Prime Video's The Boys Replacement Has A Villain Even Darker Than Homelander

Published Sep 5, 2026, 12:29 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While The Boys had one of the most reprehensible villains in TV history in the form of Homelander, Prime Video’s upcoming follow-up series will center on an even more monstrous character. Although Game of Thrones season 1 certainly pushed the proverbial boat out in terms of what could be portrayed on TV, there are plenty of subsequent shows that pushed censorship norms even further in the years that followed. First, there were hits like The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, which brought new heights of graphic violence and explicit content to the world of small-screen horror. Then, there was Shudder’s anthology Slasher, which remains the single most brutal show in the genre. Then, in 2019, a superhero series, of all things, managed to offer viewers some of the most jaw-droppingly shocking visuals in TV history throughout its five-season run. Loosely based on comic book writer Garth Ennis’s series of the same name, The Boys was a Prime Video adaptation that never pulled its punches in the show’s story of “Supes” behaving badly. The titular group of vigilante antiheroes used intimidation, torture, and even murder to keep superheroes in line, meaning the show’s superheroes needed to be seriously depraved to justify this intervention. They were, and none of them were more monstrous than Anthony Starr’s unforgettable Homelander, or at least, none of them other than the spinoff Vought Rising's protagonist. Stormfront Is Perhaps The Only Villain In The Boys Worse Than Homelander While there were R-rated superhero shows like Misfits before The Boys, Prime Video’s ultra-dark satire pushed the genre into new depths of darkness and extremity. At the core of this push was Homelander, an ersatz Superman who used his almost limitless superpowers to become a fascist tyrant as the show progressed. Before the show’s first few episodes were over, Homelander had unceremoniously killed an entire plane full of civilians, and this didn’t even scratch the surface of his evil actions. However, there was one villain in the series who made Homelander seem comparatively sympathetic, namely his predecessor, Aya Cash’s Stormfront. Initially introduced as a brash, social media-savvy supe with a foul mouth, Stormfront is soon revealed to be a fervent Nazi with a long history of murderous hate crimes to her name. While Homelander is ultimately tragic, as evidenced by his pathetic display when he finally loses his powers in the ending of The Boys, Stormfront’s racially motivated villainy makes her a more calculating, dangerous villain. That’s why it is so surprising that the upcoming spinoff Vought Rising is set to center its story on Stormfront, along with Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy, a pair of fan favorite characters who were nonetheless among the most egregiously racist and unapologetically sadistic villains of the series. While it will be interesting to see the origins of the two characters, it will be tough for Vought Rising to make Stormfront a lead character without dulling the sheer nastiness and evil of her original incarnation. The Boys Needs To Avoid Making Stormfront A Sympathetic Figure From Breaking Bad to Netflix’s underrated Ozark, there are countless examples of dark TV thrillers centering on villain protagonists without whitewashing the worst elements of their characters. However, Stormfront still represents a particularly tough challenge in this regard. The character is an unapologetic Neo-Nazi who uses her considerable charisma to launder her extremist views to mainstream viewers, something that has become an increasingly prevalent real-life problem in the last decade. As such, Vought Rising’s story needs to ensure that Cash’s character isn’t watered down from an unrepentant, calculating fascist into a sympathetic anti-villain whose vile world view can be explained away by a tragic backstory. While Homelander’s The Boys backstory worked because the character was always depicted as more thin-skinned, erratic, and unstable than Stormfront, Vought Rising can’t simply replicate his storyline from The Boys with the spinoff’s villain protagonist. Network Prime Video Directors Philip Sgriccia, Shana Stein, Sam Miller Writers Eric Kripke, Paul Grellong, Jim Barnes, Lauren Greer, Matt Berns, Paul Keables, Sheila Wilson, Sophia Lopez Cast Elizabeth Posey Private Angel