Amazon’s The Boys Presents: Diabolical was an invitation for a bevy of fans to lend their takes to the world of the boys, the adaptation of the Garth Ennis The Boys comic by Supernatural honcho, Eric Kripke. Entires came in from such folks as Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (who were behind another Ennis adaptation, Preacher) and Rick and Morty mastermind, Justin Roiland.
Diabolical, however, is more than just a fun addition to the series, it really adds to the story at large. Whether it’s in seeing the abuses of Vought or Garth Ennis’s original vison brought to life, one story, “One Plus One Equals Two,” gives us insight into Homelander’s origins and just how he came to be the way he is.
Marketing Is The Name Of The Game
“One Plus One Equals Two” opens with Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito, reprising his role from the series) at a Vought launch event for their latest and greatest superhero and product of Compound V, the Homelander (a returning Antony Starr) as he is (then) known. It takes the savvy marketing skills of Madelyn Stillwell (Elizabeth Shue, also from the series) to drop the “the” from in front of his name and make him just Homelander.
While he’s ushered out before an adoring public and a fawning press, Homelander had continual flashbacks to the abusive Vought training that made him who he is. While he suffers these moments of visceral PTSD, he relates a completely false childhood of growing up and playing sandlot baseball and wanting to join the major leagues someday, a cheerful and homespun Americana to sell this Aryan Superman to the masses.
Even from his first public interaction, Homelander is playing the public false, parroting the Vought company line just like he’s been taught; it’s a double deception as the audience is already aware that Vought’s supes aren’t born, they’re grown in labs using old-school Nazi science. With Vought, it’s marketing all the way down, every inch of poisonous capitalism laid bare.
But It’s My First Day
After the introduction to the world, Homelander expresses frustration with Madelyn about not getting to get right out there and do what he was quite literally made to do, and be a superhero. She encourages him, using their pseudo-mother/son style relationship to her advantage, to pursue his own ends.
This means ditching Black Noir whom Homelander is supposed to be shadowing as he learns the ropes. Eager to jump the line, though, Homelander takes the bait and decides he’s ready to go it alone rather than learn at the feet of a seasoned master. From his inception Homelander is taught that he’s the ubermensch, that he can do things no other being can.
There’s also the fact that Homelander is only lab-tested, not public tested. There’s also the fact that Vought wanted him to shadow Black Noir for reasons he can’t even comprehend, yet. He doesn’t know that it’s not all just flashing blond hair and perfect teeth to a press primed to take the bait, there’s also salesmanship involved.
When he tries to defuse a hostage situation at a chemical plant—one in which it turns out the hostage-takers just wanted to air their grievances to the press and not hurt anyone, something he finds out only after he kills them all, then kills the hostages who he’s terrified in a blinding fit of PTSD flashbacks to his inhuman abuse at Vought’s hands.
Blackest Is The Noir That Precedes The Day
Homelander’s panic increases when Black Noir stumbles across what he’s done. The one figure he was supposed to be learning from has now seen what Homelander is capable of and has taken off. Thinking that this means curtains for him and his debut for Vought, he takes after Black Noir in what amounts to The Boys’ version of the fight from Batman v Superman, a Superman-stand in battling a guy who uses ninja fighting skills and a belt laden with gadgets. In the course of the battle, he ends up blowing up the entire chemical plant while trying to take out Black Noir.
It turns out, though, what Black Noir is there to help with and comes back to do so, is how to commit atrocities and then get away with them by knowing just how to frame it for the press. Since dead men tell no tales, and Homelander and Black Noir are the only survivors, the spin is 100% in their favor. The lesson in The Boys Presents: Diabolical “One Plus One equals Two” is the most valuable lesson of all: it’s not the hero, it's how they're sold. It’s a lesson, based on the series, that Homelander learned far too well.