Through much of Prime Video’s surprisingly plentiful and revealing marketing material, the show has teased out the answers to many of those questions and more. One query, however, has not really been addressed: How’s Homelander (Antony Starr) doing? Vought Corporation’s ubermensch is not always entirely mentally sound, even on the best of days. But going into season 3, Homelander is decidedly far from the best of days. The man formerly known as John fell in love with a dashing new feminist hero Stormfront (Aya Cash) in season 2 only to discover that she is an ancient secret Nazi. Homelander was willing to look past that little personality flaw…only for his fellow Seven teammates to defeat Stormfront, revealing her as a fascist, and creating one hell of a PR nightmare for the country’s favorite red, white, and blue crimefighter. So how’s he faring after all of that? Well, according to the first full trailer for The Boys season 3: not great! Give the clip, released today, a look below to see what we mean. “There’s something wrong with Homelander,” Annie January a.k.a. Starlight tells someone (probably Hughie) via phone. “There’s something broken. He’s lost his fucking mind.” We then get to see many disturbing vignettes that appear to indicate that, yes, Homelander has lost his fucking mind. Homelander visits The Cameron Coleman Hour on Vought News Network to practice his canned response about the Stormfront disaster: “I may be a superhero but I’m also just a man who fell in love with the wrong woman. But out of crisis comes change.” He then has to repeat that line over and over again at a half dozen different red carpet and media appearances. It’s all enough to make even the most stable mind break, let alone one with intense mommy issues and a milk fetish. Speaking of milk fetishes, the shot of Homelander experiencing pure bliss while milking a cow popped up in the previous teaser but here it is again in all its disturbing glory. Perhaps even more disturbing than Homelander’s cow date, however, is his line near the end of the trailer: “I showed people the real me and they fucking love me.” Throughout much of The Boys, Hughie and Starlight have operated under the principle that if they could just expose Vought’s superheroes’ awful behavior to the public that it would eventually engender change. That always presumed that the public would actually, you know, care that their favorite supes are homicidal maniacs. Based on Hughie’s mid-trailer realization that they’ll have to do things Butcher’s way, it appears the unwashed masses like their superpwoered murderers just fine the way they are. Doing things Butcher’s way this season will also look a little different. As teased out in the previous clips from season 3, Butcher will indeed go the pharmaceutical route to gain superpowers and battle supes. The drug he’s given (likely Compound-V) will grant him superpowers for a 24-hour period. Mother’s Milk (Laz Alonso) points out that doing things the supes’ way is not what they’re all about but sometimes you’ve just got to fight fire with fire. The Boys season 3 premieres June 3 on Prime Video.
