About

Homelander Watching a Movie or Homelander Staring At Screen refers to a clip from season three of the satirical superhero series The Boys in which the character Homelander, portrayed by actor Antony Starr, is watching a movie inside a dark theater with a silent expression of displeasure as he looks toward the screen. Starting in 2022, the clip has been used as a video caption format and reaction for memes, often used to express dissatisfaction with films and other media.

Origin

On June 3rd, 2022, episode one "Payback" of season three of the satirical superhero series The Boys premiered.^[1] The episode opens with a scene in which the superhero team The Seven are attending the premiere of Dawn of the Seven, a superhero action film depicting a highly fictionalized account of the Seven's hiring of Stormfront and other recent events in the universe. During the scene, the character Homelander (Antony Starr) is shown watching the film silently with an expression of displeasure and dissociation (scene shown below).

On July 16th, 2022, the X^[2] / Twitter account @homelanderbot posted a 10-second clip of Homelander watching the film at the theater for future use as a reaction meme. The upload (shown below) garnered over 290 reposts and 940 likes in two years.

homelander disassociating while in the movie theater/watching a movie the boys scene reaction #theboys pic.twitter.com/EO5DA9Qv5f

— homelander reactions & clips (@homelanderbot) July 16, 2022

Spread

On July 17th, 2022, Tumblr^[3] account shittymmoviedetails posted the earliest found notable meme based on the clip, captioning it, "Me watching Thor Love and Thunder". The post (shown below) gained over 120 reblogs and 320 likes in two years.

On July 18th, 2022, X^[4] user @AndrewsVisual posted a video caption meme about Dr. Doom in Marvel Cinematic Universe that received over 5,000 reposts and 51,000 likes in two years (shown below).

If Dr Doom makes one single joke in the MCU: pic.twitter.com/ZMQZWmvv7g

— Andrew 🔱 (@AndrewsVisual) July 18, 2022

In the following years, memes based on the format appeared on X, Reddit, TikTok and other sites, with the format frequently being used to express dissatisfaction with the quality of certain media or to indicate that the content was traumatizing for the viewer.

For example, on December 21st, 2022, Redditor ChodzeDoSzkoly posted a meme about Star Wars that received over 42,000 upvotes in the /r/PrequelMemes subreddit in two years.^[5]

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References