Honestly, at this point in the story, Frenchy’s whole arc made me sad more for Kimiko than for him, because by then I was already kind of indifferent to him. I also felt it was pretty obvious he was probably going to die, so I always had that in the back of my mind. He’s never really been one of my favorite characters either, because he’s always felt kind of weak and pathetic to me. And he’s French, which already doesn’t help.
But one of the very few things from the season that I genuinely loved was that moment when he looks at Homelander and tell him that he probably never have a dance in his life. Because that scene really echoes to me what A-Train says to Homelander before dying too. The deaths are obviously very different but he tells him he’s just a whiny little brat and in the end there was never anything truly worth fearing. He’s just miserable.
And what makes A-Train’s death hit is that by that point he’s already made peace with his family. He finally became the hero he always wanted to be for them. He reconnected with the version of himself he had lost. His older brother —the person he looks up to most— is proud of him again. He knows his mother would’ve been proud of him. He knows his nephew will grow up proud of who his uncle was and how he died. And because of that, he’s no longer afraid. That’s the crucial thing: A-Train understands what actually matters in life, and he also understands Homelander well enough to know that he has none of it. He’s completely alone. Everyone around him fears him. Nobody truly loves him. And that’s pathetic.
And Frenchy’s moment is basically the same idea. He looks at Homelander and says, in essence: “You can think you’re a god. You can kill me. You can kill all of us. But you’ve never actually lived.” You’ve never danced. You’ve never had fun. You’ve never let yourself be human. You’re just a bitter, miserable man who spent his whole life crying in a corner because nobody loves him while simultaneously doing everything possible to make people hate him even more. And that’s what I find so tragic and weirdly poetic about villains like Homelander.
He is desperate to be loved. Desperate for admiration, validation, worship, approval. At his core he’s basically just a terrified child craving affection because nobody ever genuinely loved him and he’s always felt alone. But he’s also so narcissistic, so egocentric, and so emotionally stunted that every single thing he does in pursuit of love comes from a completely selfish place. He doesn’t actually understand human connection. So everything he does to force people to adore him only pushes them further away.
The irony is that Homelander is ultimately responsible for his own isolation. He created it himself. Every decision he’s made has driven people away from him. Absolutely everyone. Even his biological father basically sees him as a freak he wants nothing to do with. Like, “Sure, I’ll acknowledge you because technically you came from my DNA, but leave me alone. You’re weird and I don’t want you near me.”
And then you have people like A-Train laughing in his face, or Frenchy calmly telling him okay maybe I die. But at least I lived. And you never have. That’s what makes those scenes so powerful to me. It’s not really about defeating Homelander physically. It’s about forcing him to confront the fact that despite all his power, despite being practically a god, he fundamentally does not know how to live as a person.
That’s why villains like him are so compelling. The harder they try to control everything and force people to love them, the more isolated they become. The tragedy is entirely self-inflicted. Homelander is alone because, piece by piece, he made himself impossible to love. And that’s his biggest tragedy.
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