The Boys’ Antony Starr Explains His ‘Weirdest Scene’ and How Homelander Is a Pawn in Season 4

This interview contains spoilers for The Boys season 4. If you haven’t heard yet, check out our Full Season Review Without Spoilers.

We’ve all heard the phrase “be careful what you wish for,” but for a raging narcissist like Homelander, the proverbial monkey’s paw can be an even harder pill to swallow. How do you, as someone who considers himself a god, accept the fact that all your dreams of unilateral power are about to come true, but you’re actually just a pawn in the process and your ultimate role will be little more than muscle? I’m not sure of the answer to that question myself, so I spoke with The Boys’ Antony Starr to analyze what’s going on in his character’s mind as the coup against President Singer and the hostile takeover of America finally gets underway.

A boy just wants to be loved

First off, it’s important to know where Homelander is emotionally in Season 4. We know from previous episodes that he’s trying to kill the last vestiges of his humanity, but he never quite succeeds due to his desperate need to be loved.

“I think he feels like he’s really shifted direction in terms of who he is and exorcising the demons, so to speak, and really purifying the palette of his life,” Starr says of Homie’s little trip home in Episode 4 of the season, where he slaughters the scientists who “raised” him as a child. “Nothing’s really accomplished other than revenge, but in his head, because he’s blinded by his needs and his desires and his ego, I think he thinks it’s pretty successful. Moving forward, he thinks he’s pretty well positioned to get what he wants.”

The question of what he wants is of course a complicated one for the leader of the Seven. He wants power, but he wants it one-sidedly; he wants to be loved, but he doesn’t know how to love in return; he wants trusted advisors, but his narcissism doesn’t allow him to believe in anyone but himself.

As we know, Homelander started this season fed up with being surrounded by yes-men. Bringing in Susan Heyward’s sister Sage was a rare moment of intelligence from the brutal leader of the Seven, but his ability to deal with someone who is both smarter than he is And She wasn’t afraid of him and was limited from the start. Now that he knows that brain shots render her powers useless and reduce her to the real-life equivalent of Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, his patience with her is at an all-time low.

“As far as Sage goes, he really depends on her,” Starr says. “But he finds himself in a situation where, yes, she’s indisposed and completely unexpectedly, he finds himself in a position where he’s going to try to take the reins of a six-horse carriage, and he’s completely ill-equipped to do it.”

Of course, we all know that Homelander could He could have gotten unilateral power if he really wanted it, but that would directly conflict with his need to be adored. Yet there is a brief moment in Tek Knight’s office where we almost get that “fuck it” moment where Homelander takes out every senator and power player in the room.

“There’s just a moment where it could swing either way,” Starr says of the scene. “He could just say, ‘You know what? I’m just going to turn around and laser everybody,’ and who takes over? Victoria Neuman comes in as the ultimate backup hitter and, you could say, saves the day.”

Starr would later joke that Neuman, played by Claudia Doumit, ultimately saved the day for Team Evil, which couldn’t be more true. But it’s here that the aforementioned monkey’s paw really starts to backfire on Homelander and his quest for power. Still, there’s a painful realization that the current vice president isn’t just a means to an end. He needs her for this plan to succeed.

“Overall, it’s also very difficult for Homelander to accept that he almost failed, well, he did fail, and she’s highlighted that,” Starr says. “It’s a double-edged sword for him that she saved his ass and she saved the plan, but she’s also really highlighted his flaws in terms of that level of functioning and thinking. In this world, he’s very much a child among adults. As hard as it is for him to understand, he clearly recognizes that he needs her and that she’s invaluable.”

It’s at this point, after Sage hesitates and Neuman saves the day, that it becomes clear that Homelander is not the one in control at all. “There are little moments where he gets upset because he feels like a pawn or a chess piece being moved around the board by someone else’s hand,” Starr notes.

In the end, he’s just the guy with the laser eyes. He’s a little boy who trots alongside the big kids as they lead him toward the coup he asked Santa to deliver for Christmas, but he has no relevant power in his quest for glory, Sage’s, and Neuman’s. But never doubt the ability of egomaniacs to lie to themselves and twist things in their favor.

“[Having Neuman take charge]was a little awkward for him, but in the end, overall, we’re going to get what we want,” Starr says. “So Homelander probably took that incident and found a way in his own head to spin it and make it seem like, ‘Well, yeah, no, she actually saved them from being slaughtered, so it wasn’t me she saved. It was them.’ He has a great way of twisting things in his own head to protect his ego.”

Starr notes that he believes Homelander is a “very fragile, emotionally damaged person” who “justifies and twists things to shape his own story and his own narrative.”

We all know this type of narcissist. But I guess the narcissists in our everyday lives don’t have laser eyes. At least there’s that!

Homelander gets his milk

But if there’s one thing you can trust when you’re a narcissist, it’s ending the day with exactly what you want. In this case, it’s Homelander ending the day with some breast milk as a reward! (Yeah, I had a little gag too, we all knew what we were getting into with this show.)

Of course, I had to ask Starr why she had to film while cuddled up to Firecracker’s (Valorie Curry) chest. You know, it helps end the interview on a thoughtful note.

“Oh my God,” Starr begins with a laugh. “When we teased the show, I said the weirdest scene I’ve ever done is in this season, and that’s the scene I was talking about. It’s absolutely surreal to have breast milk squirted on your face. It’s just hilarious and surreal.”

“I looked at Curry and I thought, ‘What in God’s name are we doing? This is so absurd.’ There’s been weirder stuff. There’s been crazier stuff. We’ve done all sorts of stuff on this show, but for me, psychologically, when we were doing it, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is so twisted and weird.’”

Now, everything we know about The Boys tells us that things are only going to get weirder in Season 5, so I had to know what Starr thought about Homelander’s obsession with breast milk evolving into its final form before the series ends.

“I don’t know what they’re going to do from here. We did the cow. Now we did the human breast milk in the face, but that’s something that I’m pretty sure (creator/showrunner) Eric Kripke’s mind has already laid a few eggs that will hatch next season, for sure,” Starr laughs again. “I don’t know. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ll have to get the scripts, digest them, and then we’ll see where we go, but I’m sure it’s going to get weird.”

At this point, “I don’t know where it’s going to go from here, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to get weird” is the Boys’ unofficial slogan. But at least Homie has Sage and Neuman running the show and Firecracker for his, uh… needs.

Some quotes have been edited or truncated for clarity.

Amelia is the Entertainment Streaming Editor at IGN. She’s also a film and TV critic who spends way too much time talking about dinosaurs, superheroes, and folk horror. You can usually find her with her dog, Rogers. There might be cheeseburgers. Follow her on social media @ThatWitchMia