The Boys' Homelander Reddit Theory Reaches New Depths of Disturbing
Think Stan Edgar and Homelander, think Stan Edgar owning Homelander in a verbal exchange. Feel satisfaction? Well, you are not alone there, but you should be careful to not underestimate the threat Stan Edgar poses behind his cool demeanor.
Stan Edgar – brilliantly played by Giancarlo Esposito – and his role in the Boys in general and the fate of Homelander, in particular, have become the topic of heated discussion on Reddit.
Reddit user Troll4everxdxd, who started the discussion, gave his opinion on the relationship between Homelander and Stan Edgar. This POV twists the way we usually look at the hilarious verbal exchange happening between the CEO of Vought International and the leader of The Seven.
Homelander is such a terrible and sadistic character that it usually feels good to witness him being verbally owned by Edgar while he just stands there in quiet rage and embarrassment. These scenes make many fans happy. But the Reddit discussion will leave you thinking, what if Stan Edgar does not so much own Homelander as abuses him.
We know from the series context that Homelander was conceived in a lab, and continually isolated, tortured, and beaten up by Vought scientists. This group of child abusers was led by Jonah Vogelbaum, who had become the father figure for Homelander and had at least some decency to take responsibility for his actions. At the same time, Stan Edgar stood at the origins of Vought and had enough influence at the time of Homelander's creation to know about the abuse and horrifying grooming. Yet, he didn't care.
This brings us back to nowadays when, with the deaths of both Stillwell and Vogelbaum who posed as parent figures for Homelander having a pathological need to be loved due to his upbringing, Edgar remains the only father figure Homelander is so desperately looking for.
"So, with all of this context in mind, Edgar's "owning" of Homelander comes to me as less of a badass executive putting a sociopathic man-child in his place, and more about one of the people responsible for Homelander's suffering and twisted personality mocking and belittling him for not managing to be a functional person despite all the inhuman abuse the company Edgar now leads, put him through," the author of the theory writes.
This opinion definitely gives another perspective on the relationship between Homelander and Stan Edgar. If Homelander is the Frankenstein monster, then Edgar is his creator, who might be even more dangerous no matter how polite and affable he looks. However, other Redditors argued that no matter his role in the Supe's past, Edgar owning Homelander is – besides being extremely satisfying – one of the very few ways to control the sociopath and prevent him from rampaging and destroying humanity.