The following contains spoilers for the first three episodes of Season 3 of The Boys, now streaming on Prime Video.
The Boys has done a great job of building up every member of the superteam known as The Seven and how their arcs have changed them since Season 1. But one character that has been explored the least was the mysterious Black Noir. Aside from a known peanut allergy and a scarred face he's kept covered, much about the character remained unknown aside from his heightened strength and agility that has made him an efficient killer. That said, the answer to why Black Noir has remained masked has finally been answered in Season 3, Episode 3, "Barbary Coast."
Throughout the Season 3 thus far, it's been revealed that Black Noir was a part of the team Payback, led by Soldier Boy, before he joined The Seven. However, it had yet to be explained why Black Noir eventually joined The Seven until Grace Mallory explained to Billy Butcher what happened to Soldier Boy. In a flashback, Mallory explained how she was introduced to a young Stan Edgar who wanted to push the idea of superheroes in the military, with Soldier Boy as their example of why it would work. However, Payback was a team of unsupervised celebrities that didn't understand the rigors of war. This also went for Black Noir, who argued the validity of wearing a mask to Edgar.
Black Noir was a young man who wanted to make a cultural impact by removing his mask to reveal that he was a Black male underneath his body armor. He believed doing so would allow him to reach out to more minorities and allow him some fame and recognition without having to wear the mask. Edgar argued that ninjas were trending upward for young boys, and doing so would put a target on his back in the South. Noir quickly refused to wear the mask, but Edgar offered one final warning that the mask wasn't to cover his mask, it was for protection from threats both foreign and domestic.
This warning quickly came to fruition when one of the members of Payback alerted an enemy militia to their position, and they called an airstrike on their base. Mallory, shellshocked from an explosion, found Black Noir, terribly scarred with a gash over his skull, reaching for his helmet. In that instance, viewers understood why Edgar warned him of the dangers of not wearing his mask and the dangers of battle.
Ever since the incident, Black Noir has never taken off his mask. However, it's not clear if it was because it kept his skull, which was now exposed, intact, or the event just made him scared to take it off. Nevertheless, the incident had changed Black Noir forever, and while his ruthlessness and skill as a superhero have remained unmatched, there's likely still some trauma hiding under the mask. With every attack and explosion, he's survived; it's only pushed his resolve to keep the mask on at all times and be as efficient as possible so that he may not be sideswiped by another deadly attack.
The Boys has done a fantastic job introducing these "heroes" as flawed individuals, some more villainous than they let on and others more fractured than previously assumed. For Black Noir, he's kept his feelings and history close to the chest and learned an important lesson on the Barbary Coast. While this hasn't made him a wholly good person, it does show that he, more than anyone, would be more inclined to do what's needed to keep himself safe and avoid another incident like the one that left him scarred for life.