it. Instead of trying to fight his inner darkness,Homelander just outright accepts it.
There are a lot of perturbing moments in The Boys, but watching someone like Homelander try to embrace a cliché like this is one of its most unsettling. All it does is driveHomelanderfurther into madness and start to lay the groundwork for his most desperate and violent actions in the back half ofThe Boys.
