The Boys season 4: Is Homelander’s latest rival Lex Luthor or Ozymandias? -IGN

Homelander meets his Lex Luthor

Sister Sage marks a turning point for the series. Past seasons have focused on antagonists who pose a physical threat to Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher and the team, whether it’s Homelander himself, Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy, or Claudia Doumit’s Victoria Neuman . Sage is the first villain whose powers are entirely mental rather than physical. As we have already seen, this hardly makes it any less dangerous.

Kripke tells IGN that Sage presented a particular challenge to the Season 4 writers. It turns out that it’s very difficult to convincingly write a character who is smarter than everyone else.

“It’s actually a lot harder to write because the challenge of writing about the smartest person in the world means we have to be smart as writers, and that’s a tall order sometimes,” Kripke explains. “She is very demanding because in everything she does, she is eight steps ahead and she is brilliant. Getting into that headspace is really hard because we’re not as smart as her. I’ll tell you, writing stupid characters is a lot easier than writing intelligent characters.

This intelligence also made choosing the role difficult. According to Kripke, Heyward had two qualities that made her ideal for this highly intelligent but psychologically damaged character.

“I needed Sage to have two things, one of which is simply blinding intelligence,” Kripke explains. “Just look at that person and say, ‘Oh, wow. Yeah, they’re really smart. Susan is, it’s completely real. Then you needed someone who could really deal with the vulnerability and the pain just beneath the surface, and so you could kind of understand why she acts the way she acts. Susan, in good times, can really make you feel for Sage. It’s no spoiler to say that she has a speech in episode 6 that breaks my heart a little, and that she has to be able to be cold and calculating, but also reveal the real person in below.

It’s not an exaggeration to compare Sister Sage to Superman’s eternal enemy, Lex Luthor. Homelander is the closest thing to Superman in this world, even if he completely lacks the Man of Steel’s appreciation for truth and justice. As the smartest person in the world and drawn into Homelander’s orbit, Sage herself is the closest thing the world has to a Lex Luthor. But unlike the DC Universe, these two characters are united by a common cause. For now, anyway.

Kripke notes that while there are shades of Luthor to Sage, the character was also inspired by another iconic comic book super-genius, Watchmen’s Ozymandias.

“The archetype we’re really looking for — there might be a little bit of Lex Luthor — but also Ozymandias from Watchmen,” Kripke says. “There is a superhero archetype of the smartest person in the world. Whenever there’s an archetype we haven’t used yet, we wonder, “Oh, what would they look like in our world?” That’s where it came from, and the fact that it would make Homelander much more dangerous, (since he’s) generally surrounded by morons.

Kripke continues: “Having someone advising him who is also intelligent definitely makes him much more threatening, but it’s interesting. Once you put the smartest person in the world into the real world, you immediately think, “Oh my God, they’d be miserable.” » It’s so miserable being smart, and all she wants to do is be stupid for a little while. You just have to understand her pain, which I think makes her such a misanthrope.

If there was any doubt after these first three episodes, Sister Sage positions herself as a major antagonist in Season 4, capable of manipulating Homelander like no one since Elisabeth Shue’s Madelyn Stillwell. She is cut from the same cloth as the other heroes of the Boys universe. With heroes like these, who needs villains?

“She’s got her own thing going on and, look, almost every superhero that comes across as a hero on this show is an antagonist,” Kripke says. “I think it would probably be a real honor to be considered a supervillain in this world. They probably consider Starlight to be a supervillain in this world, so it’s a bit subverted. All the supervillains that actually exist in the world, if anyone remembers, were created by Homelander in season 1. This really isn’t a show where anyone who presents themselves as a superhero is really, in fact, a hero, overall. “

The misery of being a foreigner

Sage may be the brains to Homelander’s brawn, but these two characters share one thing in common. They are both deeply, deeply unhappy people. For Sage, it’s exhausting to be the smartest person in a world full of people she considers vapid idiots. For Homelander, nothing seems to fill the gaping maw of loneliness and desire that exists at the heart of Vought’s most beloved hero.

It’s not like things aren’t going Homelander’s way in season 4. As we see in these first three episodes, he’s accomplished just about everything he set out to do. He has a family in the form of his son, Cameron Crovetti’s Ryan. He has just been acquitted of murder. And he even has the highest office in the country in his hands. But for a man as wounded as Homelander, no victory can bring happiness. In season 4, he is a superhero in the throes of a real-life midlife crisis.

“Every season we try to go deeper into each character, and Homelander is no exception,” says Kripke. “There’s one thing he’s wanted for three seasons now. What would happen if we gave it to him? The answer is that he would be unhappy. Then he immediately began to think: “Well, if I have this, I will be happy.” » As Sage puts it so well, she says, “That’s not going to make you happy either, is it,” but he says, “No, no, no. Let’s just say maybe I’ll get that,” and spoiler alert, not everything he gets will make him happy or not everything he thinks he wants will make him happy because he’s a deep black hole and gaping with need. and insecurity.

Kripke explains that all of this is designed to help the viewer better understand Homelander, and even empathize with him. As Kripke recently told The Hollywood Reporter, he baffled by fans who view Homelander as a truly heroic character.

“Part of it depends on my tastes as a writer,” Kripke says. “I’m not very good at writing villains. I don’t understand the idea of ​​someone getting up in the morning and saying, “I’m going to do bad today.” I just don’t think that’s how people operate. Everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing, even though they’re doing horrible, horrible things. I’m really interested when there’s an antagonist, I’m really interested in trying to understand what motivates him and why he made this horrible choice. This does not condone his choice, nor does it condone it, but I at least want the public to understand it.

Kripke continues: “I don’t want them to sympathize with Homelander – he’s psychotic – but at least I want them to understand what drives him to do the things he does. I don’t know how to create a character that isn’t just a cartoon and doesn’t have reasoning or conflict or something going on. It just kind of feels like I’m too anal to introduce a character who I can’t explain why he makes horrible choices.

As for what happens next for the character, episode 3 ends with the revelation that Homelander is returning to the palace where it all began. Kripke hints that viewers will learn more about the character’s twisted origin story and what shaped him in future episodes.

“I think it’s not a spoiler at this point to say that he actually goes to that horrible place that his house was.”

The first three episodes of The Boys: Season 4 are now streaming on Prime Video. Can the Homelander/Sister Sage alliance last? Vote in our poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments below.