The Boys Season 4 teased an unhinged Homelander in Episode 4’s Bad Room massacre. Despite that scene’s bloodbath, Antony Starr promises fans they’ve yet to see his character’s worst moment.
Fans are eager to see how Homelander has changed after last week’s blood-soaked episode. Season 4’s “Wisdom of the Ages” saw his brief visit to Vought Labs end in a massacre; the scene also offered a glimpse of Homelander’s repressed rage. Antony Starr told Variety he wanted to give that scene room to breathe for Homelander’s cathartic moment. “When that episode script came out, I saw the sequence of scenes and I went to [showrunner Eric Kripke] and we retooled them a little bit just to give more freedom on the day,” he said.
Episode 4 had most of Homelander’s scenes take place in a Vought Labs basement with restricted movement for its characters. Starr said he wanted his bottle episode to showcase a conflicted character. “I wanted those scenes to be very conflicted,” he confirmed. “On the one hand, there was some sense of nostalgia and a little melancholy and incredible trauma coming up, but also just a whole mix of different things. I didn’t know when and where and how, so we created a template that we could just go into those days and in that environment and just go for it.” Their retooling paid off with a graphic depiction of Homelander’s mental breakdown on screen.
Antony Starr Enjoyed Filming The Bad Room Scene
Starr recalled relishing the opportunity of filming the Bad Room ending. The episode wrapped up with Homelander forcing Vought’s researchers into the same room where he was tortured as a kid. One scene left much to the imagination by revealing the aftermath of the carnage. “As dark and fucked up as that seems now, that was probably one of the most enjoyable sequences I’ve had on the show,” he asserted. “I had a ball doing it.” Kripke confirmed the same in a separate interview, revealing how went all-out with his scariest unscripted moment to date.
Starr teased that he’s willing to dig even deeper to deconstruct Homelander in upcoming episodes, which is a tall order considering the character’s laundry list of atrocities. “It can’t get weird enough or dark enough for me and I love that. We get to do things on screen that we never get to do in real life so it was a huge amount of fun.” The Boys have one more season left to spend before it wraps up, and it’s interesting to see Homelander devolving further (if that was even possible at this point).
The Boys is streaming on Prime Video.