The Seven Members Who Are Even Less Likable Than A-Train On The Boys
Spoilers for The Boys incoming!
Right off the bat, The Boys viewers have every right to dislike A-Train (Jessie Usher) because he runs through Hughie's (Jack Quaid) girlfriend Robin (Jess Salgueiro) at super speed. Accident or not, even with barely knowing the characters so early on, the jarring shift from a couple's casual stroll to a curb covered in blood and guts is the speedster's fault. Hughie later finds out that A-Train laughed about the incident with a friend in private, and the formal apology he receives from the Supe is half-hearted at best.
The manslaughter stemmed from A-Train's habitual recreational use of Compound V, the drug that grants Supes their powers. Without the extra boost it gives him, A-Train fears that some younger, faster Supe will outrun him — something that his ego won't allow and that he'll do anything to prevent from coming to pass. Indeed, he even murders his own girlfriend, Popclaw (Brittany Allen), to keep his drug abuse a secret.
The Boys leans heavily on the premise that superheroes experience the same yearnings and impure thoughts as anyone else, the difference being they have the powers to bring those yearnings and thoughts to fruition. In that vein, A-Train is every bit the insincere junkie showoff he appears to be, but compared to some of the other members of The Seven and what they've done, he's a guppy in a pond full of piranha.
Lamplighter's light is dimmed on The Boys
Kicked out of The Seven before the start of the show, Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore) is on the bottom rung of the Supe ladder when The Boys find him at the Sage Grove Center in season 2. Tasked with using his pyrokinesis to get rid of failed human experiments, his is a life of misery day in and day out. No matter how you look at it, though, burning people alive makes him a difficult figure with which to sympathize. Plus, even after viewers learn his incineration of Grace Mallory's (Laila Robbins) grandchildren was an honest mistake, the fact that he was gunning for Mallory isn't much better.
Lamplighter does get the chance to redeem himself when The Boys ask him to testify in a hearing meant to expose Vought International's immorality, and, for a bit, viewers might actually believe he's going to do it. He even goes with Hughie to rescue Starlight (Erin Moriarty), who's detained at Vought Tower for her betrayal — a ripe opportunity for an extra level of redemption, and the perfect way to get Hughie's mind off all the disgusting Supe porn Lamplighter watched in front of him. Not long after they get there, however, Lamplighter says, "I just wanted to make my dad proud," before self-immolating. It's an upsetting scene, but without achieving his redemption, he dies not the hero he once was, but the shell of a man that he became.
The Deep digs his own grave in The Boys
When Starlight was younger, she had a poster of The Deep (Chace Crawford) in her room, so, for her, the Supe himself showing her around Vought Tower is a dream come true. He preens her feathers, assuaging the imposter syndrome she feels as The Seven's newest member. A thankful Starlight turns to face him, only to find that he's dropped his pants and wears a look of expectation. When she tries to leave, The Deep threatens her with the lie that he's No. 2 on The Seven's roster, which would mean that he could get her kicked off of the team as easy as one, two, three; unless she's willing to give him oral sex, that is. Then he might overlook the "attack" he could claim he met at her hands.
As she should, Starlight eventually exposes the sexual assault to the public, and The Deep — previously Vought's go-to social media star — is sent on "vacation" to Sandusky, Ohio. The sabbatical doesn't sit well with him, making him feel even more like the joke he'd always felt like on some level. Even so, The Deep attempts to walk a better path, and there's some level to which viewers can jive with that. He's even sexually assaulted himself at one point, when a woman messes with his touch-sensitive gills without consent. At the end of the day, though, it's hard to come back from a trench so deep as the one he makes for himself — especially when he flips off the very people who helped him find peace with himself, who he thought could get him back on The Seven.
If you or someone you know has been the victim of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit RAINN.org for additional resources.
Translucent's shortcomings are transparent on The Boys
A-Train may have been the first Supe that Hughie ever came face-to-face with, but Translucent (Alex Hassell) is the first he ever truly confronts. It's his first real test before he becomes an "official" member of The Boys — a test he nearly fails. Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) tasks young Hughie with bugging Vought Tower, and, though he succeeds, an invisible Translucent sees him do it. A-Train may have killed Robin by accident, but when Translucent comes after Hughie, his killing intent is just that: intent. If not for Butcher's imminent arrival, the Supe would've finished the job, too. The fight marks one of viewers' first glimpses of how far Supes are willing to go.
Translucent is no angel around his fellow members of The Seven, either. He takes advantage of his invisibility to pay visits to the ladies' room, though Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligot) is onto his perversion.
Yet, as he says to Hughie, "[M]y superpower ain't invisibility. You know that, right? It's reading people."
Indeed, no Supe in the world is better equipped to find out what people are really like when they're alone. The thing is, being an expert on the human psyche turns Translucent into a real jerk. When Hughie interrogates him for information about Robin's death, he just mocks the poor kid. Gruesome though it is when Hughie blows him up, it's well deserved.
No one feels at home with Homelander on The Boys
Oh, Homelander (Antony Starr). What can be said about The Boys' resident demigod that hasn't been said already? He's the most powerful Supe in the world, and he makes sure everybody knows it. He's a true-blue American hero in the public eye and a twisted, malicious psychopath when no one's watching. Homelander is smarter than he appears to be, and yet he's easily manipulated by the women in his life and by Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), CEO of Vought. Homelander's redeeming moments are few and far between, but he's just so infinitely watchable, thanks to the stellar writing and Starr's nonpareil performance. Without a doubt, he goes down as one of the most significant "love to hate" antagonists in television history.
Because of the laundry list of unspeakable atrocities he's committed, it's hard to point to just one and say, "This! This is why Homelander's irredeemable!" Viewers like watching him, but anyone who actually likes Homelander and agrees with what he does probably has a few screws loose.
But, perhaps no one can better illustrate the smugness and general unlikability of the character than the man himself: "I'm the Homelander. And I can do whatever the f*** I want."
Stormfront is the worst of the worst on The Boys
Who could be worse than Homelander, you ask? How about a literal, actual Nazi?
When Stormfront (Aya Cash) is first introduced, she actually seems alright — a little brash, maybe, but her incessant anti-Vought rhetoric and carefree attitude make for a positive first impression, overall. Once she tells Starlight it was her own fault for being sexually assaulted by The Deep, however, well, let's just say there's no going back. Seeing her in action for the first time reveals how careless she is about human lives as long as she gets the job done, and once her prey is in her grasp, she relishes watching "the light go out" from their eyes.
Homelander can't help but be attracted to her, going from believing her power to be a threat to appreciating it as a sexual asset. The two become a public couple, but little does Homelander know that Stormfront is running the experiments at Sage Grove, where she continues the work of her original husband: Frederick Vought. As in, the man who founded the company. Which means Stormfront is much older than she appears. She eventually reveals this to Homelander and tells him about the superhuman master race she wants to build, by which even he's taken aback; at least at first. The public learning she's an ageless Nazi doesn't do Vought — or Homelander, her boyfriend — any good. If Stormfront achieves one thing by the time she's out of the picture, it's leaving a bitter taste in everyone's mouth.
Thankfully she didn't achieve any of her big-picture agenda items; as far as we know, that is.