Analyzing Evil: Homelander From The Boys

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:06]Hello everyone and welcome to the 272nd episode of Analyzing Evil featuring Homelander from The Boys. This has been the most requested character to appear in this series by far. And considering Homelander is portrayed by Anthony Star is perhaps one of the best villain performances we've ever received in popular media, that's no surprise. But I wanted to wait until the show had concluded and now it finally has. So, here we are. And we're going to get into my analysis of Homelander in just a moment. But we all know that as patriotic and grandiose as Homelander's outfit is, he's missing something that's integral to a lot of soup outfits, a mask. And if you don't want to be running around out there massless like Homelander, consider picking one up for yourself from our sponsor for this video, Mantis Sleep. Good sleep is one of the most necessary things you need to ensure your overall physical and mental health stays in good shape. And it's hard to get the rest your body needs if you're constantly disrupted by unwanted light or noise invading your sleeping area. But that's never a problem once you pick up a few life-changing products from Manta. Manta offers eight different styles of sleep mask that gives all types of sleepers the eye protection needed to make your dreaming hours as peaceful as possible. And all of Mant's masks feature unparalleled adjustability, a premium feel, and pronap movement that can soothe your eyes as they protect them if you choose their steam or cool masks or even your ears with a sound mask and it built-in Bluetooth headphones, which is the one I have right here that I can't sleep without now that I've experienced the better quality of sleep my Manta mask has allowed me to have. But a few other products Manta has recently launched that made things even better. Their white noise machine and earplugs. The white noise machine is compact and features tactile movement that allows you to adjust between 15 different sounds even while in the dark. And their earplugs are the most comfortable and soundproof I've ever experienced, blocking out all those little sounds that keep you awake, but ensuring you can hear your alarm just fine when it's time to get up. Mantis selection and quality are hard to beat. So, I encourage you to browse through their website and pick through all the different features of the products they offer to find the one that best suits your needs or the needs of someone dear to you that could use a little more rest as well. As no matter what your sleeping schedule is, I guarantee a mass for Mantis Sleep will only make you feel infinitely better while you're sleeping and awake. Summer is just around the corner and so are all those sun soaked things trying their best to keep you awake. So, if you're like me and the slightest sound and tiniest pin prick of light disturbs your slumber, head over to manttoleleep.com and use the code violet at checkout to get 10% off your order and enhance your sleeping experience today. Thank you Mantisle for sponsoring this video. Now, without further ado, let's begin.

[00:02:27]Homelander shouldn't exist. That isn't to say that he doesn't deserve to be alive, but rather that the man he became shouldn't exist. Everything that Homelander is is the result of hubris and negligence. The idea that you can fashion a superhero from a test tube in brutal conditioning that if the people who made him would have thought about it for a moment is surely the way you create a villain and not a hero, which isn't too much of a shock when you consider the mastermind behind the creation of VA is the aonomous Dr. Frederick Vot, a Nazi scientist who experimented on and tortured thousands as he sought to create the artificial superpowered master race he and his Nazi cohorts had always dreamed of. Now, before Homelander was Homelander, there was another who stood in his place.

[00:03:07]Soldier Boy, hero of the Second World War and macho American exceptionalism personified. But Soulja Boy was, to put it lightly, a jerk, one that VA couldn't control. And so Soulja Boy was sent off to a not so cozy prison in Russia. And Homelander was birthed from the implantation of his seed into a homeless runaway. A woman who would take the honor of being Homelander's first kill once he lasered his way out of her womb, though he would quickly kill several others, including three doctors and a nurse as he rose from the Sea of Carnage. that would be his birthright.

[00:03:37]Now, if you've been watching my videos for some time, you'll know that I often talk about how impactful a person's upbringing is on their development. And well, the way Homelander was raised is largely responsible for making him into who he is. For many villains, it's an abusive or tragic upbringing that starts them on the path of evil. For Homelander, it's the fact that he was essentially raised by no one and also had a tragic and abusive upbringing.

[00:04:00]Given the name Jon by Dr. Jonah Vogglebomb. Homelander spent his youth in one of VA's underground laboratories and training grounds. Conditioned to be the next greatest superhero and corporate frontman for one of, if not the most powerful corporations in the world. While we don't know too much about the particulars of his childhood, we can assume that there was little to no playtime for Homelander, no friends to connect and grow with, and most importantly, not a parent in sight to teach him any sort of values you'd expect a parent to instill in their children. While these notions are mostly true, especially in the face of everything he had to experience, there were times when Homelander was allowed to experience microscopic shreds of a normal childhood. Like any other child, initially, Homelander was sweet and good-natured, which is exemplified by the fact that between the ages of 5 and six, he reportedly liked to cuddle up to Dr. Voglebomb and listen to the stories he tell him of Davy Crockett and Teddy Roosevelt. But because VA was trying to create the most powerful man, Voglebomb quickly changed his tune and began to treat Homelander as coldly and aggressively as he could to strengthen him and to instill violent tendencies within his subject. One man, Marty, was apparently quite nice to Homelander. But as is often the case with any strain on a relationship, Homelander mostly remembered him for granting him the nickname Squirt when he was a teen, gifting him this loving moniker after he spied Homelander pleasuring himself one day, which Homelander felt was a particularly brutal slight against him.

[00:05:18]Considering that Marty was one, one of the only people who was consistently nice to him, and two, because he was being ridiculed for taking part in one of the only things that brought him joy in his otherwise joyless world. So Homelander truly had nobody growing up.

[00:05:32]But that never stopped him from trying to find someone as we saw during the trailer for season one of The Boys where Homelander asks one of his handlers if he has a father and a mother. This woman ends up telling him that Dr. Voglebomb is his father and agreeing to his assertion that she must be his mother.

[00:05:47]And it's here that we witness something else that Homelander was taught during his childhood, that people are expendable, and that even when he might kill someone, accidentally or otherwise, he can do no wrong. as after this woman agrees that she's his mother, he wraps her up in a hug that ends up killing her. And when she's taken away, he's reassured that it's okay and he did nothing wrong. Now, aside from the small amount of loving Carrie may have received from Vocal Bomb, Marty and anyone he may have latched on to over the years, as far as we know, childhood was nothing but hell for Homelander. And while I mentioned earlier that Homelander didn't have parents around to teach him what it means to be a human being or to instill any of your typical values within him, Homelander still had people around him to teach him the ways of the world. But not our world, VA's world. That is to say, the world of a corporation so thoroughly entrenched in promoting and pandering to traditional yet heavily propagandized American values. So the only things that Homelander was ever exposed to were the values of VA, American nationalism, and a warped American version of Christianity. As not only was Homelander made to be a virtual slave to the VA empire, but a paragon of classic American ideals that Vodka parade around as not just their company's champion, but all of America's. On top of all that, Homelander was also taught to believe that he was the pinnacle of human evolution. To believe that he was the most special out of all the special beings in the world, the savior of mankind and an icon who was only second to God himself, simultaneously granting him a massive ego and molding him into a subservient corporate slave. But of course, you can't have a mortal god. So, Homelander's good-natured handlers were charged with testing his limits with small, innocent trials designed at gauging his resilience and discovering the limitations of his powers, like trapping him in an oversized oven, and cranking the heat up to see whether or not his skin would char, boiling him alive, subjecting him to intense psychological and biological torment with various drugs and serums, and pitting him against adult soups to strengthen him and hone his marshall prowess. When Homelander wasn't being poked and prodded by his handlers, he spent his time in a single room, one with plain white walls adorned by a massive armored red door to keep him contained, with nothing but a small window pairing into a drab workroom filled with his tormentors to keep him company. While he was largely left alone in this room, from that loneliness as well as his trauma was born a rather harrowing disorder within Homelander, disassociative identity disorder or did which many of you will be familiar with through the outdated term multiple personality disorder. And as much as the people around him tried to ensure that his more gentle inclinations were destroyed, because Homelander was and will always remain a human who was naturally a kind, gentle, and good-natured young boy beneath his superified exterior, he ended up developing a coping mechanism to deal with all the brutal things he had to experience when he was growing up. A second, much more aggressive and cruel personality that would encourage Homelander to toughen himself up and remind him of his status as a god-like being whenever he became despondent in the face of everything he was expected to be. While the issues that this disorder creates in Homelander's life are many, as the presence of this alternate personality could be largely responsible for his willingness to commit numerous atrocities, it's important that we establish that because he suffers from did Homelander is a man who is constantly at war with himself in one way or another. A war between who he's been conditioned to believe he needs to and should be and who he was before he was subjected to everything that VA put him through to transform him into Homelander. Now, as is pretty clear from his development of such a dire coping mechanism, an upbringing like Homelanders does not translate to a happy and welladjusted individual. So, as a countermeasure to any potential escape attempts by a being who was more than capable of overpowering anyone and breaking out of anything if he put his mind to it, worldrenowned psychologists were brought in to manufacture a deep-seated need for love and approval within Homelander that made it so his reaction to any negative treatment he received was turned into a desire to please his handlers rather than a burning rage of the continuous injustices being committed against him.

[00:09:38]which further ingrained within Homelander that while he is a being who by virtue of his massive power needs answer to no one, he is one that cannot totally operate according to his own will due to his incessant need to be loved by well everyone. And this component of Homelander is also something that causes a whole host of problems for not just Homelander but many many people around him. One of the more detrimental ways that this need frequently shows itself and impacts his decision-making is through Homelander's desire to experience the parental love he never felt when he was a child. The first person to entertain and exploit this aspect of Homelander was Meline Stillwell, and their relationship showed us just how deep his innate need for the parental figures he was denied runs with a pseudoed edipus complex. As I mentioned earlier, Homelander had an artificial need for love and attention instilled within him by worldrenowned psychologists when he was just a boy.

[00:10:28]something that may have manifested in him regardless considering he never knew the love of a mother or father. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, an Edipus complex is basically used to describe a son's sexual attraction to his mother. And the name is derived from the story of Edipus, who ends up killing his father and marrying his own mother after returning home from a long journey. Now, the reason that I say Homelander has a pseudo Edipus complex is because his attraction to Meline Stillwell isn't really sexual in nature. Because Homelander never had any parents, he has always longed to feel the love of a parent, which manifests here in his desire to feel the love a mother has for a newborn baby, which is evident by his obsession with feeding off Meline's breast milk, either directly from the source or from already stored bottles of it. Homelander doesn't have the sort of close relationship with Meline that fosters this type of behavior initially. And in fact, in the boys presents diabolical, we see that she was attempting to make their relationship much more sexual in the beginning in order to manipulate him into becoming the hero she and VA wanted him to be. But after she catches him spying on her breastfeeding her son, she keenly exploits this aspect of Homelander to elevate the relationship from that of an employer employee one to that of certified codependency.

[00:11:36]Homelander's desire to feel a mother's love runs so deep that even after he feels forced to kill Meline, he misses her and the relationship they had so thoroughly that he stores and drinks her leftover breast milk whenever he feels distressed. And though he eventually attempts to rid himself of this need by physically destroying his past, even after doing so, this need within him is so strong that when Firecracker reveals her choice to begin taking drugs that facilitate breast milk production, he immediately latches on to her as his new source of motherly comfort. Now, while everything we've talked about so far is crucial to understanding Homelander, the two aspects of Homelander's development that had the largest and most negative impact on his character are his constant need for love and admiration and the fact that Homelander was never taught what it means to be a human being. He was taught what it means to be a corporate sponsored god. And because that's true, Homelander undoubtedly suffers from another mental health disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. The hallmark of a narcissist is selfishness. There are people who believe themselves to be the most important people in the world who will use and abuse other people for their own gain without putting too much thought into the harm they cause others.

[00:12:42]For a distinct lack of empathy for others is another prominent trait of NPD. But every person with this disorder is different. And a lack of it doesn't mean a total absence of it. In fact, empathy for people is something they are capable of so long as they perceive the people they empathize with to be extensions of themselves. And one of the ways this is made most evident is with narcissistic parents who will typically love their children when they're young because they're reflections of themselves at that stage. But once they start to mature and become people of their own, their love for them lessens significantly and their behavior starts to become increasingly more hostile or indifferent towards them. This is the type of person that Homelander is.

[00:13:19]Because although we see him expressing love for people at different points in the series, he doesn't love anyone in this series for who they are, but rather for what they are to him, what they can do for him, and because they love him or could love him. His son, his mother figures, his father, his lovers, his friends and subordinates. Not Ryan, not Meline, nor Firecracker, not Soldier Boy, not Mave, not Stormfront, not Arain. And as soon as they become anything but what he wants them to be, they're enemies, traitors, or useless to him because how dare they even think about doing anything other than what he wants them to. They're possessions, not people. But even when they do go against him, and he even eliminates them, he still feels lost and despondent without them to the point that he even had a shape- shifter appear as Meline after he ended her life following her betrayal.

[00:14:10]Now, his NPD is mostly the result of the conditioning he received that instilled within him the notion that he is essentially a god who has no equal. But it's also derived from his deep-seated need to be loved by all. And this need manifest behaviors within Homelander that seem contradictory to his self-centered and largely unempathetic character. Bouts of regret and remorse for what he's done. As there are numerous times throughout this series where we see Homelander struggling to be the brutal man others as well as he expects himself to be and showing a certain amount of remorse for doing some of the terrible things that he does. But that remorse is still rooted in the self in the notion that he screwed up and he's going to suffer now because of his mistakes. And that's made no more evident for us than during his first save. In the last episode of The Boys Presents Diabolical, we get to see Homelander's long-awaited reveal to the public after years of modification and training. When he first lands on stage in front of a crowd of people, Homelander experiences something that he would later ridicule his son for, a bout of stage fright. Afterwards, experiencing bouts of PTSD flashbacks that solidifies for us his possession of another disorder that only makes too much sense. But his stage fright is understandable considering that for all we know, this is the first time he's been anywhere near the public after being locked away underground for so long. This canonically is our first exposure to an aspect of Homelander that haunts him frequently. The fact that beneath his tough exterior, there's always that scared little boy who's often unsure of himself in a world where he needs to be anything but. However, this is also the first time that Homelander was exposed to the adoration of the public, an adoration that he had so far received sparingly over the course of his life. And whatever anxiety he may have felt in the moment was quickly overridden by the excitement of the spotlight. A spotlight that he had always yearned for and loathed to share with any other as we see when he glares angrily at noir when he's presented as his new mentor. Two early exposures to love and the deprivation of it that would only strengthen the need for such love within Homelander as well as his abject hatred for anyone who dares take away any of the attention he believes he deserves. After this, Homelander was sent to deal with a hostage situation at a chemical plant. And as I mentioned a moment ago, Homelander had been assigned Noir to be a mentor of sorts to him. But disgruntled by Noir stealing some of the spotlight during his first public outing, Homelander decided to go ahead and conduct the mission without him. Not used to using his powers outside of a training ground and unfamiliar with conducting such a delicate mission, Homelander proceeded to bungle the entire operation and get everyone involved killed, hostages and terrorists alike. However, Homelander wasn't trying to kill anybody here. In fact, he was trying to make this save as bloodless as it possibly could be. And importantly, it was only when he was pressured and felt backed into a corner here after he mistakenly lasered a man's gun and caused it to explode that he begins experiencing PTSD fueled flashbacks that then caused him to panic and lash out as a result. And what's equally as important to note here is that he was not necessarily distraught here because he had harmed people. He was on some level, but he was more so distraught because he was worried that they thought poorly of him and were going to ruin his chance at basking in the spotlight he had been guaranteed for so long. And so he was panicking in the face of his future crumbling before he even got a chance to experience it. So yes, his inexperience and lack of confidence failed to make this a bloodless save.

[00:17:21]But he was clearly distressed during the whole process. And that's not only notable as his first canonical instance of impulsivity, recklessness, and fear in the face of his failures, but because it solidifies something for us about Homelander that's integral to understanding his character. That at his core, Homelander is not a violent man.

[00:17:39]Don't get me wrong, he does learn to enjoy the violence he inflicts onto others as his life progresses, as we see early on when he kills a terrorist by punching him in the chest and reassuring him that it's all over now with a smile on his face. and he does have a rather sadistic romance with Stormfront. And he also becomes increasingly cruel and unstable as well. But if you look back at everything he does over the course of the story, there are actually fairly few instances of Homelander savaging other people purely for the sake of it or because he really wants to. As it's more often the case that he'll inflict violence on people because that's part of his job as a soup. is coerced into doing so by the people around him for any number of reasons or as a trauma response to defend himself or to get what he wants, which he would have done without being violent if he could have as violence is more often than not a means to an end for Homelander. And that end was always the love, admiration and devotion of everyone around him. And that's precisely why he doesn't typically relish in acts of violence, nor does he seek to unleash violence if it can be helped. In fact, at one point, he even has a nightmare where he recounts many of the horrific things he's done to people over the years, indicating that what violence he does inflict on people haunts him on some level. No, Homelander is not a violent man. What he is is an incredibly self-centered man who wants to be loved.

[00:18:56]And therefore, he will do whatever he feels is necessary to ensure that his ego, his desire for love, is satisfied no matter the cost. a malignant narcissist with a god complex who suffers from did and PTSD. And that horrific cocktail of trauma- derived mental health issues have all been poured into a man who's more powerful than any other being on Earth. Which is why Homelander is so frighteningly dangerous. And if he hadn't been designed to be the man he became, then he'd be a much different person. But he isn't a different person. He's Homelander, a man-made monstrosity, if there ever was one. And now that we've gone through Homelander's background and established some preliminary findings on his personality, let's explore his person further by reviewing his role in the story and how utterly reprehensible yet heart-wrenching Homelander's character is. For starters, this entire series only exists because of Homelander. And not because he's one of the main characters, but because he quite literally set the events of this story in motion with a single action, his assault of William Butcher's wife, Becca. It was Butcher's assumption after Becca's disappearance that Homelander either murdered her or that she went into hiding because of him. And so Butcher proceeded to dedicate his life to taking down all Soups, but Homelander most of all. And it's through Butchers and the boy's never-ending struggle against Soups that we get to see the worst of Homelander. If we fast forward to the beginning of the series, we're initially presented with a man who seems to be everything that he's portrayed as in the media. A man who cares for the members of his team and wants to hear about their saves, who seems as virtuous as any superhero should be. But that doesn't last for long. Despite being VA's poster boy, we quickly learn that Homelander doesn't have unlimited authority within the VA corporate structure. In fact, at the time this story begins, he answers directly to Meline Stillwell, VA's senior vice president of superhero management. And as we learn later on, he doesn't really have much contact with the head of the company itself, Stan Edgar, showing us that Homelander is essentially treated like any other employee in the company, albeit with a tad more importance placed upon him. However, after we're introduced to Homelander, we learn that he wants to do more for VA. And he shows this to Meline by lasering a plane out of the sky that was carrying the mayor of Baltimore with one of his signature smiles plastered on his face, a man who was negotiating a superhero for his city with Meline and who threatened to leak the as of then unrevealed knowledge of Compound V's existence. An act which also plays into Homelander's admission that he's tired of being told what to do by regular people not too long after this happens. While what happened with Homelander's first save was more so indicative of his inexperience, it was our first glimpse at the fact that Homelander is often quite reckless. And this act was our first solidification of that notion. As though he can reliably get away with whatever he wants, and VA will cover it up if necessary, taking such drastic measures on his own without consulting anyone else that could potentially have had massive repercussions is a recurring theme with Homelander. Now, Homelander, who did this of his own accord, believed then that what he was doing was a good thing.

[00:21:45]After all, this man was blackmailing his company. But as we soon learn in the following episode, when he's speaking with Meline about the incident, he didn't really put much thought into this action. He saw a threat to VA, Meline, and himself. And so, he eliminated it.

[00:21:59]Job well done, right? Not really, as aside from the fact that he just blew a plane full of people out of the sky that could possibly lead back to him in some way, he took a risk during a period where VA was trying to push their soups in the military bill through Congress, as Meline points out to him. And the night following this incident, there was a meeting scheduled between VA and the Senate Appropriations Committee, which Homelander didn't even consider, and he could have potentially ended those negotiations prematurely if he was found out, let alone getting himself and the entire company in an incredible amount of hot water with the government and the public. This is yet another of the many, many examples of Homelander self-centered behavior. As though it seems that what he did here was for the sake of others, he really did it for his own sake. as in his mind he wasn't saving Meline in the company from this man. He was accomplishing something that would have caused Meline in the company to admire him and lavish him with love and praise. Furthermore, this act and his behavior here also emphasizes for us another component of his narcissism.

[00:22:55]That being because he is so selfish and egotistical that he believes that he is ultimately the man who should be making the decisions and calling the shots. As after all, he is the Homelander, the smartest, strongest, and most talented man to ever live. one who carves his own path and doesn't like being told what to do or handed talking points. His desire for love and his need to keep his image intact to acquire that love is further emphasized for us when he states he isn't so much worried about translucent when he goes missing as he is about how it makes the seven and by extension himself look. But that's nothing compared to what he did to eliminate the mayor of Baltimore and what he did during another plane related incident that serves as another harrowing example of Homelander's recklessness and selfishness. When Homelander and Mave were attempting to prevent the hijacking of flight 37, Homelander ends up causing the deaths of every single person on that plane because he recklessly lasered the terrorists in the cockpit of the plane, disabling the controls. And afterwards, he abandons these people to their face to save his and Mave's images. Now, would Homelander have killed these people if he hadn't screwed up? No. But he did it because their existence was a threat to his own, and that's the only thing that matters as far as he's concerned. But in the aftermath of this act, we're exposed to something we haven't discussed just yet.

[00:24:07]Homelander's cunning and his talent for manipulation. Homelander, while impulsive and reckless, isn't a stupid man. He isn't the smartest man out there, but he clearly isn't stupid.

[00:24:18]Despite the fact that whatever intelligence he does possess, is typically overridden by his ego. But where his cunning does shine through is whenever he tries to manipulate people like he does here. where he uses this tragedy as a means to push fat soups in the military bill by catering to people's fear of terrorism during the eulogy he delivers during the memorial service for flight 37. And the reason he is so capable at doing this is because Homelander is a man who is riddled with fear and insecurities. And because he's so familiar with these things, he's able to latch on to the fear and insecurities of others in order to sway their minds in the way he wishes them to be swayed.

[00:24:52]This is the first time that he does this, but it would certainly not be the last. As the more this story progresses, the more we find Homelander attempting to instill fear within people in order to convince them that he is the savior they so desperately need to save them from their fears, even if those fears are in part manufactured by Homelander or thrown way out of proportion or outright falsified either by himself or by VA on his behalf. Like when he engineers the soup terrorist crisis, or begins instructing VA to paint Starlight and her Starlighters as Christ and demonic liberals who are looking to tear apart the very fabric of America. Which brings us to his use of the media and propaganda to pander to his chosen base, conservative Americans, who he pelts with inflammatory speeches about the looming threat of immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and anti-Christian elements himself through public appearances or on VNN or by ordering his various cronies to do so in hisstead in the same manner.

[00:25:44]But why did Homelander choose this particular set of people to cater to with his increasingly hostile messaging?

[00:25:50]Well, because that's who VA catered to.

[00:25:52]And because VA catered to them, Homelander, who is essentially the son of Vot, was taught to cater to them as well. So, it's what he knows. It's what he's familiar with. And in some ways, it's who he is. As he said to Meline early on in the show, he wanted to be seen as John Wayne, not the [ __ ] coastal liberal elites, a man like Soldier Boy, who at that point he didn't know was his father, but who he idolized when he was a child. that surely served as a model for the kind of man Homelander wanted to be and by extension who he wanted his son Ryan to be. But out of all of these things, this macho attitude of his is the only aspect of his character here that has some validity to it. As Homelander does want to be seen as a man's man and the courageous savior hero of all. But in truth, like everything VA made him to be was all a marketing ploy. Everything that Homelander declares to be the champion of is all a ploy to earn him the love of the people. And that's it.

[00:26:43]As the only thing that Homelander believes in is Homelander, he has no cause, no ideology, no desire to change the world in any way. He only uses these things and changes the world to suit his needs and his needs alone. He's not a Christian. He's not a conservative, nor is he a patriot. Hell, he's not even an American. He's a lab grown monster who will use and corrupt any cause that he can, so long as it gets him one step closer to becoming the ultimate object of everyone's adoration and devotion that he so desperately wants to be. But don't the racist, homophobic, and xenophobic talking points he uses at least make him a bigot? Especially when you consider that there are a number of times during the saga that Homelander expresses racism or homophobia on a personal level. Like when he pokes at Supersonic's Latino heritage, denies Silver Concincaid membership in the Seven because of her race and religion, and when he frequently makes disparaging comments about foreigners. No, they don't. Because that would require him thinking about anyone other than himself for more than 30 seconds. He's rather ignorant and he'll parrot things that he's heard or been taught on occasion, but on the whole, when he's saying these things to the public, it's a tactic to win people's support. And on a personal level, whenever he talks down to someone about their race, creed, sexual orientation, or what have you, it's because he's trying to belittle them in some way or because they might harm the image that he's tried to cultivate for himself and the adoration of his base.

[00:28:03]And not because he hates them for who they are, but because they're enemies or obstacles, he'll force Super Sonic to sit there and be belittled for who he is just as well as he'll belittle Starlight by forcing her to sing Happy Birthday for him on live television. Whatever he can say to spite his foes and make them feel smaller than he is, Homelander will do it. Not because he hates what they are, but because he hates them and he wants them to suffer in any way that he can think of to make them suffer. Even when presented with the opportunity to become the pinnacle of Nazi ideology by Stormfront, the eternal fear of the fourth Reich, backed up by an army of pure Aryan supermen. Homelander doesn't go along with this plan initially because he's dedicated to the white supremacist cause, but because he sees an avenue to getting what he wants, the adoration of all, which is made evident by his rejection of Stormfront's demands that he become this man for the sake of the white race. Now, in regards to his manipulation of the public in this way, as much as what Homelander says is effective as far as brainwashing people goes, his incredibly blunt and cruel rhetoric and fear-mongering often needs to be reigned in and softened by those around him. As though he does manage to influence people, he'll often get emotional and go overboard with his talking points to the point that he causes people to shy away from him rather than flock to him, which is largely the result of his emotional volatility and impulsivity taking over whenever he feels pressed, attacked, or beaten by his enemies. But his use of fear as a tool to sway people isn't just relegated to the masses, as Homelander will play on the fears, insecurities, and perhaps most importantly, the desires of those around him to get what he wants as well. The seven and by extension all of VA following his takeover of the company are constantly being browbeatened by Homelander. So they're kept in a constant state of fear and paranoia to ensure their loyalty to him remains intact. But he will offer them perks and prestige if he feels that will keep them in line as well. And just like with his efforts to sway the public, these tactics of his will work sometimes and other times they'll only harm him and his ambitions, which is made evident by the frequent shakeups made to the seven's roster, the restructuring of VA in so many ways, and the purge he conducts at the end of season 4 to ensure all who remain at VA are utterly loyal to him due to the enormous amount of fear he's instilled within them. But aside from the abuse and honeypottting heaps onto his subordinates, one of the more prevalent examples of his manipulative nature can be found in his relationship with Ryan, who he tries to corrupt into becoming a man just like him the moment he meets him. As again, Ryan is not Ryan. He's Homelander's son. And Homelander son needs to be a reflection of Homelander, a god who can do whatever he wants, who should be a strong, masculine man just like his father. But turning Ryan into a reflection of himself is something that he ultimately fails to do. the reasons for which we'll get into a little later on. Now, if we circle back to his intelligence, there's one more thing that we need to highlight. That being that because Homelander's intellect is rooted in cunning, craftiness, and manipulation, he's effective at influencing people in certain ways. But importantly, he isn't a competent man.

[00:30:54]He will form complex plans on occasion, like his orchestration of the soup terrorist crisis, and his strangle hold over Victoria Newman is rather well done and thought out. But when it comes to nearly everything else, Homelander, who is so hubristic and overconfident due to his status as the end- all beall of soups, more often than not, shows himself to be foolish and inept whenever he tries to accomplish anything outside of his skill set. As we see when he flounders at the first board meeting he holds after becoming CEO of VA, and through the fact that he needs considerable assistance when it comes to actually fleshing out any of his plans, as we can see with the aid provided to him by people like Stormfront, Firecracker, Sister Sage, and Oather.

[00:31:31]But the crux of who Homelander is lies in his ego and his desire to be loved.

[00:31:36]And everything that he does in this series is geared towards feeding that ego and that desire. That being said, as we discussed earlier on, this desire of his is something that he wrestles with constantly. As there is a never-ending war going on in the mind of Homelander, between the little boy inside him who never received an ounce of affection and the man he was conditioned to be by those who denied him that affection. a cruel, spiteful, and brutal man who wants Homelander not to become a god the people love, but a god that people fear.

[00:32:02]And throughout the many times we witness Homelander's behavior and actions throughout this series, we find this war not only in the words he speaks and in the way he acts, but in his mannerisms.

[00:32:11]The way his face will show great conflict, turmoil, and uncertainty in one moment, and the righteous fury of a man so angry with the world that he feels has denied him so much in the next, which is really a masterclass in acting by Anthony Star. the range of emotion that expertly conveys that Homelander is a man who suffers mightily as a result of what he was made to be, what he's done, and what he's made himself into. But Homelander, despite how much he might wrestle with his pathological need for love, was never capable of escaping that need. And no matter how much he or his alternate persona might buck against it throughout this story, when it comes down to it, all he wants is to be loved. But the tragedy of Homelander's character is that he is so fundamentally broken that his ideas of what love is and how people should love him prevents him from ever obtaining true love from people. He thinks that love is derived from devotion, from submission, and from the acknowledgement of someone's greatness that should automatically instill a great sense of love and admiration within people. This is why he can't stand when people lie to him or when they conspire against him. Yet, he can't understand why they do it. To him, he never does anything wrong and everyone is just out to get him. And he is so up his own ass in this regard that he simultaneously identifies with Travis Pickle from Taxi Driver and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because they were both beaten down by society. And while Homelander suffered in his youth, the self-inflicted wounds he suffers from public outrage are nowhere near equivalent to the struggles of either, especially Dr. King. But why do people treat him this way? Why would people want to tear down their god and hurt a man who's given everything to the people? Because he isn't a god and he hasn't given everything to the people.

[00:33:44]He's only taken from them what he wants when he wants has beffits a man who believes the people he so desperately wants to love him are just toys made for his amusement. They should be grateful that a man like him is willing to put up with them and save them from all the perils of the world. They should be worshiping him down on their knees praising the great and noble homelander for so graciously walking amongst the ranks of the common man. But they don't.

[00:34:06]They fear him or the promise of what he might do to them. And though there have been a few characters who have shown certain degrees of devotion to him throughout this story, like Ryan, Noir, and Firecracker, when it comes down to it, all Homelander ever cultivates within people is either fear or disgust.

[00:34:21]And because Homelander gets further and further away from the love he needs with each action he takes. As this series progresses, he slowly but surely becomes more and more mentally unstable, with rash and impulsive decisions dictating his behavior at an everinccreasing rate, and violence becoming more and more the norm. like when he lasered a man's head off for throwing a bottle at Ryan. His brutal dispatchment of the people who experimented on him when he was younger, and his murder of a stage hand who liked some of Starlight's posts, with each failure and each brutal act only causing him to become more and more numb as he's constantly trying to fix one blunder by shambling to the next one. And by the time season 5 rolls around, he's become more jaded, spiteful, paranoid, and unstable than ever, with his fervent desire to be loved slipping through his fingers with each passing moment as he attempts to grasp at it with increasing levels of violence, oppression, and social engineering. All of this comes to a head following his hallucination of the angel Stillwell and his plan to become a true god, no matter what anyone around him might have to say about it.

[00:35:17]And with Homelander now fully in control and surrounded solely by sycopants who cater to his every whim, a diabolical plan to turn all of America into one giant congregation who worships Homelander, whether willfully or through mind control, is put into place that nearly sees the complete destruction and subservience of this country. And if things had been allowed to progress, eventually the entire world with an immortal homelander fueled by V1 reigning supreme as king of all the true believers and a god who would one day be left alone to rule over the ashes of a kingdom he destroyed even as he raised it up. This is who Homelander is. And these are the terrible things that he does to so many people throughout this series. But as much as he believes that everyone is out to get him, in truth, Homelander's worst enemy has always been Homelander. And in the end, he fails.

[00:36:04]Fails to acquire even an ounce of the love he strived to cultivate because he was a horrendous, wholly self-centered monster. As I mentioned earlier, Homelander is responsible for all the misery that he put himself through in this story. As it was his assault of Becca that set his path to ruin in motion, with every terrible act he takes after the fact made in an effort to curb the fallout from that first horrifying act. But he was incapable of recognizing this. He couldn't understand that his constant effort to force people to love him, be who he wanted them to be, or instill love within them through fear only accomplished the opposite. Things that came as a result of his upbringing in the man he became. Yes. But importantly, because he tried so hard to distance himself from humanity while simultaneously desiring everything from them. Throughout this series, we find Homelander constantly declaring his superiority over the rest of mankind.

[00:36:51]He's a soup, a god, something beyond mortal understanding that all humans should love and fear by right of his might. And because he considered humanity so beneath him, he couldn't fathom that one of the greatest reasons why humans didn't respond to him in the ways he wanted them to is because he couldn't identify with them on a human level. Again, part of the reason for this is because his upbringing was so inhuman. But regardless, the fallacy of Homelander desiring to enjoy the brightest aspects of humanity while presenting himself as being so above them at the same time is a significant cause of the turmoil he experiences throughout this series, which is perhaps best exemplified through his relationship with Ryan. Though Homelander tried to make Ryan into who he wanted him to be, Ryan was his own person, and more than that, he was a human being. He was a boy who had known the love of a mother and the camaraderie of friendship who was raised to be a decent human being. Not a child who was conditioned to become the frontman of a corporation who was but a [ __ ] in the corporate machine that was designed to desire popularity and adoration above all things. And it's the inability to understand that people don't want to be like him or even to like someone like him that denies him everything he felt he wanted and needed. That those very things came from humanity and being a human being. For he too beneath it all, was a human being. And if only he had been capable of understanding that, he may have been able to obtain the genuine love and affection he desired from people and not the artificial, corporate, and fear-based devotion of the populace that ultimately only hollows out one's soul further. Yes, Homelander was a lab grown monstrosity.

[00:38:22]He was bad product, a tyrant, an egoomaniac, an abuser, and a brute. But he was also a man like any other. And a man who so desired love because he had been deprived of it, but also because he didn't love himself. And that's part of the reason why he needs love and validation from others. Because he needs others to tell him that he's worthy of love and admiration. As Huie said to Butcher in his final moments, it hurts to be human. And so it hurt for Homelander and to mask the pain of being a human like any other who needed the human connection he sorely lacked. He fully immersed himself in the persona that he'd been given and in the notion that he was a god. But deep down he hated that he was this thing that felt it was so above others yet desired to be one of them at the same time. To get from others, you must give to others.

[00:39:08]But Homelander never gave anything to anyone else that wasn't given with his own interests in mind. He was the Homelander, the man, no, the god who deserved it all by right. And because he was the most exemplary being who ever existed and whoever would exist, he deserved to be loved and admired. But in the end, he was not a god. All he ever was was a lost, scared little boy who grew into a pathetic, whimpering concoction of insecurities as a man. One who was a coward at his core, who was as afraid of conflict as he was reckless, and a man who, when stripped of his powers, revealed himself to be what so many others had seen him for, the pitiful and sniveling loser that he had made himself into. For as much as Homelander desired to be a champion, a man who won it all with each supposed victory, he became more and more pathetic until he was revealed to be the weakling that he always was. A man with no dignity, no grace, no humility. Only a coward. A coward who hid behind his powers to become a cruel, sadistic, unrelenting, and hatefilled monstrosity.

[00:40:12]Who, though being pitiable as a man who was once a boy that was engineered to be the monster he became, and never had much opportunity to be more than what he was made to be, ultimately made himself into a creature that deserves no sympathy in the face of his actions. and a man who will always be remembered as a twisted and barbaric manifestation of evil.

[00:40:33]Thank you all for tuning in to this episode of Analyzing Evil, and I hope you've enjoyed. What are your thoughts on Homelander? Did I miss anything? Let me know down below, and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured while you're at it. If you like this video, hit that thumbs up button and make sure to subscribe if you haven't already. And if you want to support the channel even further, consider signing up to become a patron over on Patreon, where you'll get access to my videos ad free, uncensored, and a day early for as low as $2 a month. A big thank you to all of my subscribers, my patrons, anyone who's decided to honor me with a super thank and especially our Dark Lord patrons, Elijah Kyier, Mr. Rossom, Louis Docktater, Just keeping it real, Lacklin, Atris, Rain, Selopa, Him, Downstairs, Off Mega, Beep Boop, Lorenzo Antonyino, and Eli Livingston. And a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now.

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