The Amazon series The Boys is based on a comic. Many of the characters appear in the series, but are extremely different from the comics. The big twist at the end will probably never appear in the series either. The creator of the series, Eric Kripke, is not a fan of the plot twist.
Warning spoilers: The following article contains spoilers for the end of The Boys comics. If you still wanted to read them, you should come back afterwards.
What happens at the end of the comics in The Boys? Over the course of the comics, Homelander becomes increasingly brutal. He seems to send himself pictures of his actions, as he doesn’t seem to remember many of them.
At the height of his madness, he tries to storm the White House with an army of superheroes and kills the president. Butcher’s troops are able to kill the army and also hold off Homelander.
As it turns out, it wasn’t Homelander who did the bad things, but Black Noir, who is a clone of Homelander made to stop him when he goes mad. The pictures were sent to him by Noir.
Noir then kills Homelander and Butcher later kills Noir. Eric Kripke, the writer of the TV series, doesn’t think much of this ending and doesn’t want to use it for the series.
Fans of The Boys should also check this out: If you are waiting for the 4th season of The Boys, you should watch this anime on Netflix
The Boys Official Trailer Season 1
More videos
Autoplay
Kripke has never been a fan of the twist
What does Kripke say about the comic twist? In an interview with Variety, the author talked about the differences to the comics and why he changed a lot of things. He was also asked about Black Noir and whether he was interested in the comic story.
Kripke says straight away that he wasn’t interested in that at all. But he doesn’t find the concept that the villain isn’t the real villain exciting. He wants to show Homelander as a villain and doesn’t want to work with clones.
If I’m going to go after this villain, I want this guy to be the villain. So I was never really into the idea of the clone.
Eric Kripke on the Homelander twist in the comics (Source: Variety)
He also thinks that the topic of cloning is too magical for the show. Although there are superheroes, the rest of the show tries to be as down to earth as possible.
What does Kripke like about the comics? When asked which aspects of the comics he liked that he wanted to focus more on in the series, he said the relationship between Frenchie and Kimiko was the most popular. He particularly praised the chemistry between the two actors. In particular, Karen Fukuhara’s performance was great, even without any real dialogue.
The TV series is much more socially critical than the comics. A big point is the criticism of commercialization, in this case of superheroes. To use this for marketing, Amazon often advertises in the real world. Most recently, you could ask Homelander questions: Homelander from The Boys answers questions on Reddit and it is just as absurd as you would expect