Eric Kripke Is Done Being Patient and He Wants Antony Starr to Get That Emmy Now
Few performances in modern television have sparked as persistent a conversation about awards injustice as Antony Starr’s seven-year run as Homelander on ‘The Boys’. Season after season, critics and viewers reached for superlatives to describe what the New Zealand actor delivers in the role, calling it terrifying, layered, and among the most compelling villain portrayals in the history of the medium. The character, a corrupt, laser-eyed god complex wrapped in a patriotic costume, became one of the defining figures of the streaming era. And yet, the Television Academy never took notice.
‘The Boys’ completed its fifth and final season on Amazon Prime Video, with episodes airing from April 8 through May 20. Starr’s season 5 performance is widely considered his finest outing as the character, masterfully depicting Homelander’s unhinged quest for power before stripping the villain down to a pathetic, powerless nobody begging for his life in the finale. The response from fans and critics as the show wrapped was an outpouring of appreciation for everything Starr built over the course of the series. It also brought renewed urgency to a question that has frustrated the fanbase for years.
That question reached a new boiling point this week, when @TheBoysOOCC shared a post on X featuring a message from showrunner Eric Kripke calling Antony Starr one of the best TV villains in history and demanding Emmy voters finally give the actor his due. The sentiment echoes something Kripke said to Gold Derby in an interview earlier this year, where he described the lack of recognition as nothing short of a crime. Kripke told Gold Derby, “To me, it’s criminal that Antony Starr has not gotten recognition for the job he’s doing as Homelander. And then you add to that Jack Quaid, Karl Urban, Chace Crawford, etc. Everyone’s doing career-best work, and they deserve to be recognized for it.”
In its full run, ‘The Boys’ received eight Primetime Emmy nominations, but six of those went to technical and craft categories, with Starr never receiving a single nod for his performance across any of the show’s five seasons. Outside of the Emmys, Starr has received recognition from the Critics’ Choice Super Awards several times, and has also been nominated at the Saturn Awards and the Critics’ Choice Awards, but for Kripke and a vocal majority of the fanbase, that trail of recognition has always felt like a consolation prize compared to the Emmy the performance warranted.
Prime Video has formally submitted Antony Starr for Emmy consideration in the Best Drama Actor category for the final season, alongside Karl Urban and Jack Quaid. According to Gold Derby Emmy odds, Starr is currently the performer from the show with the best chance of receiving a nomination, though he faces a competitive field that is likely to include Noah Wyle, Gary Oldman, Mark Ruffalo, and Sterling K. Brown.
With ‘The Boys’ now concluded, audience reactions to the series finale were filled with praise for Starr, with viewers describing him as having played “one of the best villains ever to perfection.” The Emmy eligibility window for the final season represents the last opportunity for voters to correct what many consider one of the most glaring oversights in recent awards history. Whether Television Academy members are finally willing to acknowledge it is a question that will be answered when nominations are announced.
Now that ‘The Boys’ has reached its conclusion and Antony Starr has delivered what many are calling his career-best work, where do you stand on whether Emmy voters will finally get it right this time?
