The following contains spoilers for the first three episodes of The Boys Season 3, as well as discussions of suicide.
One of the most endearing Superman stories of all time will forever be Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s 2005 series, All-Star Superman. This painted a most human, vulnerable Kal-El as he came to grips with his mortality, performing a series of tasks to prepare loved ones and Earth for life after he died due to solar poisoning.
It was chock-full of sentimental moments, reminding DC fans why, despite his godlike powers, Clark Kent was always a son of Earth, as much as he was one of Krypton. Interestingly, The Boys‘ evil take on Superman, Homelander, just remixed All-Star Superman’s most heroic moment, turning it into a gory tragedy, so he could flex his power.
In All-Star Superman #10, Kal saved a young girl, Regan, from jumping off a building. He stayed with her, reminding her she was stronger than she thought; a universally acclaimed scene that also acted as an anti-suicide PSA. It was a powerful message on mental health, taking the Man of Steel away from big explosions and cosmic fights to show he cared about the folks on the ground.
In Season 3’s second episode, “The Only Man in the Sky,” Homelander warped this sequence in a nasty way. He initially tried to stop a girl, Chelsea, from leaping off a building, but he was doing it for the cameras on his birthday, calling it “charity.” When he learned Stormfront died, though, via the big screens in New York, Homelander quietly snapped and urged Chelsea to jump off. He didn’t care about saving her anymore, because he realized everyone was beneath him. He felt like a king to ungrateful peasants who kept hating superior beings like himself and Stormfront, so when Chelsea tried to leave, he intimidated her with his heat vision, making sure to inflict panic.
One way or the other, this rooftop was going to be her end, which culminated in her splattering all over the pavement in front cameras and the public. It was Homelander at his worst, lacking the compassion and warmth of Kal-El. A lot of it was due to self-loathing, however, because he couldn’t be himself. He felt so controlled and fake, being a test tube baby who didn’t even know what his birthday really was, outside of a designated date in a PR campaign.
Instead, by putting fear and terror on TV, he knew it’d be a way of striking back against a society he hated but couldn’t denounce vocally. He didn’t care about Vought’s marketing anymore, and felt making this young lady a victim was the ideal flip of the bird. Ultimately, Homelander decided to show hopelessness to humanity, and subtly remind mankind that he could choose to destroy rather than save, which is the total antithesis to everything Clark stood for, across all mediums.
New episodes of The Boys debut Fridays on Prime Video.