I guess calling fan culture toxic is an understatement. It sounds like an arrangement where you give someone the power to ruin your day, and the person concerned doesn’t even know whether you exist or not. Todd, who was introduced in the third season of The Boys, was portrayed as some kind of conspiracy theorist, a sort of basement dweller from the troll army. So Todd became a huge fan of Homelander because he found him cool. Yes, that’s enough to worship someone these days. Our generation is not very fond of words like: right or wrong, law, and ethics. We’ll take humanity forward with coolness. So when we first met Todd, he was dating MM’s (Mother’s Milk) ex-wife, Monique. Unlike MM, Todd actually had time for her daughter, Janine, because of which she grew extremely fond of him. So, I am not saying Todd was a bad person. He just got mixed up with the wrong company, that’s all. And he literally crossed the line when he took Janine to Homelander’s rally. [Spoiler Alert] But even though he was such an ardent fan and extremely fond of Homelander, our main man here didn’t flinch before killing Todd in cold blood. But why?
So, after the entire bloody fiasco at the end of season 3, where Homelander brutally killed a person in public, the entire media and authorities went after him. However, what was problematic in the show was that for people like Todd, Homelander did the right thing. Sorry, he did the cool thing. The unwavering support of his fans gave Homelander the idea that he could go on killing more people in public without facing any consequences. However, the fourth season of The Boys started with a trial, which is a trending word in US&A these days. This season had a slightly different tone, where we saw a melancholic Homelander missing his old friends and foes, whom he had already killed. He realized that he had been surrounded by a bunch of buffoons who didn’t have the spine to point out his mistakes, even if he was going in the wrong direction. At this moment, Homelander didn’t really know what to do. On the other end, Starlight’s supporters had been giving him nightmares. That was when Homelander approached Sister Sage, who claimed to be the smartest person in the world. From the very first meeting with Sage, we understood the fact that she had read a lot about human history, especially about dictators and savage monsters like Homelander. She seemed to be the best person who could help Homelander with improving his public image. She suggested that he shouldn’t act like a ruthless dictator like Hitler but instead have a more cunning approach like Caesar. Her solution to Homelander’s bad press was to sacrifice his own fans to gain some sympathy in the popular media, and that’s what Todd’s death was all about. A grand sacrifice for the greater good of Homelander.
The very next day, Homelander invited his three fans (including Todd) for a special meet and greet with The Seven. The fans really believed that their superhero had finally shown some gratitude towards them, but it was all a farce. Homelander ordered A-Train, Noir, and Deep to give these three fans a brutal death and later place their dead bodies outside the court, where Sage had already incited a riot between Homelander’s die-hard fans and Starlight’s supporters. So it was obvious what they had planned to do. They killed some of their own to get sympathy from the press, and it worked for a bit but was resolved too quickly or too badly.
A-Train, who had been helping The Boys since the previous season and still feels guilty for killing Hughie’s ex-girlfriend, came to help Starlight again. Basically, A-Train wanted to do more for his community, but Vought didn’t understand the place he had come from. For them, helping a community meant sending a White savior, which, as history tells us, is the worst thing you could do. So when A-Train found out that two Black men had been arrested for killing Homelander’s fan, he decided to step in and give Starlight a pendrive so that she could prove the innocence of her supporters.
The entire thing was extremely scattered. I mean, it was such a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that many will probably not notice A-Train’s change of heart and be surprised at the fact that he is helping out The Boys now. And that’s not it. There were numerous such instances in the first three episodes where the characters’ arcs were building up to something amazing, but the haphazard way in which they were resolved ruined the viewing experience. And what’s worse about such a hasty conclusion is that the key characters don’t get enough screen time to mourn the deaths or losses. Take Monique, for example. The creators brought her in for a brief scene so that MM would follow Todd and get entangled in the narrative. But after Todd’s death, we didn’t see Monique again (in the first three episodes). She didn’t get any closure regarding Todd’s death? Also, Monique said that her daughter Janine is missing Todd a lot, and he has become distant after Homelander’s public killing. So, at least Janine deserves to have a scene where she can at least shed a tear for the man who died in vain. And I understand that gory deaths have become The Boys forte, but serious deaths used to have consequences, especially for major characters. Now it’s all just “cool.”
