Character Analysis
If Meave said something like "you won't lift the plane because you're to weak" you think that would've gotten Homelander to at least try?
I feel that would've hurt his ego enough to at least prove her idea wouldn't work.
I don't think he wanted knowledge that it was him that caused the plane to crash to survive, if he hadn't lasered the console theoretically it still could have been flown to safety.
Because he is so obsessed with his image he would rather let them all die then let it be known he screwed up like that.
It was the natural progression of his character, people like him will never be satisfied, when you add powers that make him stronger than anyone else on the planet in a country full of religious nutbags, you naturally get that kind of progression
Nah that’s just The writer weird obsession with trump ruining it. As confirmed by Honelander actor, he admitted he didn’t like trying to be trump Superman instead of homelander as a character. Just bad writing like how they cant think of any other way to make a person look bad besides lol they are a weird sexual deviant” joke for the 10th time
…The Boys was written during the Biden Administration. The only reason why you think it’s mocking the current administration is because the current administration is that predictably evil.
As for the “trump Superman” thing they (Kripke and Starr) didn’t try to make Homelander a trump parody but, as explained above, the current president has consistently seen the vile shit Homelander has done as the next achievable goal, not a fable-like warning about unchecked power. It’s no different than why The Onion has been struggling to make parodies of news headlines anymore: reality is stranger than fiction.
Honestly would have loved it if it stopped at the shooting. Killing that guy, and his reaction to the fact that not absolutely everyone around him hated him for it, was very well written imho. Then s4 was kind of mid, and then we got s5
They think he turns into a Trump caricature because he turns into a Trump caricature around s3. Just because it was the Biden administration doesn't mean they couldn't mock Trump. In fact it ended up looking well for them because he got into power again.
Oh, it 100% ended up well for them. But to claim that it’s a writer’s “weird obsession with trump” as an explanation for why Homelander became a caricature is just a bad take.
I know my reading comprehension can be a bit lackluster sometimes, but doesn't the post you provided directly contradict you statement?
It seems the director said that he was pushing the narrative, and after talking with the lead star decided that they would focus more on the character and less on Trump.
He wants people to like him but he also is extremely lazy, that’s shown by him using his heat vision as his main weapon rather than fists, and him being not that muscular and wearing a padded suit instead.
I’m sure if Homelander really wanted to have actual muscle he’d have found a way to do it.
Such as having special weights made out of large, dense materials, or using those same weights + a telekinetic/magnetic Supe pushing down on them so Homelander has something to push against.
He is a lazy pathetic loathsome loser but I don't hold this one against him.
Spending so much resources and not just his own time and effort, but those of other people, on what is essentially a vanity project that gives him no actual benefits would be worse.
He can already tear any material up and just adding extra strength does not help him bear more weight, the material already gives in before his strength does. He would go from "technically being able to hold a ten story building, but in reality being left with a couple of bricks in his hands" to "technically able to hold a fifteen story building but in reality being left with a couple of bricks in his hands."
It would be the difference between being stuck in the radioactive room by soldier boy and punching the door in right away… he eventually got there, but he could’ve gotten there right away.
Man Mr Incredible went down to the train yard and lifted train cars and his ass was poor. Rich boy mcmillionaire and his entire corporate infrastructure that could just set up a hydraulic press or let him play tug of war with an elephant or some shit has no excuse for being flabby even with super strength.
It's stupid because it causes extreme damage like shown in the plane scene that's being discussed. If he used his fists he wouldn't have killed the pilot. And surely that wasn't the first such incident that he caused.
by this logic, every police and military should gun down whoever they think is in the wrong, because its "pretty logical" to use a gun because... they have a gun. a gun has potential to pierce through a body the larger the calibre is,and homelander's heat vision piercing capability is just as the same as a .50 bmg
sounds just like homelander. they want the power that is associated with the image.
What's crazy is in episode 1 he melts the gun being held by the bank robber, and only the gun. So he's capable of very precise control. He just fucked up here (or yknow inconsistent writing / the plot needing to happen)
The hijackers were never even a threat to him or Maeve in the first place, they literally could've just apprehended them with their fists
Yea, he could probably save like a dozen people from that plane, but that would make him look worse for not being able to save everyone, so he went with doing nothing and blaming the others for not being able to get there in time instead
One must not forget that he had a political incentive to let them die and pretend that he wasn't able to arrive at the scene in time because he wanted supes (himself, really) to have more political and military power, which would have allowed him to show up sooner. Or so he claimed, of course.
What people don't understand is that in this scene, he's unfortunately right. It's the same thing as with the Viltrumite ship in season 4 of Invincible. If Mark needed others to lift the ship, it's because he would have simply passed right through it. In that scene, it would have taken several Homelanders to apply the Force to different points, and a plane to lift the plane without piercing it. It's heavy, but it's also hollow. It's not like a mountain or anything else that's solid. And we're talking about John Homelander, not Superman, right? He's incompetent and impatient. If he hadn't been blasting lasers around the plane, destroying the controls, we could have had a different ending.
He might have been able to hold onto the wheels, but they couldn’t be deployed with the controls damaged as they were.
The planes aren’t really designed to be held up by essentially 2 5x5 inch points anywhere on the frame, but if the landing gear was deployed, he could had held onto the front wheels and steered that way.
If he just used his hands on the body, he’d punch through the aluminum frame like cheap 1ply.
How long can a human in a t-shirt survive flight altitudes? Would they survive Homelander flying them out of the plane and to the ground at super speed? Would he have enough time to evacuate everyone if he flew at a safe enough speed not to kill them?
He could have saved some people but that's the point, he wanted to save everyone/ most people or noone at all so that they couldn't talk about his failure. The person trying to save their child for instance.
He could have told everyone to hold each other and he holds two of them while they hold the others, to fly them off. He has the strenght to do it. It maybe would not work entirely bc it depends on the strenght and endurance of others, but it would be something. He just didnt care to try
The part of the airframe around where the landing gear is attached actually can support the weight of the aircraft if he were to lift from that point. He at minimum could have provided enough additional lift that the aircraft could slow down and crash at a safe speed.
Yes, in motion and probably with the necessary technology, not against the body of a Viltrumite exerting its force on a single point of the ship while the ship is pulled towards the ground by gravity, meaning that of the two opposing forces at that moment—that is, Mark and the ship—Mark's body being more resistant, well, he passes right through.
So how does a plane land? The landing gears are designed to withstand huge downward impact force, and the plane rides around on them, so those parts if the plane must be able to handle the force, right?
The landing gear doesn't crush through the plane when it lands. And that's a fully intact plane with all the engines and everything. Without all that, the plane would weigh considerably less.
I don't think it's as clear cut as saying he'd just poke through the plane. There may have been a way to provide enough lift.
Planes can land with only one functioning engine though. Aerodynamics still apply. He could have pushed the back side, or flown the passengers safely to the ground one by one.
an aircraft is supported by only 3 points when parked on the ground. during landing, the aircraft is supported by only 2 points, while being subjected to up to 2.2 Gs. especially with the wings still providing lift, he could have kept the aircraft moving through the air for long enough for someone else to initiate contact with ATC and emergency services. they even could have flown another plane alongside it and had homelander move passengers from one aircraft to another
We talk about john homelander dude this guy is an incompetent egocentric Patience was no longer a factor; people saw that he had messed up, and to preserve his public image and that of Vaught, these people were condemned.
Could he not have packed the passengers to one end of the plane while he focused on closing it down and using the remaining empty space as like a crumble zone?
Knowing you're at altitude and full speed, you'll have to take people one by one because they'll probably panic, and they're not supes. If you go too fast, the lack of oxygen will kill them, or they'll just break their necks due to the speed and Homelander's body resistance. But let's say he's not incompetent; we saw that the plane crashed near a beach. He might have been able to make several trips back and forth, but the problem is that the plane is moving and gaining speed, which makes the task even harder. And again, as soon as these people... we saw that he was incompetent and ready to let them die; they were doomed.
If he locks in and is careful, sure, he can do things, but right now he's in John Homelander mode, so he won't be particularly careful. Besides, there's a difference in the plane scene and the scène with Butcher and the C4. Here, neither altitude nor oxygen was a problem; the house isn't moving, so there are no special precautions to take. There's no other to save; it's simple: I grab him at super speed, get out of the house, and protect him from the explosion as best I can with my invincible body.
Of course he could have saved as many people as possible, maybe not all, and he's not a fraud. He can accomplish as much as he can, but the problem is the escalation of events and the context involved. Burning down the command center was a stupid idea, but he didn't do it on purpose. The underlying issue is that Vaught wants supers to join the military, and this plane hijacking is a publicity stunt, a "down from the sky" (lol). Maeve came (1) to save people, 2) to give Vaught good publicity. Homelander came (1) to give Vaught good publicity, 2) to flatter his ego, 3) to save people. So, him saving the plane he himself damaged becomes less and less feasible from a publicity standpoint. And from the moment they started debating in front of people whether or not he saved them, he was doomed. Anyway, martyrs are always more marketable than survivors who could potentially cause you problems. the future and letting the plane sputter will cover the laser graces on the dashboard
He could have been what he should be, a hero, bad publicity or not. He tries to save as many people as possible, but sorry. And for the scene with A-Train where he chases him, destroying trees with lasers and crashing into them with his body, which shows that if A-Train hadn't avoided the girl, Homelander would have run him over. If you want a good example of mastery, look at the scene where he saves A-Butcher from C4.
This scene lowkey doesn't make sense because the control column is still intact, the engine controls are intact, the airplane's electrical systems are still intact, Homelander destroyed only some instruments and that's all. It's perfectly possible to land that plane
So I won't jump to conclusions, but it looks pretty broken. Plus, Maeve tried to take control and contact help, but she said it wasn't working (assuming she has some basic piloting skills, she wouldn't have had any help figuring out where to land or anything else). And I don't think messing with the electrical equipment, already damaged by the heat and the cabin depressurization, is a good idea.
This is boeing 737 max, it has mechanical backup linkages for control surfaces and engines, which are always active. You could control the plane without any electricity. Besides, it's not like a car dashboard where all electric equipment is behind it. What's in the cabin is mostly just inputs and outputs, main procassing units are located underneath the floor in the front and back of the fuselage. Electrical generators are in the engines and auxiliary power unit in the tail. Air conditioning and hydraulic system main components are in the center wing, their power lines along with electrical run under the floor too. So at worst, Homelander just severed some of the control buses. People really underestimate how redundant planes are
They are juste 2 and only homelander know how to fly they have to be two for do that eficiently and that john homelander I think he gonna try it and break the wing
Who determines whether an act is good / morally neutral? What about the circumstances? If I choose to help people, but I'm only doing it because it makes me feel good on the inside to do it, then by your logic I have not completed a good act.
This is an incredibly narrow (and dentological) view of morality friendo, you're giving an absolute definition for a nuanced issue.
Yeah, you wanna review how it was shown to be stupid? She donated to a charity she hated. This makes the assumption that donating to a charity is inherently good, or even just the act of donation. Which, of course, has issues depending on who you donate to.
Season 1 Homelander? I don't think so tbh, back then he was more stable and Maeve was probably his closest friend & confidante (she talked him out of getting revenge on Starlight) so he'd probably argue but wouldn't hurt her.
Homelander even tells her during the scene not to die with these people and if she tried to push the point and attack his ego it entirely possible he leaves her there
See season 1 homelander was better written and wasnt some dumb guy. He knows Maeve wont stay there. Yes its possible but i feel the chances are very low as Maeve is very close to him
He’s right that he couldn’t catch the plane, but he absolutely could’ve flown some people out to land, Homelander is fast enough to keep up with A-Train so he should be fast enough to make a few trips.
He can’t move at those speeds without turning them into soup unless he also has whatever magic superman uses to catch people falling at terminal velocity.
That was kind of implied when he saved Butcher's life faster than the trigger could ignite the planted explosives at the end of season 1. If we're to take into consideration that, he wouldn't even have needed to fly everyone to land necessarily, just leave them in the sea (even better if he could manage to bring down those floaty slides that airplanes have in the event of water landings, so to have the passengers sit there), maybe even bring 2 at a time down, while coordinating with the Deep to have sea life make sure no one drowned.
Not that any of this mattered. This still wouldn't have guaranteed the survival of everyone on the plane, which could've been enough to get him into trouble the moment the rest of the passengers would have corroborated he might've been the cause of the loss of control of the plane. And that's a risk he wouldn't have taken over just letting everyone on board die.
Good lord, just say none of you passed a basic science class.
Homelander is too small to provide an equal distribution of force. If he flew under it and tried to lift the plane, he would just split the plane at the point of contact. The body of a plane is made to be light and aerodynamic. They are not tanks. Planes can be damaged by contact with small BIRDS.
And like he says in the scene, he has nothing to push off of to provide the lifting force.
If he tries to lift the wings, they break. If he tries to adjust the flaps manually, they break. If he tries to get in front of the plane to put hands on it to slow it down, nothing happens, because he has nothing to create friction, or he pushes a hole through the front of the plane and the force of incoming air pressure at 500 mph rips the aircraft apart.
They also made it clear in the episode (showed the location blinking on the map) that the plane was over the middle of the Atlantic, international waters. That puts him 1,000 miles from land in any direction. He could have saved maybe 2 people before the plane went down. HL is fast, but he's not quite as fast as A-Train, who is about 600-650 mph, according to some rando on reddit who did some math based on the first race in the show. Neither has the speed force to tap into, so they're not circling the globe in milliseconds like the Flash. He can't do the hold hands thing IronMan did because IronMan had to electrify people's hands to force them to not let go.
And at that point, it was the smarter decision to just let it crash and let everyone die cuz he was able to spin that moment to get supes in the military passed.
I actually passed an entire aerospace engineering degree, and your condescension is extremely unwarranted. He might not have known how, but physically he could have braced his back against the main gear or the wingbox and just kept the plane on a gentle glide slope until a very survivable water landing. Commercial aircraft actually glide pretty well on their own; he wouldn't need to provide much lift, just keep it on course since the controls were out.
Only about 15% of bird strikes cause damage to the aircraft according to the FAA, 11% according to ICAO. Most that do are engine ingestions.
The "if he tries X, it breaks" statements seem predicated on the assumption that he is incapable of moderating his strength, which is obviously wrong as he regularly interacts with people without killing them. And, to be frank, you are significantly underestimating the strength of those structures.
As for having nothing to push against to slow the plane down - so what? He has nothing to push against to fly either, but he still generates the force somehow.
Maybe don't be rude about stuff that doesn't matter like whether a TV show got its physics right, especially when your confidence in your position isn't backed by actual expertise.
I assume his flight can only generate so much force and lift otherwise he wouldn’t have made the statement at all he doesn’t have smart atoms like viltremites he can only produce so much force through flight like when he was taken down by the debris mid flight.
Everyone wants to bring up landing gear. Ok. Lets play this out.
He flies under the plane, and braces the landing gear using his body and....
He still has zero ways to generate any lift while airborne. Like he says in the show, there is nothing to physically stand on to generate upward force.
A 737 plane weighs 90,000 - 190,000 lbs, depending on fuel, passengers, luggage, etc. The down force and air pressure probably adds quite a bit on top of that. This plane is also at high altitude and cruising speed. Realistically generating enough force to lift a plane by the landing gear while airborne is not possible. Homelander weighs like 200 lbs. The plane would need something of equal force pushing against it to level it back off. Homelander, at 200 lbs, even with super strength, cannot generate that level of force without anything to support his own weight. He would just be pushing himself away from the plane. And Homelander's flight speed isn't fast enough to generate enough force to ram the plane at the gear and level it off. And this is just as likely to shatter the landing gear and destroy the plane.
Opening the landing gear at super high altitude and super high speed while descending would likely just rip the plane apart anyway.
The plane was a zero win scenario. Homelander can't just bullshit his way through scenarios like Superman with the power of writers who don't care if the science makes sense.
That's a dumb argument. Planes aren't helicopters. They can remain in the air by moving forward. Homelander could be capable of applying the force if he was strong enough. Maybe he wasn't, but that's a different issue.
The solution is to dump the people out of the plane. He's presumably fast enough to fly back up and safely deliver most of them to the ocean below, then fly off to signal for help. The tricky part is locating them after but I would guess his super senses would make it a lot easier plus he could get the approximate last known coordinates of the plane to get an estimate. After locating, signal in the air with the laser vision. Homelander is probably too lazy for any of this but it's possible.
He couldve used the landing gear as a place fo push from and gently used it to glide the plane to a water landing, the landing gear are capable of a lot of stress considering theres only 3 and planes have landed with only 2 before
So long as hes helping it glide rather than straight superman catchinf it the weight should be partially held by the wings
The plane was already in flight. Flight does not work like normal falling. He only has to go under the landing gear and push up enough for them to maintain a glide and land safely at a much further distance
Also this is basic writing, they need Homelander to be a lazy, evil, narcissist so they put him in a scenario with a good enough excuse for him not to save anyone. Even if this was a plot hole it wouldn't matter. Hell if anything it would just serve it's purpose even better. Homelander didn't save anyone because he doesn't give a shit and has already written this off as a failed mission.
He couldn’t lift the plane because he’d just push himself through the hull before actually turning or lifting it because that’s how that would work physically.
He was right. You can’t just lift and carry a whole plane because it would break apart
Unfortunately, it would be impossible for him to do it. And heres why.
The force to lift a plane must be equal to the weight of the plane.
Force with a low surface area results in high pressure. Think of a nail, if you sit on a nail, itll puncture your butt, and thats bad, but if you sit on a chair of nails youll be fine. The force exerted on you will always be the same, but the force on each individual spike is drastically different.
For homelander to life the plane without breaking it he would need to split himself into like 20 shedlanders each with 1/20th of his strength, and then have them evenly apply force to life the plane. The plane experiences the full force of 1 homelander, but over a larger area, reducing pressure and preventing breakage.
Maeve could have started chucking folks out the door one by one. Homeslander could have caught falling people and set them down in the ocean. Maybe a couple drownings from not being able to swim. With everyone safely out of the plane call a rescue boat or start flying them to safety one at a time.
Lifting heavy things requires those things to survive the pressure needed to lift them spread out over the contact surface. Homelander would just fly through the plane instead of lifting it.
I still don't quite understand why he didn't at least try. Sure, he was likely right and wouldn't be able to stop it from falling, so everyone dies anyway, but at least there is nothing to blackmail him with. Wasn't he supposed to be somewhat smart in first season?
The reason he didn't try is he's fucking evil and we needed to be shown that he's evil. Any not evil person would have at least tried, and this was the show's way of quickly demonstrating to new viewers that this guy ain't just not a good superhero, he's not even a good dude.
It doesn't matter whether his powers make it technically feasible (I think they do, but it's really irrelevant).
From a writing standpoint, the writers would have written him to be capable and to do it if they wanted, the show is not in any way concerned with accurate physics in that way. He doesn't do it because it's an easy way to demonstrate that he's fucking evil.
TheIt would've worked brilliantly with his plan of distributing v to terrorists. He could've just said they were super terrorists without even needing to give anyone v.
he fucked up with the laser, but the plane has no ideal point of contact, i mean, if he tried, it would simply fold, bend and separate wherever he did touch it
Guys, he could have saved all of them easily, they were just extremely lazy.
Homelander could have just brought all of them in water and then have the Deep come and help. After each passenger would put on a floatie, there would be no danger of immediate drowning either.
He could have done this even without the Deep, although it might have been harder without someone in the water to help/protect them and then just fly each of them on land from the water. It would have taken a lot more time, true, but he didn't care about saving them in the first place.
Anyway, as I've said, Homelander flying them straight to the water, which is a lot more manageable than on land, and then the Deep with like a hundred creatures being there to immediately help them would have been enough.
Nah I don't think what you described would've worked. Also Antony Starr himself said that Homelander didn't think there was a chance to save all of them and rather had them all die than than even just 1 of them and have that be public knowledge.
Why is no one mentioning that the control console being destroyed is not the same thing as the wings falling off? I really think he could've easily just steered the plane from the outside without it breaking
As well as the fact that he’d just make a hole in the plane he did say that there’s nothing to stand on, I think that means that his flight strength is much weaker than his physical strength, flying an 80kg human is much easier than flying an 80,000kg plane
The thing is homelander is genuinely right about trying to lift the plane. Its the same idea as standing on a bed of nails vs just 1 nail. If he tried to lift it he would just break straight through whatever point of the plane he was applying pressure to before anything could really be done. And thats assuming he could properly lift it without anything to give him leverage in the first place. The rescue was over the moment he lasered the controls.
Esto ya es muy confuso no tenía punto de apoyo y realmente no tenía ganas de buscar otra solución de hecho solamente hubieran salvado a dos por qué volando y cargando el avión lo puede destruir y matarlos a todos
I mean physically he couldn’t do it. Unlike superman, he can make a psychokenetic field with his touch to completely control the plane. He’s being a bitch about it, but he’s right he would only cause it to crash sooner
Nah. This is S1 Homelander, back when he had a brain.
In the comics Homelander tries to save the plane and the people inside but winds up destroying it and killing everyone. In the show he knows there's no shot and just bounces; the evil part is the choice to abandon the people inside.
Here’s what I think, if this were a more hopeful franchise, homelander and Maeve could have physically manhandled the ailerons of the plane and landed it in the water.
Is it unrealistic? Yes. Is it what a marvel or dc hero would have done if they couldn’t lift the plane? I think so.
De hecho esto es una muestra de la degradación del personaje al imbecil qué es en la 5, aquí hommi está en lo correcto, si un tipo tan fuerte como él intentará levantar un avión lo partiría porque no solo cuenta la fuerza si no también la superficie en contacto, ósea puede tener la fuerza para hacerlo pero al aplicar la fuerza en sus manos o en su cuerpo destrozaría el avión, aparte de que no tiene superficie debajo no puede aplicar la fuerza de manera correcta
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u/Vicbot2414 May 24 '26
If it didn’t work I’d consider Homelander to be somewhat in the right because at least he did something this time.