They get it because they get help from people who buy into their facade of strength. They don’t get it on their own merits - as Stan Edgar points out to him later, Homelander is basically an empty shell who has no idea what he’s doing. Obviously, The Boysis a ridiculous, over-the-top show - I don’t know if I will ever be over that exploding penis scene from the first episode - but it’s doing a great job of realistically depicting how a petty bully like Homelander gains power. I also love that Homelander found out about Starlight’s alliance because A-Train tattled after Supersonic tried to recruit him. I’m not sure if he’s actually dead or not - as Stormfront showed us, Supes can survive a lot - but neither way, this is a genuinely shocking turn for him. But having be the person he says he is - a nice dude who wants to help Starlight because she’s trying to do the right thing - and get beaten to death for it…that I wasn’t expecting. Was he going to betray Starlight and rat her out to Homelander? That’s predictable. Were they using him to make Hughie jealous? That’s tired.
I’ve been side-eyeing the inclusion of Supersonic for a minute because I didn’t know what point he served.
I basically want to start at the end of the episode, where Homelander whisks away Starlight on a creepy magic carpet ride to show her the mess he’d made of Supersonic, who was helping her foment an anti-Homelander alliance. And I don’t mean that as an insult he’s wonderful at driving conflict, I’m truly scared of him, and I don’t know how the other characters are going to topple them but I’m in their corner 100% of the way. This guy…is such a loathsome piece of sh*t, and he just keeps getting worse and worse.
I don’t think there’s been a villain as good as Homelander on TV since the days of Joffrey Baratheon on Game of Thrones.