WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for The Boys Season 2, Episode 8, "What I Know," available now on Amazon Prime Video.
On The Boys, Homelander is the most powerful superhero on the planet. He has nearly all the abilities of Superman, including flight, invulnerability, super-speed, strength and heat vision. Those powers make him truly unstoppable, and yet, Billy Butcher and his team have made it their mission to take down the villainous Supe. The task is much easier said than done, considering they are regular, fragile humans who don't stand a chance when going toe-to-toe with Homelander.
But like Superman, Homelander has a weakness. For the DC superhero, it's Kryptonite, the radioactive rock from his home world, but for Homelander, it's something less substantial. It's more of a concept -- one that's used to great effect against him in the Season 2 finale: Homelander is backed into a corner when the people's love for him is placed in jeopardy.
Homelander's Real Weakness Is That He Craves Love & Adoration
Homelander is a vile and twisted character who comes alive in the public eye. Deep down, he's a true villain, but, whenever cameras are filming and people are watching, he does his best impression of a bright and hopeful hero. Thanks to Vought International, Homelander is a worldwide icon with millions of fans. When he flies down to be among the people, he is rapidly swarmed by fans who want to take pictures with him, and that attention -- that acceptance and love -- is what he craves above all else.
He cares about the value of the people's appreciation of him, down to a statistical number. This is put on display when the people started turning against him in "We Gotta Go Now." He considered killing everyone after the betrayal, but he eventually held himself back, and it's now clear that it was because if he crosses that line, he will lose the public forever.
From the start of The Boys, it was clear that affection, however misguided or twisted it could be, was Homelander's weakness. Fans saw that firsthand with Madelyn Stillwell, who kept a leash on the Supe by giving him the attention and care he desperately wants. Now, this weakness comes to the forefront in the Season 2 finale. At the end of "What I Know," Homelander and Butcher are alone in the forest when the superhero's son, Ryan, chooses to side with his mother's husband. At that moment, it looks like Homelander will kill them both, but, before he can do so, Queen Maeve tells him to let Butcher and the boy go.
The Threat of Exposure Forces Homelander to Stand Down
To make sure he complies, she threatens not to fight him, but to release the video of herself and Homelander letting a plane full of innocent people crash, as seen in Season 1. Homelander claps back that he'll just kill her anyway, but she answers that she doesn't care, so long as she makes sure the people seem him for the monster he really is. If the video is released, Homelander will lose the people's love forever -- and that is what ultimately makes him stop.
He allows Maeve, Butcher and Ryan to go, and he is even strong-armed into welcoming Starlight back among The Seven. Sure, he's ready to go to war with Maeve and Starlight, but, so long as this video threatens his superhero status, he won't do anything about it. It's no radioactive rock, but the love of the people is truly what ended up stopping Homelander.
Amazon Studios' The Boys stars Karl Urban as Billy Butcher, Jack Quaid as Hughie, Laz Alonso as Mother's Milk, Tomer Kapon as Frenchie, Karen Fukuhara as the Female, Erin Moriarty as Annie January, Chace Crawford as the Deep, Antony Starr as Homelander, Aya Cash as Stormfront and Simon Pegg as Hughie's dad. New episodes of Season 2 release Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.