For all the exploding heads, clone-on-clone oral pleasuring, flying monster sheep, and deadly Hughie Sr. hospital mayhem, The Boys is somehow never more than a few minutes away from delivering another shocking and/or cringe-inducing sequence, with Antony Starr’s Homelander involved around half of the time. Season 4 has tapped into some of his twisted childhood memories as an affection-starved experiment, with a few on-the-nose callbacks to the Supe’s perhaps unhealthy infatuation with milk, particularly a female’s breastmilk.
TV viewers aren’t exactly used to seeing superheroes with sexual fetishes and hang-ups, so it’s been wild watching The Boys hyping up Homelander’s milky odyssey since the early days. Speaking with Rolling Stone about his all-powerful character’s Season 4 arc, Starr offered something of a Cliffs Notes version of Homelander’s obsession with fluids, saying:
So my memory is it came up in the scripts — full credit to the writing team on this, because it was so weird. It started with X-ray visioning my Oedipal mummy figure while she was breastfeeding, and me pining like that and having a jealous relationship with the baby. And then at the start of Season 2, I found some of her … Homelander found some of her breast milk in a freezer and lasers it, starts drinking it, gets caught.
Even though fans were only introduced to that arguably disturbing detail a few short seasons ago, so much has happened on The Boys that it's just a fully built-in understanding at this point that the most powerful character available to enjoy with an Amazon Prime subscription is inevitably going to enjoy some liquid calcium at some point. He even attempted to bond with Ryan over a nice, frosty milkshake, only to have those fatherly intentions blow up in his face, meaning no shake for Ryan.
The reason why it's become such a mainstay character trait is because Antony Starr was just as on board with the icky-ish fascination as showrunner Eric Kripke and other writers. The actor continued, saying:
And it was so funny and weird, and I think I sent Eric an email after that scene going, 'Dude, we gotta get as much milk in this show as possible. This is gonna be like a little motif or a signature thing. Like, we have to do it.' And he was like, 'One step ahead of you, brother. I’m putting it in everything.' And so now every opportunity we get, the milk thing comes out. We don’t have to do anything with it, either. If I just look at someone and sip milk, there’s a twist to it. It’s become a really fun thing. The fans have really glommed on to it. And enjoyed it.
I dunno if glomming is the perfect word to use for fans appreciating Homelander's milk motif, but there probably aren't any perfect words for that. Perhaps nothing is perfect about it, save for Antony Starr's instant puppy-esque look of longing anytime that desire is piqued.
In the same interview, Starr talked about playing villains whose actions are hard to shake off when the camera stops rolling, and explained why Homelander actually feels different from the norm, despite being one of TV's most morally bereft characters. As he put it:
There’s a lot of lasering people, and it’s very vindictive and vengeful and all that. But right off the bat, just because of the nature of the show as well, it’s pretty funny. And we’ve always tried to find the humor in this character because it makes it a lot more accessible. And we didn’t want to make a mustache-twirly villain where everything is bad. We want to see under the hood a little bit with this guy and see what makes him tick and why his engine is the way it is.
Lest anyone think he's kidding, The Boys' blooper reels make quick waste of those doubts, especially when it comes to milky moments. Also, let's all agree that if Homelander had any facial hair at all, he would have the milkiest mustache in existence, and his hands would be constantly sticky if he twirled it. Take that, Dick Dastardly.
The Boys streams new episodes on Thursdays on Prime Video, but head to our 2024 TV schedule to see what new and returning shows are also on the way soon.
