The Amazon series based on The Boys is based on a comic. While many of the characters appear in the series, they differ greatly from the comics. Also, the big twist at the end will likely never appear in the series. The creator of the series, Eric Kripke, is not a fan of the plot twist.
Attention Spoiler: The following article spoils the ending of The Boys comics. Those who wanted to read this should come back later.
What happens at the end of the comics in The Boys? Throughout the course of the comics, Homelander becomes increasingly brutal. He seems to send himself images of his actions, as it appears he does not remember many of them.
At the peak of his madness, he tries to storm the White House with an army of superheroes and kills the president in the process. But Butcher’s crew can kill the army and also stop Homelander.
However, it turns out that it was not Homelander who did the terrible things, but Black Noir, who is a clone of Homelander created to stop him when he goes insane. Therefore, the images were sent to him by Noir.
Noir then kills Homelander and Butcher later kills Noir. Eric Kripke, the author of the TV series, does not think much of this ending and does not want to use it for the series.
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Kripke has never been a fan of the twist
What does Kripke say about the comic twist? In an interview with Variety, the author talked about the differences from the comics and why he changes many things. He is also asked about Black Noir and whether he was interested in the comic story.
Kripke directly says that he was not interested at all. But he finds the concept that the villain is not the real villain uninteresting. He wants to portray Homelander as the villain and does not want to work with clones.
If I follow this villain, I want that guy to be the villain. So I have never really been fond of the idea of the clone.
Eric Kripke on the Homelander twist in the comics (Source: Variety)
Additionally, he feels that the topic of cloning is too magical
for the show. While there are superheroes, the rest of the show tries to be as down-to-earth as possible.
What does Kripke like about the comics? When asked which aspects he likes from the comics that he wanted to highlight more in the series, it was the relationship between Frenchie and Kimiko. He particularly praises the chemistry between the two actors. In particular, the performance of Karen Fukuhara, who delivers a great performance without proper dialogues.
The TV series is significantly more critical of society than the comics. A major point is the critique of commercialization, in this case of superheroes. To utilize this for marketing, Amazon often also does advertising in the real world. Recently, you could ask Homelander questions: Homelander from The Boys answers questions on Reddit and it is just as absurd as you expect
