'The Boys' Season 2 Release Date May Bring a Homelander Comic Book Twist

The Boys is already one of the darkest superhero stories around, but in Season 2, the Amazon series could get even more disturbing if it sticks to a particularly grim plotline from the original comics. Seriously, if this is where The Boys Season 2 is headed than it’s going to make Season 1 look as wholesome as Captain America: The First Avengers by comparison.

Possible spoilers for The Boys Season 2, and definite spoilers for Season 1 and the comics, below. Also, trigger warning, it’s about to get all sort of gory in here.

The Boys Season 1 ended on a huge reveal: Billy Butcher’s wife is still alive and she’s raising the baby she conceived with Homelander. The last shot of the season finale suggests this could be a major plot heading forward, but a look to the comics hints that an even bigger twist about Homelander could blow this one out of the water.

You see, in the comics, Homelander’s arc takes a decidedly different turn. As the story progress, the evil Superman stand-in is blackmailed by someone who sends him a series of incriminating photos. This really bothers Homelander because he doesn’t even remember doing any of those terrible things.

Eventually, Homelander’s sanity totally unravels and he ends up killing the President of the United States (yeah, it’s wild). Butcher shows up to confront Homelander, and he’s followed soon afterwards by Black Noir — the supe from the Seven who never talks in The Boys Season 1.

Here’s where the big twist happens: Black Noir pulls off his mask to reveal that he’s a clone of Homelander, identical in every way but somehow even more evil. It turns out those photos used for blackmail were actually of Black Noir, not Homelander, and this leads to a deadly fight between the two teammates.

Noir kills Homelander right in the oval office and then Billy Butcher kills a weakened Noir (it turns out he was actually the one who killed Butcher’s wife in the comics). A particularly gruesome panel shows Billy yanking out a handful of Noir’s brains and crushing it in his hands in the hopes that they contained the memories of his wife’s murder.

Will The Boys Season 2 actually attempt to tackle this plotline? On the one hand, the Amazon show has already diverted from the comic by revealing that Billy’s wife is still alive. Then again, that doesn’t mean Black Noir can’t also be a clone of Homelander, and based on a recent set photo, Season 2 won’t be shying away from gore and violence. So who knows, maybe the live-action series will even find a way to outdo one of the most disturbing moments in the always-unsettling comic book series.

The Boys Season 1 is streaming now on Amazon. Season 2 is confirmed, but does not yet have a release date.