In the Flesh: The Boys

The narcissist who wants to be loved is hardly a novel character concept. Nor is the subversion of Superman, an ubiquitous archetypal figure in modern storytelling, into a tyrannical despot virgin territory for fiction. The authoritarian Communist regime of Kal-El’s alternate self in Mark Millar’s Red Son, the godlike distance and moral alienation of Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore’s Watchmen — this is well-trod territory. The Boys, based on Garth Ennis and Eric Kripke’s comic of the same name, lacks the extent of Watchmen’s moral depth and insight, playing as much in the sandbox of exploitation as it does with satire, but its sometimes agonizingly laser-precise political relevance and its front and center positioning of a very particular sort of masculine weakness more than justify its placement alongside Moore’s masterpiece/killshot to an entire genre. More than any other single factor, the thing that secures it that space is Antony Starr’s lead performance as Homelander, the most powerful living thing and a fragile narcissist tangled inextricably in his own mommy issues and desperate insecurity.

Starr plays Homelander with a combination of sadistic brutality, hearty Man of the People bluster, and childlike neediness, bringing a tremendous emotional complexity to even the simplest scenes. Repellent, he longs to be loved. Invincible, he yearns to be vulnerable. His desperate desire to be loved by everyone around him curdles inevitably again and again into resentment toward those same people for the power he can’t help but give them over him. The show doesn’t shy away from explicitly tugging at the knot of his snarl of personality disorders, trauma, and reactive bigotry, but it’s Starr’s face that makes the whole bag of cats come alive. With his Ken Doll good looks, dazzling phosphate smile, and big, expressive blue eyes he looks like a cross between an action figure, an Aryan recruitment poster, and an overgrown schoolboy, his Apple Pie and 4th of July wholesomeness undercut by something inescapably effeminate. He holds godlike power over the people around him, even his fellow superheroes, but in a single expression, eyes crinkling, eyes wet, Starr makes it plain that he lives on the verge of a panic attack.

Homelander is the God of the old testament, in a sense, imposing cruel tests and petty restrictions on even his most faithful followers, pushing them to reject him even as he craves and needs their acceptance. His desire to be loved by his previously unknown son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), exposes new facets of both his weakness and his humanity. While he quickly proves abusive and domineering in his approach to parenting, he endangers himself repeatedly to protect Ryan, even risking the loss of his powers to make sure the boy is alive during a fight with his biological father, the macho, hard-charging Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). He harbors a strong desire not to expose Ryan to the isolation and emptiness of his own childhood as a laboratory subject, and he’s the first to clearly and coherently state that Ryan isn’t at fault for accidentally killing his own mother, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), during an attempt to save her life. That the attachment is emotionally parasitic on Homelander’s part, an attempt to relive the lost childhood he covets through his obsession with breastmilk and his electrifyingly hot and grotesque Mommy/baby dynamic with his corporate handler Madelyn Stillwell (Elizabeth Shue), is obvious, but Starr brings a heartbreaking openness to it nonetheless. It’s the kind of acting you wait around hoping to see for years at a time, an effortless subtlety cohering actor and character into a single totally unique entity.