On “The Boys,” superhero Homelander has killed countless people, sparked xenophobia and made love to an actual Nazi. In other words, the dude’s a villain. He’s clearly the bad guy.
But the show’s creators aren’t sure everyone gets that.
On Saturday, thousands of Trump supporters rallied in Washington, D.C., for the Million MAGA March, with some apparently participating in a Donald Trump/Homelander mashup cosplay.
Writer Laura Jedeed tweeted a photo of a costume depicting Trump as Homelander, prompting Eric Kripke, the showrunner of Amazon’s anti-superhero superhero show, to wonder: “Um ... are they actually watching the show?”
Actor Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, cast doubt on any redemption for his character in an interview with HuffPost and called the character “extremely needy, emotionally like a child.”
He also weighed in on the Trump-themed cosplay, tweeting: “The art of ignorant dumbfuckerry.”
“The Boys” comic co-creator Darick Robertson put it succinctly: “These doofuses don’t even understand that ‘Homelander’ is the bad guy.”
Though the intention of the costume isn’t clear, perhaps it’s not so shocking that Homelander would show up at a MAGA rally, at least according to Kripke.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter in October, he didn’t mince words, saying that superheroes had “fascist underpinnings” and were created to protect “white, patriotic America.”
“The myth of the superhero taken straight, that’s where it starts to become fascist. Because they’re protecting a world that doesn’t and shouldn’t exist. Superheroes are inherently MAGA,” Kripke said.