Antony Starr Interview Quotes about Homelander
In season one, we see that Homelander isn’t doing what he’s doing because ‘Mwha-ha-ha, it’s good to be bad,’ it’s because he’s deeply, deeply traumatised because he was raised like a lab rat and doesn’t understand how to relate to people or other superheroes or anyone in a way that’s functional or what we would deem as normal.
I think he’s always going to be looking for that connection [he had with Madelyn] because he is so deeply alienated from everyone on the planet. So I don’t know that he’ll ever achieve that goal of connecting fully and wholly, but I don’t think the character will ever stop looking for it.
He is, in a sense, the most emotionally vulnerable, neediest, weakest character, one hundred percent, on the show. The eternal dilemma for Homelander is that what he loathes most about himself is his humanity, but that’s also such a strong part of what makes him who he is: that need and that want and that desire to connect with someone or anyone, really. He’s just so isolated. So he’s a whole big bag of contradictions and contrasting ideas. He’s a very, very screwed up dude.
There’s a sense of this guy who’s always been ostracized and disconnected from not only humanity but even other supes because he’s out on his own and this corporate packaged product, who’s based his whole sense of identity in the character of Homelander, while the person inside has been crying out to meet someone that can connect with them, on that level. And then, with Stormfront, he finds that.
Ultimately, one of the key issues for the character is the thing that he craves the most, which is connection and connecting deeply to the thing in himself he hates the most, which is his humanity and vulnerability.
Homelander is irredeemably damaged I think. He’s not without moments of kindness and the odd kind act, but that’s only after he trusts someone implicitly. He has the emotional maturity of about a thirteen-year-old boy so he acts accordingly. But never say never- the great thing about the character is that he can go anywhere.