apocalypse.is.near.

homelander is a confirmed RAPIST, and assaulted and impregnated billy's wife, becca. do yall forget this or smth?

i'm a person who likes villains, but the moment a character commits evil of that stature, evil that is not ambiguous at ALL in the series, i have to look at them differently.

don't get me wrong---i find homelander incredibly intriguing as a character, and in general, i view the boys as a giant, modern roman myth (something i'd like to talk abt when i finish up), but overlooking his actions and shipping him with butcher or hugh is just straight up nasty

both butcher and homelander share terrible childhoods, doomed rivalry and a type of toxic masculinity mindset, but these similarities do NOT magically cancel out what homelander did. like are we just going to forget how homelander sexually describes becca struggling at the end of season one? that's some top-tier awfulness right there.

i'm not just trying to point fingers at fans here either. i also believe the writing of show strongly contributes to this issue.

season two paints homelander in a more empathetic and frankly goofy light (esp with ryan.) however, we also have STORMFRONT. stormfront feels incredibly shoehorned and basically acts as a scapegoat for homelander's actions because she's the evil nazi woman, which i personally think was very lazily written. seriously, i could rant about this all day, it really feels like she was solely created to make homelander look better by comparison.

stormfront gets all teary eyed over a baby? homelander introduces her to ryan. stormfront wants an aryan family and army? homelander kidnaps ryan. stormfront wants ryan to practice his powers even though he's clearly upset and uncertain? homelander listens to her and coaches ryan anyway. the issue is, with stormfront out of the equation, homelander is still inherently SELFISH. he doesn't see ryan as his own person-- he sees him as an extension of himself and has held this view since he FOUND out about his EXISTENCE. however, stormfront is set up as some type of master manipulator throughout this and as a result, homelander's selfishness, which was so CHILLINGLY displayed in season one, comes off as being empathy instead.

in season three we have the mirror scene, which i personally think was great. it highlighted some of the things i had noticed about homelander up to that point: he's a labgrown man who is struggling to understand the meaning of his own humanity, which causes him to lash out and act downright ridiculous at times. that's the way i saw it, but it also seems to be set up as a type of DID situation (which i hope isn't the case cause that would pmo), where "tough mirror homelander" is a version of himself that he created as a shield when he was younger. that just...sounds like deflection in terms of writing, to me. it is a topic that is quite realistic, worth discussing and can be done well, but i don't believe there was enough consistent or serious setup for it in season one, and ESPECIALLY in season two. the show has surprised me though, so i'll probably circle back if i end up liking what they do with this.

but at the end of the day, the heavy-hitting conflict when it comes to homelander has to be his backstory. being raised in a lab with basically no human contact is terrible, but his backstory and his actions are not seperate things. from what i've seen, people tend to say that they KNOW homelander is terrible, but--!

the thing is, there are no buts.