Antony Starr’s Most Humiliating Homelander Line Was His Own Idea, and Eric Kripke Is Still Laughing About It
For seven years, ‘The Boys‘ built Homelander into one of television’s most terrifying villains, a god-complex given flesh, laser eyes, and a Vought-issued smile. Antony Starr’s performance turned the character into a cultural phenomenon, a figure so chilling and so watchable that fans tuned in season after season half hoping he would never actually be stopped. But the series always had a plan for how the most powerful man in the world would eventually crumble, and that plan called for humiliation on a scale the character would have found unthinkable.
The finale delivered exactly that. With Kimiko using a DIY radiated chest blast to strip Homelander of his powers, the show finally exposed what Kripke described as the character’s true nature beneath all the arrogance and intimidation, leaving him cowardly, blubbering, and pathetic in the Oval Office for the entire world to watch. The image of Homelander desperately trying to fly and flopping helplessly to the ground became one of the episode’s most talked-about moments, with critics calling it an utterly priceless payoff.
Now, showrunner Eric Kripke has revealed that the single most degrading line in that sequence was not something the writers’ room cooked up. It came directly from Starr himself. Speaking with Variety, Kripke explained that the moment grew out of a brainstorm session between the two of them, and it was Starr who pitched the line “I’ll eat your shit on live TV,” with Kripke’s immediate reaction being that it was so funny he simply had to put it in.
In his interview with Rolling Stone, Kripke explained that he had proactively reached out to Starr before the script was even finished to prepare him for how unglamorous Homelander’s exit would be, telling the actor that the character would not be powerful in his death and would leave the series in the most pathetic way possible. Starr’s response was immediate and enthusiastic, agreeing that the ending had to match the horror the character had inflicted over the course of the show. Far from resisting the direction, Kripke told that Starr proved to be a great partner for all of it.
Kripke also addressed fans who questioned whether Homelander would really fall apart so completely in his final moments, responding that the entire season had been building toward exactly this point, asking what is left of a man like that once you take the power away. The showrunner said it was important for Homelander to spend at least some time powerless before his death, because simply releasing him into the world without abilities would not be a lasting punishment, and the scene needed to reveal what everyone had been saying all along, that without those powers, he is nothing.
Fan reactions have been sharply divided, which the cast had predicted well in advance. Some viewers called the death the most satisfying villain exit since Joffrey Baratheon in ‘Game of Thrones,’ with others singling out the physical transformation in Starr’s performance as he switched from cocky immortality to whimpering terror. Critics, however, were more measured, with some noting that the death felt less like a triumphant catharsis and more like a mercy killing after a season dense with Homelander’s god complex posturing. Either way, Starr’s portrayal across the full run of the series is already being discussed as one of the greatest villain performances in streaming television history.
What is clear is that the actor and his showrunner were completely aligned on giving the character the ending he deserved, right down to the most unprintable line of dialogue in the entire series. Whether you think Homelander went out perfectly or wanted something bigger, it is hard to argue with the fact that Antony Starr committed to every second of it, so what did you make of his final scene as the man who once called himself a god?
