The Boys Reveals The Horrific Story of Homelander’s Birth

The Boys Season 4 Episode 4 revealed more of Homelander’s (Antony Starr) origin story – including the horrific story of his birth! 

(SPOILERS) In the latest Season 4 Episode 4 “Wisdom of the Ages”, Homelander returns to Project Odessa, the Vought lab that created him and tested the limits of his superpowers. Homelander goes there to reconcile with his past and overcome his deep-seated insecurities. Of course, being Homelander, the trip down memory land turns out to be nothing less than a sadistic horror show. 

Homelander puts two of his biggest tormentors on the lab team through payback games that leave one man getting burned alive in a furnace, and another being castrated by Homelander’s laser eyes (RIP Frank and Marty). One of Project Odessa’s lead scientists, Barbara (Nancy Lenehan), finally arrives to curtail Homelander, by pulling on his psychological strings. Barbara does the one thing Homelander is not invulnerable to a change in perspective. 

The Boys: Homelander’s Birth Explained

Barbara tells Homelander that while he feels like he was the victim of cruel and unusual punishment as a lab rat, he was a predator from the moment he was born. In Barbara’s telling of the origin story, Homelander lasered his way out of his mother’s womb during birth, killing her. He then apparently started flying, floating into the air while his umbilical cord was still attached. Newborn Homelander also slaughtered a handful of the doctors and nurses in the room, before he was contained inside an isolation chamber. 

In the end, Barbara explains, the team at Project Odessa knew that they didn’t have the power to physically hold Homelander. Instead, they got the best psychologists together and came up with a set of psychological protocols that seeded Homelander with the need to be liked, and seek approval from both authority figures, and the common man he deems “beneath him.” Barbara tells Homelander that his psychology is something he will never overcome – to prove her wrong, Homelander slaughters the entire lab team and locks Barbara in the isolation chamber with the carnage. 

The Boys always presented Homelander as a superman who still had the emotional maturity of a child. It was a humanizing part of the character to believe that he had a tragic childhood, and no real love and nurturing as a Vought product. However, this episode of The Boys creates a different impression: that Homelander was a shark, a living weapon, since the moment he was created. 

Now the question is: Is The Boys trying to soften the blow, emotionally, for killing off Homelander? 

The Boys Season 4 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.