Antony Starr doesn’t want “a redemption story” for Homelander on The Boys

The Boys wrapped up its third season today, and it ended with Homelander — the show’s psychopathic take on Superman — more dangerous than ever. He’s always been one bad day away from just annihilating humanity for the fun of it, and now he has an eager throng of supporters who would love for him to be their god-king. Super.

But might there be hope to pull him back from the brink? Homelander is definitely the main villain of the show, but villains can have redemptions arcs. Actor Antony Starr doesn’t see it in the cards for his character. “I don’t think there’s a redemption story for Homelander,” he told Collider. “I wouldn’t really wanna see that, to be honest. I don’t think there’s any intention of doing that either.”

Hear, hear! The Boys is a pretty cynical show and Homelander is a terrific villain, so it’s hard for me to picture him reversing course now. Starr, in lock-step with the show’s bleakly satiric vision of the world, has a different “happy ending” in mind for history’s most terrifying Superman parody:

"I think Homelander’s happy ending would be him annihilating everyone in the world and sitting there in a bloody wasteland on his own, with no one to mess with him. As for his demise, I don’t know. Every time I try to pick out what might happen in the future, I’m wrong, so I’ve given up speculating. I’m just like, ‘You know what? I’ll leave that for the writers and spare myself the embarrassment of being wrong, again and again and again.’"

Karl Urban has sympathy for Homelander on The Boys

As awful as he is, one of the things that makes Homelander a great villain is that he has a sympathetic backstory. Even Karl Urban, who plays professional superhero-killer Billy Butcher, can empathize. “When you find out that he was a little kid who was grown out of a test tube, who grew up in a sterile environment, and you actually think about that, you go, ‘Oh my god, that’s absolutely horrific. And in that moment, you’ve humanized the character,” Urban told Men’s Health.

Butcher had his own arc in season 3; he took a drug that turned him into a superhero for 24 hours at a time, even though he’s dedicated his life to fighting superheroes and the corruption they represent. It doesn’t turn out well for him, though: he uses too much of the drug and learns in the finale that he only has a few months left to live.

“[I]n true [showrunner] Eric Kripke fashion, the characters get punished when they make the wrong decisions,” Urban said. “What happens to Butcher at the end of the season is definitely heartbreaking and tragic, but those are events of his own making. This is the consequence of bad decision-making—and Butcher is very adept at bad decision-making.”

"I’m certainly interested to see how this new life expectancy manifests itself in terms of Butcher’s behavior. I would be very interested to take the character into a new direction for sure. You never want to find yourself in a situation where you’re repeating yourself, spinning your wheels. So it’s important to me that the character has a strong utility, and that whatever story we do tell going forward adds something new not only to the world of The Boys, but to Butcher’s character."

Unfortunately, Urban doesn’t actually know what’s in store for The Boys season 4, but he does have confidence that the show will continue to take a satirical look at serious issues. “I think that, like a lot of great television, it holds up a mirror to society, and it does it in a way that is somewhat removed from reality.”

"We incorporate these fantastical characters with these amazing powers, but at the end of the day, we are having a look at some pretty poignant issues—like racism, like sexual harassment, like the corruption of political power. And also the overwhelming appetite that we have for social media, and this desire to be liked. The show takes a good look at all of that, and I think that’s one of the ingredients to its success, and it’s a vital one. Because it’s not just some vacuous form of entertainment. It has a lot of entertainment value, and at the same time, it’s thought-provoking. To me, that’s the mark of a good show."

About that exploding penis on The Boys…

And of course, Men’s Health had to ask Urban about the infamous scene from the season 3 premiere where an Ant-Man-like superhero shrunk himself down to a tiny size, crawled up his lover’s penis, sneezed, and exploded out the front of the guy, killing him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything on TV more gross.

“I have had reporters ask me if I went to the giant penis set. I did not go. I know what a penis looks like—I happen to own one, and I didn’t feel the need to go onto that set,” Urban laughed. “But, again, it’s fun to play in the warped world of Eric Kripke, and we all have a ton of fun shooting those kinds of scenes.”

I don’t know how they’re going to top that for season 4. I don’t know if I want them to. I don’t know if I want anybody to.

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h/t Dexerto