{"id":622057,"date":"2026-04-22T23:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/622057\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T23:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T23:17:08","slug":"the-boys-showrunner-on-homelanders-story-arc-lining-up-with-trumps-ai-jesus-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/622057\/","title":{"rendered":"The Boys Showrunner on Homelander’s Story Arc Lining Up With Trump’s AI Jesus Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Warning! Spoilers for The Boys Season 5 Episode 4<\/a> follow:<\/p>\n

A quick recap before we get into spoiler territory. The Boys is a super gory satire of the superhero genre based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson. It follows the eponymous team of vigilantes who work to bring down a group of supervillains (The Seven). Homelander, played by Antony Starr, is a demented despot who rules The Seven with an iron fist. The other supes on the team live in fear of his mood swings and his overpowered abilities, which give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.<\/p>\n

The Boys Season 5 revolves around Homelander’s attempt to achieve immortality. The Boys, led by Billy Butcher, lead a resistance to Homelander’s fascist rule over America, and hope to use a virus to wipe out every supe on the planet.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the official blurb on The Boys Season 5:<\/p>\n

In the fifth and final season, it\u2019s Homelander\u2019s world, completely subject to his erratic, egomaniacal whims. Hughie, Mother\u2019s Milk, and Frenchie are imprisoned in a \u201cFreedom Camp.\u201d Annie struggles to mount a resistance against the overwhelming Supe force. Kimiko is nowhere to be found. But when Butcher reappears, ready and willing to use a virus that will wipe all Supes off the map, he sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change the world and everyone in it. It\u2019s the climax, people. Big stuff\u2019s gonna happen.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve seen the latest episodes of The Boys<\/a>, you\u2019ll know that supervillain Homelander has taken his god complex to a truly uncomfortable, messianic level. He is now demanding not just obedience, but genuine, unconditional love. He believes it his destiny not just to be a god, but to be the god.<\/p>\n

Season 5 Episode 4 hammered Homelander\u2019s delusion home, as he forces his cronies to spread his ascension to the world via the power of marketing. And it just so happens that Homelander\u2019s god complex leveled up at the same time as Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Jesus-like figure.<\/p>\n

The image, which showed the U.S. president healing a sick man in a hospital bed, sparked a backlash from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum. It was later removed, with Trump claiming it was meant to show him as a doctor.<\/p>\n

The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke has said that Homelander was always intended to be a proxy for Donald Trump, and that it had become increasingly difficult to effectively provide satire. \u201cWhen Seth [Rogen] and Evan [Goldberg] and I took it out to pitch, it was 2016,” he explained. “We just wanted to do a very realistic version of a superhero show, one where superheroes are celebrities behaving badly. Trump was the, \u2018He\u2019s not really getting the nomination, is he?\u2019 guy. When he got elected, we had a metaphor that said more about the current world. Suddenly, we were telling a story about the intersection of celebrity and authoritarianism and how social media and entertainment are used to sell fascism. We\u2019re right in the eye of the storm. And once we realized that, I just felt an obligation to run in that direction as far as we could.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Kripke told TV Guide<\/a> that he was \u201cbummed out\u201d that Season 5 was written before the presidential election, which took place in November 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m totally bummed out to say we wrote it before the election. It sounds super naive now, but I swear the plan was, \u2018Let\u2019s write a 1984 version of what creeping authoritarianism looks like in America,\u2019 and maybe everyone will be like, \u2018Whew, we really dodged a bullet.\u2019 But instead, we got hit with the bullet,\u201d Kripke said.<\/p>\n

Kripke added that the writers would come up with outlandish ideas that at the time seemed implausible, but have since become reality. \u201cAnd a lot of things that were far-fetched for us, we\u2019re like \u2014 \u2018That\u2019s crazy!\u2019 \u2014 have come to pass in a way that\u2019s really really f***ing troubling,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Now, in an interview with TheWrap<\/a>, Kripke went into more detail on this week\u2019s Season 5, Episode 4, and how Homelander\u2019s story arc lined up with Trump\u2019s Jesus post.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy main reaction is, I\u2019m just tired,\u201d Kripke said. \u201cThe way that the Homelander is god thing and the Trump image thing lined up \u2014 I don\u2019t like it. I\u2019d rather it not happen. One, it makes my job harder in terms of just presenting satire to the world. Second is it\u2019s just bad for the world, right? So I would way rather that s**t didn\u2019t go down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Season 5, Episode 4 ends with Homelander pitched to the world as the head of the new Democratic Church of America, but not everyone appears to be on board with the idea of a ‘superhero’ replacing God. \u201dI think this might be the bridge too far for him, because I think people, by and large, are reasonable people,\u201d Kripke teased.<\/p>\n

More parallels are coming, it seems. Kripke has revealed<\/a> that in Episode 7 of Season 5, Homelander says a line that the writers felt was the \u201ccraziest\u201d they could think of, but \u201cit\u2019s already happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a line \u2014 I won\u2019t give it away \u2014 but there\u2019s a line in Episode 7 that Homelander says that was the craziest line we could think of, and it\u2019s already happened,\u201d Kripke said.<\/p>\n

In May 2025, Starr spoke of his shock at the glorification of Homelander by some The Boys fans<\/a>, calling it \u201csurreal.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We had a bunch of guys that we all kind of knocked them down a little but on social media to say, ‘This guy is not the hero of any story.'” Starr said. “They were really glorifying him, they loved him. Which is surreal.”<\/p>\n

Starr added that he was surprised to find some The Boys fans siding with Homelander, given the outrageously evil actions he takes in the show. “What I didn’t expect was that people would be so conflicted around it and, you know, finding themselves finding empathy for this monster.”<\/p>\n

And in 2024, ahead of The Boys Season 4, Kripke responded to fans saying Homelander is a hero<\/a>, saying: “Some people who watch it think Homelander is the hero. What do you say to that? The show\u2019s many things. Subtle isn\u2019t one of them. So if that\u2019s the message you\u2019re getting from it, I just throw up my hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning! Spoilers for The Boys Season 5 Episode 4 follow: A quick recap before we get into spoiler…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-622057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622057\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}