Homelander

About

Homelander is a main character and antagonist in the comic and Amazon TV series The Boys, created by Garth Ennis. Homelander is seen as a dark version of Superman in that he has similar powers and abilities, but is noticeably unhinged and evil. In both the comics and show, various scenes and expressions associated with Homelander have become memes, such as the Stressed Homelander or Homelander Gets Applause formats depicting actor Antony Starr.

History

Homelander originally appears in issue #3 of the comic and episode one of the television series, who quickly establishes himself as the main antagonist. On July 26th, 2019, the first episode of the Amazon Prime Video series debuted, which features Antony Starr's Homelander stopping an armored car robbery early on in the show (seen below).

Early memes featuring Homelander were mostly comparing him to Superman and other characters but reflected his dark personality. This can be seen in the meme posted to Pinterest by the fan page The Boys Series,^[1] which shows that Homelander is Captain America, Bright Burn and Superman combined into one (shown below).

Online Presence

In episode two of the Amazon series, Homelander, while speaking to a worker at Vought, declares that because he's Homelander, he can do whatever he wants. The delivery of the line includes a smile that has been picked up as a still image and used in memes known as Homelander Smiling. The line delivery itself was uploaded to YouTube by the channel BourgDotOrg^[2] on July 26th, 2019, where it gained over 200,000 views in three years (shown below).

The Homelander Smiling format was then used in memes as both an exploitable and a phrasal template in the following months. For example, on August 28th, 2019, Redditor^[3] wadekording creating a motivational image out of the phrase with Homelander's crazy stare added on top, earning over 310 karma in three years (shown below).

Homelander's online presence continued to grow with the release of episode four in which Homelander and Queen Maeve attempt to save an airplane that was hijacked by terrorists. Their first attempt at rescuing people from such circumstances, instead of the usual fighting of supervillains, the plan immediately goes wrong and causes Homelander to lash out and decide to kill everyone on board to cover up their failure. The scene was uploaded in its entirety to the YouTube channel Amazon Prime Video UK^[4] on March 23rd, 2020, where it received over 1.3 million views in two years (shown below).

Still images from the scene, especially of Homelander's snide smile and laser eye fury, were made into separate memes, with one being made using the grin and the It Was Time for Thomas to Leave template, uploaded to Reddit on September 4th, 2019, by Redditor^[5] Pdrw3tf and receiving over 300 upvotes in two years (shown below).

Related Memes

Stressed Homelander

Stressed Homelander is a clip of the character Homelander, played by actor Antony Starr, from the Amazon superhero series The Boys acting stressed and exhaling deeply through his mouth with his cheeks puffed out. In early July 2022, the clip gained virality as an exploitable and source material for video or GIF caption memes.

Introverts after a Zoom call. pic.twitter.com/Qw1wOi1PYW

— Ariel Relaford (@ArielRelaford) July 5, 2022

Homelander Gets Applause / Homelander Smile

Homelander Gets Applause, also known as Homelander Smile or Homelander Kills Civilian, is a video and GIF caption meme format based on a scene from the Amazon superhero series The Boys in which the character Homelander, played by Antony Starr, smiles and laughs after the crowd supports him over murdering a man who threw a can at his son. The format gained virality on Twitter and other social media in mid-July 2022 following season three's finale.

when i tweet something out of pocket and nobody unfollows pic.twitter.com/KFoSfqHYnj

— torb (@torbalderson) July 12, 2022

Search Interest

External References