The Boys has never made any secret of how heavily it draws from other superhero franchises for inspiration, but it’s primarily Marvel and DC that the Prime Video series likes to pay homage to with its superpowered characters. So, there are several figures who seem incredibly familiar in The Boys, even if they’ve had a very dark spin put on them. For example, Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy wouldn’t exist without Captain America serving as a solid jumping-off point. However, the most prominent tribute to an iconic superhero comes from how The Boys portrays Homelander.
Antony Starr’s villainous Supe is essentially just DC’s Superman by a different name. Although he lacks the alien origin backstory, Homelander has all the same powers as Superman and at least makes his own twisted attempt to be the same beacon of hope and freedom. Still, he’s unquestionably a villain. Starr’s demeanor as he plays Homelander and the scripts that are written for him are the biggest wedges between him and the hero he’s been so strongly inspired by. Regardless, season 5 just strengthened the comparison in a fascinating way.
FULL SPOILERS beyond for The Boys season 5 Episode 4, "King of Hell."
The Boys season 5 just revealed Homelander’s Kryptonite
Superman has been around for so long now that most of the more important parts of the lore surrounding the character have been ingrained into popular culture. So, even people who aren’t Superman fans know how powerful he is, and how near-impossible he is to defeat. They’ll also likely know that a green, crystalline substance known as Kryptonite weakens him when it’s in his immediate vicinity. There have been countless times this has been taken advantage of by various DC villains who want to take Superman down — or at least sideline him.
Just like Superman, Homelander is also one of the most powerful beings on Earth. There’s almost nothing that stands a chance of felling Starr's character, and that includes most other Supes. So, it comes as something of a surprise when The Boys season 5 Episode 4, “King of Hell,” adds an unexpected tool to the arsenal of rare things that can bring Homelander to his knees: enriched uranium. When Soldier Boys locks his son in a chamber at Fort Harmony and exposes him to the glowing, green material, Starr’s physical well-being begins to gradually decline.
It feels like a very intentional move to make Homelander’s biggest weakness to date the exact same colour as Kryptonite, as well as having it affect the character in much the same way as Superman whenever he is around his emerald Achilles heel. While it doesn’t kill Starr's character, it does seem a little too important for it to be a one-and-done scenario that results in Homelander never coming into contact with enriched uranium again. Showrunner Eric Kripke has acknowledged this with TVInsider by saying, “Without spoiling anything, it does come back to a certain extent.” Exciting!
The biggest difference between Superman & Homelander’s respective weaknesses
Kryptonite is a hyper-specific way of weakening Superman, and it’s one of the only ways of doing so. The same is also true of how The Boys brings Homelander to his knees. While this may seem like a direct parallel, there is a very notable difference. As pointed out by Kripke in the same TVInsider interview: “Because ultimately [Homelander’s] a human, his Kryptonite would be the same Kryptonite that all of us have, which is just highly insanely radioactive material.”
In other words, because Superman is so weak when faced with something as relatively rare as Kryptonite, which has no impact on humans, it feels like some fantastical twist that could only belong in the pages of a comic book. It is still radioactive, but the radiation it emits is only harmful to Kryptonians like Superman, as it originates from the core of his destroyed homeworld of Krypton. Place even the largest chunks of the green ore near humans and…nothing. Therefore, Kryptonite allows fans to see Superman in a rare state of weakness.
Inversely, because being exposed to enriched uranium would be lethal to almost every human on Earth in The Boys, Homelander’s ability to withstand it is actually a way to reinforce how terrifyingly powerful he really is. It’s more like how Superman emerges unscathed from nuclear explosions on Earth, because he’s immune to other radioactive materials that are otherwise harmful (and even lethal) to humans.
So, even though Kripke seemed to be making a point about how grounded Homelander’s weakness to enriched uranium is compared to how Superman reacts to Kryptonite, the showrunner’s sentiment ended up making the parallel more similar than he realized. Just as Superman is weak to radioactive material from his homeworld, so are all other Kryptonians. Furthermore, Homelander’s only known physical weakness is also radioactive material from his homeworld — just like every other member of his species. There are enough wrinkles in there for it all to still feel a little unique, but there’s no question where The Boys drew its inspiration from in this respect, whether it was all so minutely intentional or not.
The Boys is streaming now on Prime Video.
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