apocalypse.is.near.

as soon as they deviated towards the political parellels in season two, it just got incredibly bad. i'm not saying that politics shouldn't be satirized or talked about either---we SHOULD do those things, especially now. the issue is the laziness of it all. if there's one thing i hate it's LAZY WRITING AUGHHH

also all the stuff they do to hugh in s4, including the SA scene??? That and screwing over kimiko in s5 is what made me stop watching because it's a disgusting bastardization of the characters i came to love in s1

a lot of the reviews i have seen so far come from two sides: people saying the comics are amazing and the show sucks, and vice versa.

i actually think that it isn't that black and white at all. after quitting the show, i decided to learn some more about the comic run, so i watched some reviews about it. from what it looks like, i think there's actually an inverse relationship between the two. the boys show starts off strong, but is underbaked in the middle, leading it to fall off at the end, whereas the comic series seems to have a poorer start, an underbaked middle, and picks up towards the end. if they had combined the STRONG POINTS of both iterations we probably would have gotten a decent show out of it.

s1 really hits you hard with discussions of trauma, assault, religious analogies and sprinkles in some politics here and there. this was done really well, and every second was captivating. there were ACTUAL STAKES. seeing frenchie, butcher and hughie getting freaked out when homelander flys overhead is terrifying, and so is the standoff between butcher and homelander in the finale.

s2 just regresses all of the characters to such terrible degrees that it ruins the setup for the rest of the show.

about HOMELANDER

it pisses me off when i see people complaining about his character traits changing so quickly and people countering with "uhhh that's just character development" because it's NOT. it's character regression if anything. i'm not saying this because i think homelander was aurafarming from sheer might or whatever, but because all of his intellect and intimidation from s1 was thrown out too blatantly and far too quickly. s1 homelander was actually CLEVER and had agency. In the beginning of s2 he gets yelled at by giancarlo esposito and stomps off to the suburbs 😭

it's no secret that homelander is actually a pathetic sniveling manchild that just happens to have powers. but that's an issue. it SHOULD be a secret for the audience, at least for a while. i honestly think the first mistake was made when they made homelander so terrifying in s1 because it contradicts with his comic persona. in the comics, homelander is painted as nothing more than a douche with powers from the beginning. he does terrible things, but can only sink to human levels of evil, which stillwell mocks him for. on the flip side, show homelander seems to lack humanity, and THAT is what makes him evil. he literally has beef with a baby because he's jealous. this also shows that he's pathetic but it's more subtle than having him crash out over ragebait in his bedroom

his hatred of humanity and his hypocritical desperation for the public's approval should have been the main tools used to show how miserable he is underneath his facade. too much focus on the latter humanized him in a way that felt very uncharacteristic and downright weird. also his pettiness amped up too quickly, i bust out laughing when he started calling a-train fat 😭 if they took inspo from the memes online they should NOT HAVE, leave that to the fans

i just believe that show homelander shouldn't have been humanized to the degree he was if the writers wanted to keep any form of tension. if they went the route of him just being some joe-schmo jerk from the beginning, the following seasons and the finale would have made more sense. the tonal shift felt so odd.

don't even get me started on homelander's lack of agency. his relationship with madelyn was way better than his relationship with stormfront imo, because it showed that stillwell and him were both manipulating eachother. stillwell eventually fails in her endevaours because she's still human. that's the setup we're given for homelander's m.o., but the introduction of STORMFRONT just ruins it all by showing the audience that homelander really just "wants a family" and will listen to any milf that looks his way basically 💀one thing that is crazy for me is the fact that i thought stormfront should have been a paternal figure, because it would have balanced out the madelyn angle.

SURPRISE

in the comics he's a dude and actually IS homelander's father.

WORDS CANNOT DESCRIBE HOW MUCH I HATEEEE STORMFRONT

ever since she was introduced, s2's story tanked. so she's supposed to be Homelander's manic demonic pixie dreamgirl nazi girlfriend, but the way they set up the reveal was so BAD. she's supposed to be racist, but the way they wrote her just makes her look rude. to everyone. she's actually promoting equality ig because she is absolutely awful to everyone. oh, and she's a streamer

why would stormfront, who is like 101 and a secret nazi, be the equivalent of an ipad baby??? it isn't even done well. her microaggressions are surprisingly tame and i only remember her acting this way (before dating homelander) to a-train. even then it's so cringe. she's like "oh you know the church of the collective fell off when it started accepting CERTAIN people, wink wink." they couldn't be more subtle? when she kills the people in the apartment complex while chasing kimiko's brother, it doesn't come off as racist either. it just looks apathetic. she doesn't mock the black tenants she kills, so it has an air of apathy, not malice. i didn't know she was supposed to be a "minority-hater" until she calls kimiko's brother a "yellow bastard." that's another thing, this show will put together the most diabolical strings of cuss words but doesn't let stormfront, a literal NAZI, use any slurs. it's so oddly tame by the show's standards. also, she doesn't even say anything out of place or suspicious. she's been around for abt 101 years at this point, they should have had a scene where she says something that no modern person would know. also her ideology isn't explored very well and is surface level. she doesn't mention anything about jews or actual minorities, she just talks about super-terrorists. she makes NO CONNECTION between the superterrorists and other minority groups, so her entire way of thinking feels like a contrived farce. she's literally just there to boss homelander around---and this makes it easier to blame her for his actions. all in all, i despised the way the show explored themes of racism because it was always so black and white (literally) all of the time. don't even get me started on mm and soldierboy....

soldierboy kills mm's family. mm says soldierboy is racist. now i haven't watched s4 or s3, but from what i saw of soldierboy, they made no attempt to develop this part of his character. i understand that they're probably trying to take a poke at police brutality but it's just so BAD. like, stormfront pulls over a black girl and her brother and kills the latter while mocking him, which is a simple example of what i think they were going for, but it feels like this aspect of her character was forgotten in favor of the ipad baby thing. they were so FOCUSED on concealing the reveal that they didn't give the audience any hints to prime questions or interest in her. same thing goes for soldierboy. was he targeting black neighborhoods for crime, similarly to a-train and blue hawk's conflict? from what it looks like, mm's family idolized soldierboy, down to the adults, who probably would have something to say if soldierboy was targeting areas with POC. this makes mm's tragedy is more akin to what happened with HUGHIE and ROBYN. the audience is expected to believe that the incident is racist because mm tells us that it is, but it is poorly framed and barely talked about, so it feels forced.

this really pisses me off. if you're going to talk about police brutality, you should commit to it, because it isn't just "beating up people of color." besides, soldierboy and stormfront aren't really seen taking anger out on any other groups besides black people mainly, and that perspective is hilariously narrowminded. still, because the characters literally just say "it's racist" we're expected to believe them, even though we don't SEE any elaboration. for example, stormfront telling ryan that he needs to use his powers because "white genocide" was so terrible that i started giggling

the dialogue of the show doesn't really help matters either. i get that it's supposed to be edgy, but everyone starts sounding like butcher towards the end of s2 and onwards. butcher and soldierboy saying downright disgusting phrases and cursing a lot makes sense. mm and frenchie cursing a lot but toning down the disgusting phrases makes sense. it DOESN'T make sense for annie, hughie and ESPECIALLY KIMIKO

they use the f-word so often that it becomes exhausting. at first it felt like it was mimicking the comics and was SUPPOSED to be somewhat cartoony, but it eventually just seemed like bad writing because it WAS. they were really hitting us over the head with the billy joel thing in s2 as well and it wasn't even endearing 😭i LOVE BILLY JOEL and the song is acc my favorite but i was trying not to cringe, it felt so forced

and the season three FIGHT??? that was it for me partner

soldierboy was the only person who was rightfully confused like why are we NOT killing homelander??? why did the rest of the boys intervene??? where is the PLOT because it was NOT in that room soldierboy was just getting jumped and maeve was the only one trying to whoop homelander's ass😭

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.