The Boys: What IS Wrong With Homelander In Season 3?!

The Boys season 3 trailer shows Homelander at his most fragile. What were the events that led to Homelander's inevitable fall in The Boys season 3?

Prime Video’s The Boys season 3 trailer serves as overwhelming evidence that Homelander is more dangerous than ever – but what exactly is wrong with him? Starlight (Erin Moriarty) can be seen on the phone stating: “There is something wrong with Homelander. There’s something broken.” This statement is backed up by the remainder of The Boys season 3 trailer, as viewers are exposed to the far-off look in Homelander’s (Antony Starr) eyes, forced laughter, and cracking voice that something is deeply wrong.

Homelander’s origins set the foundations for a truly broken character. He was raised from birth in a lab to be the world’s greatest superhero. He never had any parental bonds, and cold Vought scientists constantly tested his powers. Throughout The Boys there are two Homelander personas on display; one persona is the clean-cut superhero adored by the public, and the other is the homicidal monster who privately gets away with murder. Vought has covered up numerous diabolical crimes committed by Homelander, including mass murder, assault, and international terrorism. Since he never gets caught, and no one ever challenges his powers, Homelander’s sense of entitlement and ego has become his defining attribute. He truly believes himself to be superior to all other beings.

However, Homelander’s massive ego was finally challenged and bested at the end of The Boys season 2. This was the first time Homelander was defeated and humiliated by multiple people he considered inferior. Because of his powers, Homelander never truly learned to accept defeat and learn from his mistakes. As a result, Homelander’s response to his crushing defeat at the end of The Boys season 2 will likely be unstable and violent as he tries to regain some sense of power and control through whatever means necessary in The Boys season 3. Here’s what’s wrong with Homelander in The Boys season 3 trailer.

Why Homelander Is So Different In The Boys Season 3

To understand why Homelander is so different in The Boys season 3, it is critical to plot how his character’s situation changed from the beginning of The Boys season 1 to the end of season 2. At the beginning of The Boys season 2, Homelander finally had everything he wanted, including unlimited access to his son Ryan (Cameron Crovetti) and a seemingly unassailable public image. Yet by the end of the season, Homelander is blackmailed by Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) with video footage of his involvement in the crash of Transoceanic flight 37, forced to cede control of the Seven to Queen Maeve and Starlight, give up Ryan to his enemy Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), and see his volatile lover Stormfront (Aya Cash) dismembered in front of him. In this way, by the end of The Boys season 2, Homelander had lost control over the Seven, his son, and his indestructible ego had been outsmarted. These crushing defeats altered everything Homelander believed about himself and took away everything he cared about, damaging him psychologically, which is why he behaves so differently in the Boys season 3 trailer as a man with nothing left to lose.

How Homelander’s Problems Will Impact The Boys Season 3

In The Boys season 3, Homelander will have to deal with the public fallout of his relationship with Stormfront and pretend to be remorseful for his involvement, as shown in the Prime Video trailer. Not only that, Homelander will eventually discover Billy Butcher can temporarily gain superpowers, and Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) may help Butcher’s team. As a result, Homelander may finally reach his breaking point and begin hunting down anyone he sees as a threat regardless of the repercussions. This is to say nothing of the fact that Homelander will be dealing with daily reminders of his humiliating defeat, which will undoubtedly take its toll on Homelander’s fragile ego and push him closer to the brink. This can already be seen playing out in The Boys season 3 trailer as he starts talking to himself in the mirror and hallucinating. Before, Homelander was overconfident, but now that confidence has been shaken, there is no telling what violent actions he will take in an attempt to regain a perceived sense of control in his life.

While Starlight and Queen Maeve turned against Homelander and gained the upper hand by blackmailing him, that will likely only fuel his rage in The Boys season 3. The previous seasons of The Boys have shown that Homelander has a fragile sense of self that he aggressively protects and has little to no regard for the wellbeing of others, which makes him more dangerous than ever in season 3. This will likely see Homelander relentlessly pursue The Boys and his other adversaries in a quest for vengeance – making him a powerful and unpredictable entity that is a danger to all those he comes in contact with. The Boys’ season 3 trailer makes it clear that Homelander is about to snap, and the Boys will need to deploy every resource at their disposal to survive Homelander’s imminent murderous warpath.