The Boysturned Homelander into one of the most impactful villains in TV history. It’s not enough that he’s a beloved celebrity and the de facto head of a major corporation; he’s also practically invincible. Billy Butcher and his Boys have been struggling to find a surefire way to put down Homelander since before the show began, but they’ve struggled to pin anything down. Now that fans have seen Victoria Neuman’s head-popping power, it’s worth asking whether she could finally kill the world’s worst hero.
Power levels are a little messy inThe Boys. The show isn’t really concerned with accommodating power-scaling conversations. One of the most interesting elements of the series is watchingthe titular team struggleto find weaknesses in seemingly godlike beings. Frenchie comes up with a selection of fascinating anti-supe technology, but Homelander is still the team’s white whale. Most fights wind up a little less intelligent than the attack against Translucent, but there’s still plenty of room for creativity inThe Boys.
How do Victoria Neuman’s powers work?
Victoria Neuman entersThe Boysas amuch-needed new allyin the fight against supes. She’s a young and beloved congresswoman from New York who seems to be dedicated to countering Vought’s influence. As a fairly obvious fictional equivalent to widely-beloved progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, many assumed she would be a newfound hero. Then over a dozen whistleblowers and court officials working to bring a case against Vought died simultaneously from inexplicable head explosions. The conclusion ofThe Boysseason two revealed that Neuman was responsible for the attack. She’s also controlled opposition, working to keep Vought in power by pretending to fight against them. Neuman’s powers still aren’t known to the public. Only a few people are aware that she killed all those people. She only provided a deeper look into hergift inGen V.
Victoria Neuman’s power is blood manipulation. It works very similarly tothat of Marie Moreau, though she’s had more time to develop her skills and use them in different ways. She demonstrates the same control over her own blood that Moreau uses, but she typically manipulates the blood of others. Her usual tactic is to cause her target’s body to explode from within. It’s visually indistinguishable from an internal explosive. The only obvious tell is that Neuman’s eyes roll over white while she uses her power. Neuman requires a direct line of sight to wield her gift. She also has a standard suite of superpowers, including superhuman strength, senses, and reflexes. Her durability recently became an open question, as it appears almost no weapon can harm her. The limits of her ability have yet to be tested, however.
Could Victoria Neuman’s power kill Homelander?
Victoria Neuman’s blood manipulation power almost certainly couldn’t kill Homelander. The show provides several pieces of evidence to suggest this unfortunate truth.Neuman has no troublequickly killing humans, but her power isn’t unstoppable. While she did kill the speedster Shockwave in her initial attack, the runner who played second banana to A-Train likely wasn’t much harder to break than any other person. Victoria later faced Tony, a fellow former resident of the Red River Institute who demonstrated superhuman strength. When she tried to kill Tony, he resisted her initial strike, suffering only a minor nosebleed. She eventually killed Tony, blasting apart his hand and jaw before destroying his body, but that initial struggle suggests that she’d have a hard time damaging someone as durable as Homelander. Victoria might be able to subject Homelander to enough damage that it would eventually cause his death, but it would not be instantaneous. Even a moment’s pause would be enoughfor Homelander tonotice the attack and respond, likely killing Victoria instantly.
The other obvious point against Victoria’s ability to kill Homelander is her consistent fear. If Neuman could kill Homelander, she likely wouldn’t regularly work to keep the supe happy. She could have simply eliminated him alongside the other participants at the trial. Victoria could have decided to spare him, seeing some use for him in future schemes, but it’s likely that killing him was never on the table. At theend ofGen V’sfirst season, Neuman takes command of the anti-supe virus by killing the scientist who developed it. Butcher taunts her, pointing out Homelander’s obvious control of Neuman’s political career. Without Edgar around to keep Neuman safe and Homelander on a leash, Neuman is forced to answer to Homelander. Butcher knows that Neuman has the virus and that it isn’t strong enough to kill Homelander. This strongly implies that Neuman is actively seeking a safe way to dispose of her supposed ally. If her powers could handle the job, she wouldn’t need to muck around with a virus that might put her in danger too.
What could kill Homelander?
This tough question has at least a couple of answers. Here are a few existing options that couldalmost certainly kill Homelanderunder the right circumstances:
While there are still a fewreasonable methods to kill Homelander, Victoria Neuman isn’t one of them. Her powers struggle with supes, Homelander is tough to kill, and her work on the anti-supe virus suggests that she knows her limits. Neuman may develop the perfect solution to use against her current de facto boss, but it’s unlikely that fans will have to thank this secondary villain for killing the primary one.
