An Examination of Homelanders Public Speeches from the show ‘The Boys’

*Spoilers for the TV Show ‘The Boys’ ahead*

‘The Boys’, developed by Eric Kripke, and loosely based on the comic book, ‘The Boys’, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, is a superhero TV show currently streaming on Amazon, that follows a team of vigilantes as they combat super-powered individuals who abuse their abilities, as well as the larger corporation, called Vought International, which manages their public image and develops drugs that gives these people their superpowers. ‘The Boys’ is a sharp critique of American politics and cultural, but I will particularly be examining the public speeches made by the main antagonist of the show: Homelander, a parody of Superman, and is amongst the most corrupt, as well as the most powerful individual superhero in the show, like his DC Counterpart. Antony Starr’s performance as the psychopath superhero has been universally praised by fans and critics alike, as he embodies what people often say would be the worst possible person to run this country: a person who drapes himself in the flag and says all of the right things to the American public, while actually having a deep disdain/hatred for people without powers. He has imagined killing hundreds of them at once — even threatening to kill millions of people and just taking the White House for himself, while also obsessing about being loved by these same masses. Starr’s performance as the sick maniac that is Homelander, can hardly be described with words. The audience and characters can feel the sheer terror of every step he is unpredictable and murderous — you know at any point he can and will kill anyone with the flick of a wrist, whenever he wants to, and he does, he does it often.

As an audience, we only see the dark side of Homelander, but as a theme, The Boys looks a lot at the media — there are a lot of shots of the characters watching television, the superheroes are often rehearsing for an event that is televised, or they are on television, while Homelander himself is obsessed with his popularity polling. Vought itself operates as a pharmaceutical company, but when dealing directly with the heroes on their roster, they act as public relations/marketing/media company — they develop movies featuring the ‘ supes’ as they are called in the show, televised events like Homelanders birthday, manage and run marketing campaigns, schedule and host press conferences, produce music, and even go as far as writing scripts for the in-show news anchors. Vought is meant to parody the omnipresent media companies we all know and love in real life, such as Amazon and Apple, but also sports leagues like the NBA, who operate in a similar fashion to Vought in the show, in relation to how they manage their athletes. Ex-NBA player Grant Hill recently described the NBA as a “a global media and public relations firm disguised as a league”. (at 1:57 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJoUw6iGLa). Even outside of the show, the real life marketing team of ‘The Boys’ is often putting out canon promotional material through their Youtube channel, Vought International, as well. The Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman is a 7 minute news segment featuring a parody of mainstream opinion journalists like Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow, talking about the world of the Boys. “Official” music videos like ‘Chimps Don’t Cry’ by Crimson Countess and a trailer for “Dawn of the Seven” the in-show parody of the Justice League and Avengers movies, cast with the actual superheroes themselves, acting as themselves, which highlights exactly who these characters are — glorified actors being wrung out for every dollar, celebrities that live in the clouds above the little people, who pretend to be needed, who never really need to save the world, just pretend they’re saving it, can be found on the Vought International Youtube channel. This is particularly highlighted by the ‘The Dawn of The Seven’ a story that is supposedly biographical, which features a destroyed New York City being saved by The Seven, something that was never close to happening in real life in the show, and also highlights their futility as heroes, unintentionally, since they are fighting a fictional version of Stormfront, who destroys the city in the movie, who by the time she was taken out by Homelander, in the movie…destroyed the city. They were already too late, and technically suck at their jobs. They’re just actors who call themselves superheroes because they have superhuman abilities, never really doing much heroically at all, in fact OFTEN the opposite, but are managed publicly in a way by Vought, that makes them seem like they’re doing a lot.

So far, throughout the show, Homelander has had 4 major televised speeches: his first, was after the plane he was supposed to save from terrorists, crashes and is destroyed, killing everyone on board. The second was at the ‘Believe Expo’ a Christian Fundamentalist event hosted by Homelander and the other superheroes, a great example of how Vought has violated any sort of moral separation between these superheroes and the Christian God, the third was at a rally alongside Stormfront, and the fourth was at his own birthday event, a speech that is easily his most unhinged at this point in the series. I will be examining all four of these speeches because they are incredible examples of fascist speeches, written very well, and the Antony Starr/Homelanders charisma is incredible in all of these moments.

Speech 1:

His first televised speech in the show is in Season 1, Episode 4. This speech particularly stood out to me for a number of reasons. For one; this is just hours after he let hundreds of people die by not even attempting to land a hijacked plane using his superpowers, which include flight, super strength, and super speed. Landing planes himself is also something that Superman is infamous for in his comics, and while it is widely debated on by fans if this was something that Homelander was capable of physically doing, he doesn’t even attempt to try to land the plane with his hands, after he inadvertently/recklessly shot the controls of the plane with his laser vision, destroying them and sealing everyone on the planes fate, and literally just flies off of the plane with Queen Maeve, letting all of those people die without any sort of remorse or guilt, even to the point of threatening to kill every one of them, up to even the most current episode.

The speech that he gives on the beach is shocking for a number of reasons. For one, it is an impromptu speech given to a news camera crew, where he callously lies about when he arrived at the scene, claiming by the time he got there he was only 3 minutes late. He uses the speech to attempt to garner support for allowing superheroes to enlist in the military, a major goal of Vought International stemming from the Vietnam War in the 1980s, and possibly farther — the character Soldier Boy served in World War 2 on the side of the Allies — claiming that because they weren’t in the “chain of command” that they were delayed and people died, literally faking tears, a particularly callous lie, while also appealing to American Patriotism, particularly in the last part of the speech, below:

Homelander: “Talk to your congressmen. Talk to them.
They’ll listen to the people. And together, together, we will make sure
that this never happens to our great nation ever again! God bless you. God bless America. “

First Responder: “We hear you, Homelander!”

Homelander: “And I hear you, brother! I hear you! And the world hears you! And very, very soon, my friend, whoever did this to us will hear from all of us!”

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

In this last part he uses an interesting propaganda technique, outlined by Jacques Ellul in his book: Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. “any modern propaganda will, first of all, address itself at one and the same time to the individual and to the masses” (The Individual and the Masses, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, p. 6). Homelander is able to do this by telling people to ‘Talk to their congressmen’, an individual call to action to put pressure on their representatives, while exclaiming that “together we will make sure that this never happens to our great nation ever again!” And subtly with the term: “I hear you brothers”, literally calling the people he hates, his brothers, a great example of how he will say anything to further his cause.

Jacques Ellul in his book also touches on how the mass media of his time, was instrumental in allowing fascist leaders to work within this perfect pocket of addressing the individual and the masses within the same breath, simply because mass media basically IS the pocket. Everyone has their own individual screen, but large swaths of people are all watching the same thing and being addressed individually as a group.

It is also important to note two things:

• In the comics, The Boys #21, this plane scene was a replacement for a botched attempt to stop the planes that were hijacked on September 11th, 2001, with Homelander acting recklessly within the comic books, and making the plane crash into the Brooklyn Bridge, killing his own teammates and the passengers on board. The showrunners decided to change this scene in the show version.
• The back end of Homelanders speech, quoted above, is incredibly similar to President George W. Bush’s impromptu speech at ground zero after 9/11. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayj0l8TfmPU&ab_channel=PirateStahlion). We ended up invading and occupying Afghanistan the next month, and Iraq 2 years later — now infamously known as two of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history, while simultaneously implementing The Patriot Act 6 weeks later, and expanding upon mass surveillance programs and the mass surveillance security state domestically and overseas, a decision that was abused by the NSA, CIA, and FBI.

Finally, Homelander taps into the patriotism of the theoretical viewer, while simultaneously invoking God, and bringing the viewer of this tragedy onto his side/behind him and his future actions in the last part of his speech, with more of what Ellul describes as addressing the individual and the masses:

“together, we will make sure that this never happens to our great nation ever again! God bless you. God bless America.”… “And I hear you, brother! I hear you! And the world hears you! And very, very soon, my friend, whoever did this to us will hear from all of us!”

While very short, this speech is incredibly powerful and Starr does an incredible job in his performance of the speech, while the writers were able to perfectly capture a lot of the elements of strong propaganda seen throughout history.

Speech 2:

Homelanders second speech was in Season 1, Episode 5, at the “Believe Expo”, a radical christian event where superheroes make speeches and perform, while also baptizing individuals who were able to pay for a ticket to a meet and greet. Here he delivers a more unhinged and powerful speech to a base of people who already have a deep belief in divine power, who worship the ‘Son of God’ in Jesus Christ, and who basically believe in magic, while building upon his last televised speech directly after the plane crash, and going a couple steps further, which he is capable of doing because of the lines he crossed in his last speech — slightly shifting the overton window in a more fascist direction. He touches upon common themes seen in fascist political speeches throughout history such as distrust of the media, claiming he was chosen by a higher power to take out the “filthy bastards” who “took down” the plane Homelander refused to save, in “whatever cave they’re in’ using “God’s might”, a good example of slight racism by the way, something you begin to see more and more of during each subsequent televised speech, and by the end of this speech he is claiming to be chosen by God to protect America, a very important theme in modern Christian Prosperity Gospel movements, who often believe that God chose America to be great, while quoting Psalms and floating in the air with his arms outspread like Jesus on the cross, landing in the crowd, a VERY powerful propaganda image — he literally floats into a crowd of ‘the masses’, claiming to be their “protectors”, which is meant to elicit a feeling of protection in the individuals within that crowd and on television watching, great propaganda. There are also a lot of allusions to Donald Trump’s speeches at his rallies where he oftentimes goes off of script, mannerisms such as the double finger pointing are present, and Homelander speaking to his base of Evangelical Christians at these types of events, who are statistically a major part of his Donald Trump’ supporters, who he won over en masse to win the 2016 presidential election.

“I say I answer to a higher law.”

This quote is the most important part of his speech in my opinion. It has a couple of meanings really worth breaking down, and he is talking to multiple audiences within the world of The Boys, while the show writers are conveying something different to the audience. On stage he is telling the masses that he answers/gets directions directly to/from God. Congress is ultimately the body that will either approve or deny allowing superpowered beings into the military, in this case he is signalling to the US government, publicly, that he is above its laws and governance, whether the sitting representatives believe in God or not, and that supes belong in the military, (this episode also seemed to imply that Homelander doesn’t even believe in God, which is ironic and simultaneously a great critique of the politicians who speak on religious stages and take advantage of that bloc of voters, and this isn’t even touching on how he doesn’t follow any sort of religious teachings). This is also the rhetoric of past fascist leaders, looking to overtake their standing government and consolidate power to commit atrocities and rule over the populace. It would be easy to dismiss this all as just Homelander lying on stage for a religious crowds support, but I ask the question: if Homelander pretty obviously doesn’t believe in God, who is the higher law? Homelander himself is trying to say he is a great leader, bigger than his country, but I believe the showrunners were alluding to the higher law he answers to being Vought. The power dynamic is fully on display in Season 2, during his meeting with Stan Edgar, who makes it clear to Homelander that he is “not their most valuable asset”. It is important to note this: the whole ‘supes in the military’ thing is not Homelanders personal aspiration. It has been Vought’s aspiration since at least the Vietnam War, with Stan Edgar going overseas himself to oversee Payback. Meanwhile, Homelander does everything he can to push for this goal that isn’t his, in fact, as seen in ‘Herogasm’ he was terrified to go out into the field and actually fight. Vought seems to actually operate as the highest power within the show, even stronger than the US Government, who answers and helps strengthen Vought. In the end, this is just another great speech with so much substance and another incredible performance by Antony Starr, and the writers of the show, this speech is one of my personal favorite moments in the show.

Speech 3:

This 3rd speech is interesting because he speaks in tandem with Stormfront, who has her own aspirations and goals, seeing how she is a literal Nazi and all. I want to particularly focus on Homelander in this speech because while their ideologies align, they don’t align 100%, and Homelander is saying something different than Stormfront in his speech, that is much more nuanced than what Stormfront wants, and as good as Aya Cash was in the role, by the way, Antony Starr steals the show every time he speaks.

First off, right off the back he kisses Stormfront on the mouth, publicly. This is something that has been so commonly done during political campaigns at various rallies, but I believe that this is meant to elicit an anti-gay, pro-nuclear family/’love is between a man and woman’ reaction from the crowd. More point from Homelander is done, as he calls the crowd “the real heroes”, his catchphrase throughout the series, he even says that phrase towards the beginning of the show when he saves those 2 teenagers from the bank robbers. It also really reminded me of President Nixon, with his iconic pointing. Now this speech is very interesting because he really pushes the Overton Window over, and begins to reference how “this country used to be beautiful”, asking the crowd if they “remember” a mythic past, a historical conjuration created by fascist leaders dating back hundreds of years, and calling this mythical past a “fact”. The racism heats up too, he says that these supe-terrorists are “pouring across the U.S. borders”, a very on the nose nod to every Republican, and some Democrats, who spewed this kind of anti-immigration rhetoric. It is also important to note here that Homelander gave these ‘terrorists’ Compound V, literally creating a threat for him to leverage for more power domestically, that literally makes him a terrorist. He also uses the word “mud” here, while definitely racist, is also a nod to Harry Potter and the term “mud blood” a term referring to people without the ability to do magic, used by those who have the ability to do magic, at least in my opinion. After this speech he uses the word “mud” in reference to those without superpowers a lot more often, the term “mud people” and he even calls a “mud person” in his reflection, and refers to wanting to rid his blood of the mud in it, that represents his humanity. Showrunner Eric Kripke openly says that Homelander is meant to be Donald Trump, and here you can see his mannerisms as Stormfront speaks on her aspirations, and they are actually quite interesting. While Donald Trump might not 100% align himself with Nazi’s, he is 100% willing to step back and nod in agreement with someone more radical than him at his rallies, if anything he is known for being “Nazi/white supremacist-adjacent” if it means he can consolidate more favor and power with a group, something Homelander is obsessed with. While this speech is not as charismatic and explosive as his other speeches so far in the show, there is a lot here, and he continues to speak in the code of a power hungry fascist dictator.

Speech 4:

Throughout the series, Homelander often says “You are the real heroes” when referring to the general populace without powers (https://fb.watch/dVQxofZ60x/ A compilation), it is his catchphrase in the eyes of the public, and a reference to real world leaders who often say this to the populace. This final speech at his birthday celebration, is the one where he ‘breaks’. A man in the crowd at HIS celebration mocks him over Stormfronts death, “your nazi died”, a celebration which is controlled entirely by Vought, (it isn’t even his real birthday, the date was picked by Vought), he can’t have his celebration 100% the way he wants it, with Starlight even overstepping him during prep, at the behest of Vought, the “higher” power Homelander answers to. He had done press, after press, after press, apologizing and explaining his “mistake” of dating a Nazi in Stormfront, Starlight tries to pressure him publicly into giving her organization $10 Million, and this just breaks him, an interesting moment for him to break, since he breaks at the mention of another American God, Dollar Bills, and a few seconds after Starlight calls him “a human” who makes mistakes just like everybody else. Then EVERYTHING breaks down. This speech is chilling, and if you watch it yourself, the lighting changes to red really subtly due to what is behind him on the big screen, it is done so naturally and I really want to applaud the people in charge of lighting here/whoever had that idea, if you aren’t looking for it you won’t even see it, but it adds to his speech endlessly.

In the first few lines of his speech, he uses 0 code. He just states that he is better, stronger, and smarter to the audience and the people at home. He bluntly states that he isn’t a “weak-kneed fucking crybaby who fucking apologizes all the time” and follows that with “and why would you want me to be?”. In these moments I like to pull myself out of my own shoes, and put myself into this world, watching Homelanders birthday celebration, watching him flip out of national TV and ask myself: “If all of this was real, what would I be thinking if I saw this live?” because if we are being honest, I would probably be like “he’s right”. It is the perfect question to ask the American public across party lines: “wouldn’t it be better for America if Homelander was ruthless and unforgiving?”…Now imagine if someone, who didn’t do nearly the thinking I have currently done on these speeches, LIVES in this world, or if someone who is pro-war or a right-winger saw this, they would probably immediately agree/love that he is letting loose and telling the world his unfiltered opinion on a massive stage. It is a quality that helped Donald Trump win his election, and its exhilarating to consume that much energy from someone with so much power, speeches like this have been scientifically proven to make people’s brains go haywire and even brainwash the right people, inadvertently, or intentionally conditioning the individuals in the crowd to want more. As seen in the next scene in M.M.’s ex-wife’s home, you can see how her current husband is feeling the exhilaration, then later in the season he has the speech on repeat in his home — a great example of how addicting the right type of language in the right setting can be/relatable to someone who might feel as though they cannot publicly state their own controversial or bigoted beliefs.

While also viewed partially as comic relief, Homelander also tells Roger not to cut off the broadcast, an indication of the intentionality of his messaging, and even when it seems like these leaders are off the cusp, their brain disease allows them to think rapidly and plan their messaging millisecond to millisecond, even when the message seems jumbled or off the cusp.

I also like how he talks about the powers that be/media “controlling you” and “controlling me”, and even when he is talking down to the populace: 1, they love it based on his approval numbers launching up in the next episode, 2, he is still able to relate to the individual and the masses and seem like ‘one of them’, even when he says openly in the same speech that he is not ‘one of them’. His rhetoric is insane here, peak insane — it is seen in a lack of doublespeak here, something found peppered all over his other speeches — he is completely unshackled for a moment and he just says what he has been thinking. It is interesting to note how in this moment in the show, he is the most controlled that he has ever been; his public image is literally being crafted by the company that manages him, minute by the minute, even more than usual. This speech is easily the most fascist, he speaks like a Hitler-esque dictator, looking to confuse the populace and build distrust in the media. While the showrunners openly say he is supposed to be Donald Trump, I see a lot of mannerisms and ideologies that were popular in the mid 20th century, especially in his speeches.

He also states that he is “done being persecuted for his strength” a very interesting thing to say, that echoes a lot of what is said in the current Republican Party, who believe in things such as “The Great Replacement” and the persecution of Christians, often claiming that “Christian Persecution” is one of the major issues in this day and age. You can also look at the current Roe v. Wade overturn, and point at the book The Birth Dearth by Ben Wattenberg, which claims that banning abortion will prevent the extinction of the white race in America.

Homelander does a lot of things with this speech. While I mentioned above that it isn’t peppered in nearly the same amount of doublespeak as his other speeches, he is constantly talking to the masses as though they are individuals, claiming that “you need me to save you”, a sentence that is singular in one context, but plural in this context, he claims that “he is the only one who possibly can [save everyone]” literally creating a problem and presenting himself in a stronger position of power, as the solution to his fabricated and framed problem, and then ends the speech directly, and beautifully with “You’re not the real hero, I’m the real hero”.

As I mentioned earlier, this speech within the world of ‘The Boys’ was incredibly popular. It would never have happened without the normalization of his rhetoric in other speeches throughout the series. These speeches from the audiences context just seem like incredible Antony Starr performances, which they are, but it is important to take yourself out of the shoes of the real world audience, and put yourself in front of a TV in the actual show. I constantly ask myself: with 0 context, if this was real life, and these people existed as superhuman, would I be on their side? Or would I be the protestor who runs the risk of being one of the 100 people lasered by Homelander with no consequences? It is easy to dislike or protest Donald Trump because he doesn’t have laser eyes. I personally think that he appeals to the moderate white Martin Luther King Jr. described as the largest obstacle for true inequality, and that is what is scary. The Boys isn’t about superheroes, these people aren’t superheroes, they don’t “save the day” it is about the darkest American leadership nightmare: What if pure evil draped an American flag over himself, said all of the right things, told the right people that God was lighting his path, and garnered the support and then took absolute power?