So is Homelander a completely irredeemable evil character because something something Trump standin, or is he a mentally ill victim and suffering from schizophrenia and a bunch of other mental disorders because of his abusive and traumatic upbringing and is lashing out because of that?
Like if he's actually insane and is full on hallucinating things that manipulate him into doing bad things because he was abused then that kinda devalues his role as a supremely evil villain, doesn't it? Those kinds of character developments tend to add sympathy to a character and the writers keep trying to course correct him into being completely unsympathetic every time it happens, so which is it?
They never understood the character to begin with. Spoiler for the comic's story.
Homelander's original premise is pretty simple: what happens to a mediocre person when he's given the powers of a god?
The thing about Homelander, in the comics that is, is that besides his given powers, he isn't a particularly interesting person; he is of average intelligence and started out as any other super in the comic, a self-absorbed asshole that was just glad to bask in the hedonism the powers and costume provide, and while arrogant, he had no particular ambitions that would go beyond his mediocre wants and needs.
But that is pieced along the comic's story, because when we first get to know Homelander, it's been years since Butcher started to fuck with him—pictures of him committing atrocities, like eating a baby, stuff that Homelander himself has no recollection of. To add to that pressure, Vought is constantly keeping him on a short leash after the 9/11 debacle, and they also threaten to cut him off from his lifestyle and expose him if he is nothing but a lapdog.
The constant stress and manipulation from both Vought and Butcher start to affect Homelander, and he devolves into a psychopath with delusions of grandeur, but even so, his ambitions and plans are painfully moronic and short-sighted. The real danger about Homelander is just his brute power and nothing else.
In the twist we found out who committed the real atrocities in Homelander's name (including the rape of Butcher's wife), which was caused essentially by a corporation micromanaging an investment asset (which, to Ennis's credit, was a funny dig at "le capitalism").
So Homelander ended up being just a putz, a fool that broke down due to pressure by people that were far, far more vicious and intelligent than him (Butcher and Stillwell) in a game far beyond his grasp. If he were to be left alone, he would still be an inept asshole, but a relatively harmless one.
To give Homelander this whole traumatic baggage, or try to turn him into a clumsy Trump analogy, goes beyond missing the point here. Homelander isn't interesting, not even in a "what if Superman bad" way; it's the people and their actions around him that are interesting.
