‘The Boys’ Fans Can Barely Stomach The Evil That Homelander’s Been Doing This Season

(Spoilers for Season 3 of The Boys will be found below.)

Amazon’s The Boys finished up Season 2 by seemingly putting Homelander in his place — that place being the top of a skyscraper, where he (after being told by Queen Maeve that he deserved to be abandoned by everyone) proceeded to unleash his Little Homelanders upon those who were unfortunate enough to be at ground level. Don’t expect, however, that he’s feeling downtrodden and unable to come back from that. Rather, Season 3 presents Homelander in even worse form than we’ve ever seen. His sadistic tendencies explode, prompting him to (in the season premiere) make a girl commit suicide on his birthday, and then things grow more visceral.

A few weeks into this season, Homelander unleashes his contempt upon The Deep. It’s not only pure evil in a nutshell but also passive aggressive and truly revolting and made me (as I previously related in an inarticulate manner) wish I hadn’t eaten dinner before hitting “play.” I’m referring to the scene where Homelander decides to make The Deep eat one of his still-alive ocean friends, Timothy the Octopus.

Given how horribly The Deep began this show (he forced Starlight to perform oral sex on him), it’s rather remarkable that Antony Starr’s character could make anyone feel sorry for the tan-line-sporting Aquaman parody. Chace Crawford has actually done a fantastic job of showing The Deep receive payback already (those gill scenes, for one thing), and so it’s almost heartbreaking (amid all of the revolt) to see what Homelander forced him to do. To recap, here’s how I reacted:

– The Deep… oh my god
– And Homelander, no, what a f*cking sadist
– Eeeek, don’t do that to The Deep
– I can’t keep watching this
– Holy sh*t
– You should stop watching this
– Breathe, lady, breathe
– Why did I eat dinner before this episode?
– Ew, Homelander
– EW EW EW, no no no noooo
– [Stares into space for a few minutes]
– God, I love this show

As I suspected, reactions from the audience took a similar turn.

And yes, it’s not really a surprise to see Homelander being completely reprehensible (as seen below, when he shoved his own kid off a roof), but the writers impressively continue to one-up his evil, making us all wonder what’s in store for the world next.

The Boys is currently releasing weekly Season 3 episodes on Amazon.