While trying to win the war against the likes of Billy Butcher, Homelander is losing his grip on reality in The Boys, something that a cameo in Season 5, Episode 3, “Every One of You Sons of B*tches” makes clear. The episode picks up after Soldier Boy’s survival in Episode 2, which puts Homelander on a new path. He now knows that the key to his immortality, and becoming the world’s ultimate power, is Compound V-One, and he’ll seemingly stop at nothing to get it. Warning: SPOILERS from this point on.
His relationship with his father was already fractured, but it’s even worse now given, well, Homelander sent him to die. As he bathes in a bath of breast milk (because of course), Soldier Boy tells him that he’s going to keep on ageing. But while he didn’t get support from his father, he did from the mother figure in his life, the late Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue), who appears to him as an angel and pushes him down the road of even greater destruction than ever before.
Really, it makes a lot of sense that Stillwell appears to him as an angel. He’s long had a God-complex, but the idea of V1 is taking that even further than before. He believes it will make him immortal. Truly, a God. And so it is fitting that an angelic figure is the one to encourage him. There’s also a sense of irony in this, as she’s really acting as the devil on his shoulder, or at least, would be to anyone in their right mind.
Homelander has probably never been in his right mind, but the vision makes it apparent that, more than ever, he is having some kind of breakdown. But it’s one he can’t, and won’t, turn away from. Stillwell tells him that he is going to ascend, that he must baptize the unfaithful with their own blood and rip babies from their mother’s wombs (which is hopefully a level of f**ked up even The Boys won’t go to!).
The Vought villain has long been obsessed with Stillwell, even after killing her earlier in the show. Shue has returned before now to highlight this, but this specific cameo twists one of the most intriguing parts of her character: her ability to manipulate him. It shows that even in death, Homelander, through his own vision, and thus his own subconscious thoughts, still wants her helping to take care of him, a sense of motherly comfort he’s never managed to replace (despite Firecracker’s efforts). Speaking with The Wrap, showrunner Eric Kripke gave his take on the scene and explained what it means for Homelander going forward:
“He’s unhappy with all of this, with all of his power, so he has this, in our minds, a complete psychotic break and Stillwell gives him his final mission, which is make yourself immortal and be God, and punish anyone who doesn’t love you in their hearts, and you’ll be happy.
“Obviously, that’s his own twisted psyche talking to him, in our minds. But he now has a goal and a purpose, and what he believes to be a divine destiny… which he thinks gives him the freedom, whereas breastmilk was a shameful, private thing that he was embarrassed about. Now he just [does] it in public, and he’s just totally open to a point where he’ll bathe in it and invite people into his bathroom to see it, and he just doesn’t give a shit anymore, because he thinks he’s been chosen to be the next literal God, and believes that in his heart that an angel told him his destiny, and so he’s ready to his freak flag fly.”
This will mean it’s a Homelander who has levelled up even further, even without the V1. There’s no shame, no one he’ll listen to, and perhaps no one to stop him from doing what he wants. We already get a sense of this at the end of the episode, when he almost kills his own son, Ryan. And if he does get his hands on V1, then the task of stopping him is going to be even more difficult as The Boys Season 5 approaches its endgame.
New episodes of The Boys release on Wednesdays on Prime Video.
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