I tend to think that the people claiming to believe Homelander wasn't written as a rapist or that s1 was ever dubious about what happened are just a reflection of how pervasive and persistent rape apologia is in society.
For me, this was never controversial. I liked how the situation was presented because it felt very realistic while not being the typically overdramatized or grotesque presentation that never actually reflects reality, but it was never really vague at all. I was actually very surprised to see people debating it or saying the portrayal was unclear.
When we get flashbacks of Becca before the event, she's a pretty upbeat person. After Homelander rapes her, her personality does a complete 180. She stops talking to her husband and completely shuts down, and when we see her at the park she just looks miserable. Maybe I just haven't encountered it, but I can't think of a single situation where someone who cheated on a partner reacted like this to, supposedly, their own actions. Even when she left that room, she looked shocked and bewildered at what just happened, maybe because she didn't understand why he left her alive. She doesn't look like someone happy about it or guilty, she's visibly confused like she's trying to make sense of it. That actually happens with real life victims. Sometimes trauma can make it hard for a brain to make up or down from a situation and for me, that scene felt really raw because it very accurately reflected that reality.
In real life, there's no one particular way victims are supposed to act. The same goes for rapists. An overwhelming majority of people who were raped, were raped by someone they knew, people they trusted. The actual statistic is about 80%. So to say that Homelander doesn't feel like a rapist is just a reflection of how realistic the writing is. Yeah, most rapists don't feel like rapists either. That's how people end up trusting them and then getting hurt by them, which we even see happening on repeat with Homelander in the series just in how he generally treats people. Rape is an action, not a defining character trait that is visible on the outside. Personally though, that does feel like he's "written as a rapist" because his abuse is so pervasive and natural that people trust him despite us knowing he's a monster, without us being made to see him raping someone. Which it's really weird that people keep suggesting this should have been a scene if they wanted to make it clear???
No it shouldn't have been? They did just fine without that? What are you really asking for if you want that?
I get that society still has its issues but the way it was written suggests it was meant to be something that was portrayed more realistically, not just because realism is important for topics like that, but also to challenge and make people internally reflect on their own biases and any internalized rape apologia. It's sad to me that people still don't seem to get this and try to find every excuse they can for a fictional man where this isn't even his worst crime in the series.
I can even get some of this being a defense mechanism because it can be hard to reconcile this sort of idea of what rape or rapists or victims are "supposed" to look or act like in our heads with what it actually looks like in reality, which is always rather messy and unpredictable than neat and uniform. People are too used to painting a perfect black and white picture in their heads to protect themselves from scary possibilities, in this case it would be something like "well this could never happen to me because I could tell what a rapist feels like", but that specific thought is exactly one that makes people incredibly vulnerable to being abused by an actual rapist. No actually, a vibe check??? Could not protect you because that's not how this works. The idea that a vibe check could even be considered an acceptable measure of whether or not someone committed a crime, rather than actual evidence, is patently absurd.
And it's just victim blaming, full stop.
I also know, unfortunately or maliciously, that a lot of people don't fully understand consent. Sometimes it takes someone learning sex ed and what consent means to realize that a family member or someone in their life has been raping them. That happens far too often, and it shows how broken these perceptions really are. You aren't intelligent or criticizing the writing if you debate this, you're just reflecting a greater problem in society and may need to reevaluate your own perspective of what rape "looks like".
Sorry for the long thing, I'm just a little tired of seeing this even after everything we saw. I recently saw people downplaying Becca's reactions to Homelander in s2 and making the most absurd arguments to suggest that Homelander wasn't "supposed" to be a rapist and that's just ... It's going to be a no for me. I say this as someone who likes Homelander but has never tried to excuse or make excuses for what he does. The rape apologia and victim blaming needs to stop.
