Characters / The Boys (2019): The Seven

The Boys (2019) Main Character Index
The Boys | Supes (The Seven, [Homelander, Starlight, Stormfront], Soldier Boy) | Vought International | Godolkin University | Others

In General

The Seven

Season 1's roster.^note From left to right: Starlight, The Deep, Queen Maeve, Homelander, Black Noir, A-Train and Translucent.

Season 2's roster.^note From left to right: The Deep, Queen Maeve, Stormfront, Homelander, Starlight, Black Noir and A-Train.

The crown jewel of Vought, led by their captain Homelander. While on the surface they're the nation's best and most popular superhero team, a combination of Vought's corporate management and their own personal flaws have turned the team into a den of debauchery.

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• Adaptational Heroism: They all abuse their power, but they're a lot less one-note evil than in the comic, which makes the Boys' activities even more morally grey.
• Artifact Title: Ever since Translucent gets killed, they have a harder and harder time maintaining their numbers at seven. And every time a new member is added, they get killed or at least "retired". Eventually the team struggles to even have six members at a given time. By the end of Season 3, they only have three members left.
• Beware the Superman: With the exception of Starlight, most of them are (or have become over time) malicious corporate agents, as willing to kill people as they are to genuinely help them. Maeve is the only exception, and even she's so defeated and cynical, she knowingly turns a blind eye to the others.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The second season gives us Starlight (blond), Stormfront (brunette) and Maeve (red). Given how Vought's marketing team operates, this isn't too surprising.
• Broken Pedestal: To Hughie and Starlight. They both were big fans of The Seven growing up and were unfortunately in for a massive reality check (Hughie especially).
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: They've killed and crippled countless people through collateral damage but they either laugh it off or use their many connections to cover it up.
• Cast of Expies: Most of the main superhero characters' abilities and costumes are very similar to those of famous established comic book superheroes.
• Celebrity Superhero: While in this universe superheroes in general are treated as celebrities and promoted by Vought, the Seven are in-universe seen as the superhero team with a lot of merchandize and television shows. Joining the Seven is seen as a big goal for any newcoming hero.
• Corporate-Sponsored Superhero: Their personas, jobs, and salaries all come from Vought, a corporation that owns their image rights. Because of this, they are all more interested in looking heroic to the press than actually having any moral character themselves, basically turning them into narcissistic, unbalanced celebrities that could (and have) create a body count of innocent people due to their powers and negligence in using them, having an entire global corporation to clean up whatever messes they create.
• Corrupted Character Copy: As in the comics, the characters are mostly clear copies of existing characters from other comics, mostly Marvel and DC. In some cases, they've altered the copy a bit or made it clearer.
  • Homelander, Superman Substitute, but as a straight-up villain. Unlike Superman, Homelander was Raised in a Lab, without loving parents to provide him with any moral fiber. He also has shades of Captain America with the patriotic aspects twisted for nefarious purposes.
  • Queen Maeve, expy of Wonder Woman. Her costume draws a lot of inspiration from Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe, she's a Multi-Melee Master, but can't fly (relying on Homelander to carry her when needed). Maeve started out idealistic and genuinely dedicated to saving the world, but eventually gave it all up one compromise at a time, and now is a rude, apathetic alcoholic who isn't going to her meetings.
  • Black Noir, copy of Batman. Dresses all in black, good at close-quarters combat with knives, never speaks, mysterious. He serves as Stan Edgar's loyal attack-dog, basically acting as Vought's personal Black Ops operative.
  • The Deep, expy of Aquaman, complete with perceived uselessness and fish jokes. He pulls a Casting Couch on Starlight, and suffers a Trauma Conga Line when it comes out. It's also stated he's sexually assaulted (or at least harassed) several other women. His one redeeming trait is his genuine love of all marine creatures, leading to the aforementioned fish jokes, and every time he tries to push this issue forward he's rebuffed (he wants to "shine a light" on Oceanland's questionable animal handling practices, but is told to just go along with the ad campaign Oceanland signed him up for).
  • A-Train, copy of The Flash. Repeatedly called "The Fastest Man Alive." Fear of losing that title leads to him abusing Compound V to the point he has a heart attack. As in the comics, he's responsible for reducing Hughie's girlfriend to Ludicrous Gibs, and doesn't really feel that bad about it (he even repeatedly fails to recognize Hughie, even after they met face-to-face and A-Train delivered a Vought-mandated apology). He's also the key in Homelander's plan to spread Compound V through the world and create supervillains for The Seven to fight, and murders his girlfriend Popclaw when she proves a weak link in this plan.
• Didn't Think This Through: When he discovers the bug that Hughie placed in the bathroom, he doesn't simply hand it over to the security. He doesn't even tell anyone about it. He just follows Hughie back to his store and tries to squeeze information out of him. It results in him getting captured and ultimately killed.
• Dirty Coward: All of them except Starlight and, to a lesser extent, Maeve are this. They're extremely haughty and cruel to non-powered people or less poweful supes but when they face a genuine threat, they flee in terror.
• Dysfunction Junction: Their personal lives tend to be messed up.
  • A-Train's work has strained his relationship with his brother, who eventually leaves him out to dry once A-Train starts abusing Compound V to keep his title as the fastest man alive.
  • The Deep has been sexually extorting women using his position, and ends up getting raped by a Looney Fan. His Sham Marriage in Season 2 is also shown to not provide him with sexual satisfaction.
  • Lamplighter spent his whole life trying to earn the approval of his father, but never received it.
  • Starlight spends most of Season 1 getting estranged with her Stage Mom, who volunteered to have her injected with Compound V. Her father left her because he couldn't stand keeping the truth from Annie.
  • Maeve avoids any relationships period both because she is a Closet Gay (well, Closet Bisexual) woman and because Homelander is extremely territorial around her. She's also become a Jaded Washout due to how amoral her teammates and Vought act.
  • Homelander has never really had any good familial or friendly relationships due to being raised in a lab. When he does enter a romance with Stormfront, he ultimately loses her due to her own racism.
  • Stormfront is an original Nazi and carries all the baggage that comes with it.
  • Black Noir was subjected to brutal physical and psychological abuse during his prior tenure in Payback, and was mutilated during Payback's collective mutiny against Soldier Boy.
  • Ironically Averted with Translucent, who despite being a raging pervert who abuses his powers for sexual reasons, actually has a fairly good life outside of heroism, including a loving son.
• Fallen Hero: Most did start as heroes with noble intentions (help aquatic animals, escape poverty, and do the right thing) but Vought's business practices numbed all their ideals or put them on such a tight leash that they had to play along whether they like it or not.
• Hero Insurance: Zig-zagged. Heroes have a similar form of semi-immunity as police officers while fighting crime, but they have to be credited with being "on the clock" responding to a crime and can still be sued for wrongdoing when there is enough evidence of poor judgement. A-Train outright splatters Robin and gets away with it by claiming to be responding to a robbery and Robin was "carelessly" in the street (Hughie repeatedly says Robin was one foot off the curb, not in the middle of the street). Vought tries to buy off Hughie to prevent his complaint from damaging their brand, but Hughie's father notes that it will be almost impossible for them to actually prove anything. Butcher later points out that police records do not show anything that A-Train would have been responding to at the time of the incident. On the other hand, Starlight is very vulnerable to a lawsuit when she beats up some would-be rapists on film without the context of why she's fighting them (until the victim comes forward to corroborate).
• Hero with an F in Good: Once in a blue moon they'll actually try to be heroes. However, they lack skill with their powers, pay little mind to collateral damage and Vought is very selective about which crimes they can prevent. Notable examples include The Deep's attempt to save a dolphin, the barbaric mishandling of Flight 37, and Robin's (accidental) murder at the hands of A-Train.
• High Turnover Rate: Career safety in the Seven really disappeared with Lamplighter when he retired at the beginning of Season 1 and the Boys start moving against them. To whit...
  • Season 1: Translucent gets killed off and the Deep is removed after his sexual assault of multiple women comes to light.
  • Season 2: Stormfront replaces Translucent but is removed after she is outed as a Nazi and is made the scapegoat for the bloody congressional hearing. Starlight is exposed as a traitor and arrested, but is allowed back in after Maeve blackmails Homelander. A-Train loses his spot to Shockwave after his heart attack but is brought back in after Shockwave dies. By the end of the season they're still down a member.
  • Season 3: Starlight finally has enough and publicly quits. Queen Maeve makes a Heroic Sacrifice while fighting Homelander and Soldier Boy, and ends up faking her death and going into hiding. Homelander also kills Black Noir, though his survival is still possible at present writing. But if not, the Seven is just down to Homelander, A-Train and The Deep being the only ones remaining.
    Homelander: We're not even the Seven anymore, we're down to five. We're dropping like fucking flies.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Maeve has dropped all personal relationships in order not to be susceptible to blackmailing and advises Annie to do the same. Non-casual relationships seem to be rare throughout the Seven, and with good reason: Every one we do see subjects the supe involved to serious risks.
• Jaded Professional: Due to the PR-obsessed, profit-based nature of Vought International, the Seven have all turned into image-obsessed celebrities that seem more interested in looking good and selling merchandise than actually accomplishing anything good. Even when any of the heroes try to do something noble (Starlight saving a would-be rape victim, the Deep wanting to help with the conditions for dolphins at Oceanland, etc.), Stillwell and the PR department will advise against it.
• Jerkass: Most of the superheroes turn out to be this. A-Train actually jokes about killing Robin and has zero remorse (admittedly, it was accidental, but he doesn't feel bad at all, comparing it with a bug on the highway).
• Limited Wardrobe: Most of The Seven are rarely seen in civilian attire, and will go from publicity events to private corporate meetings wearing the same thing. Homelander in particular (barring dropping his pants for sex) is always seen in full costume, even mentioning he hasn't bothered with a Secret Identity in years. Starlight regularly drops the look and goes out in public as just Annie, but even still tends to wear white or off-white that matches her hero costume.
• One-Hour Work Week: Broadly speaking, given their celebrity status doing numerous charity drives, advertisements, PR interviews, feature movies AND the occasional scheduled superheroics, none of the Seven seem to have any difficulty with having plenty of their own free time. The filming of "Dawn of the Seven" appeared to only take them a week.
• Powerful, but Incompetent: Part of the Seven's problems is that they are powerful, but poorly trained in how to use their powers, resulting in a lot of unnecessary deaths, injuries, and collateral damages that could have otherwise been avoided.
• The Psycho Rangers: While they have a numerical advantage on the Boys, there are direct counterparts to each member on both teams.
  • Homelander to Butcher: The Leader, Ax-Crazy, has Fantastic Racism. Butcher and Homelander are each other's Archenemy, and bully around the other members of their teams. Butcher, however, genuinely cares about his teammates while Homelander only looks out for himself.
  • Black Noir to Kimiko: The most lethal member of their respective teams, and also happen to be mute. Both are also surprisingly expressive despite lacking a voice. Black Noir, however, keeps his distance from his teammates while Kimiko is surprisingly open and friendly with Frenchie.
  • Maeve to MM: emotional center of their team, and also the most professional. Yet while MM is actually trusted by Butcher and fights hard to retain his ideals, Maeve has long since developed Jade-Colored Glasses and Stopped Caring about her team's amorality.
  • Frenchie doesn't have a specific counterpart, but his laid back yet simultaneously bizarre nature, drug problems and implied sexual deviancy (based upon a comment by MM in "Herogasm") pegs him as one to The Deep, Lamplighter, and Translucent, all of whom had sexual deviancy and mannerisms that put them at odds with the Seven, as well as A-Train, who also is a drug addict. Unlike them, Frenchie is genuinely respected by his team, respects the boundaries of women, is able to function normally without drugs, and doesn't let his past failures define him.
  • Starlight to Hughie: the Naïve Newcomer of their teams, both are more idealistic than their teammates until they had a massive reality check involving a member of the Seven that they idolized (A-Train reducing Hughie's first girlfriend to Ludicrous Gibs, The Deep pulling a Casting Couch on Starlight). Hughie, however, is still respected by his teammates (and is in fact Butcher's Morality Pet) while Starlight only has a good rapport with Queen Maeve. Their similarities end up leading to Hughie and Annie becoming a couple.
• Secret Identity: Zig-Zagged. It's implied they had them, but Starlight seems to be the only one keeping hers up, and even she outs herself pretty quickly. Homelander states he gave his up a long time ago, and Queen Maeve states she's come to believe cutting oneself off from attachments to be necessary in the superhero game, implying no one else even bothers. None of The Seven wear masks except for Black Noir, but going out in regular clothes instead of their costumes means they are unlikely to be recognized, no one would expect to bump into A-Train in a department store.
• Slave to PR: Everybody in the Seven is surrounded by Vought executives, who try to script their every word and tailor every little thing towards marketing the superheroes at the expense of, y'know, actually fighting crime.
• Two Girls to a Team: Queen Maeve and Starlight are the only two female members of the team. This appears to be invoked, as Starlight mentions Vought is auditioning "girls" nationwide in search of Lamplighter's replacement. Prior to that, the team ran on The Smurfette Principle with Queen Maeve as the only female. Apparently, marketing decided to get with the times in terms of female representation. The trope is broken in Season 2 when Stormfront becomes Translucent's replacement, with Vought's marketers making sure to play this up to score diversity points.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The Seven are prime examples of this. The people think they're heroes, but they're actually self-deluded narcissists who just do whatever they please no matter who they hurt (with the exception of Starlight and possibly Queen Maeve).
• Women Are Wiser: Queen Maeve and Annie/Starlight are so far the only members who have a moral compass, are genuinely good people and are disgusted with the rest of the Supes misusing their position. And while Stormfront's moral compass is basically non-existent, she's an incredibly intelligent social expert that runs circles around Homelander with a fraction of the resources.
• You Go, Girl!: Vought makes sure to market how there are three female members on The Seven by Season 2, coining the slogan "Girls Get it Done."

The Original Seven

Homelander

See Homelander's character page here.

Queen Maeve

Queen Maeve / Margaret "Maggie" Shaw

"I really did want to make a difference. I really did care."

Portrayed by: Dominique McElligott

Dubbed by: Barbara Beretta (European French)

"The truth is, our weakness is the same as anyone's. It's people. The people we care about."

The Seven's Amazonian warrior woman.

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• Abusive Parents: Her father was a Stage Dad who got her on Compound V to perform in pageants and competitions, earning money to gamble it away at Circus Circus.
• Action Girl: She is a powerful combatant only second to Homelander.
• Action Girlfriend: To Elena, who is just a mere woman.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In the comics Butcher describes Maeve as "quite tasty-looking, until you get a good look at the cracks." This combined with the art implies Maeve's looks are fading due to age. Dominique McElligott looks quite lovely, not a "crack" in sight.
• Adaptational Badass: Biggest difference between comic book Queen Maeve and this one, is that her show version engages in active fighting. She fights terrorists and other Supes like Stormfront. Her comic version was too preoccupied with being an alcoholic hedonist to fight crime, despite being shown standing up to Black Noir.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, Queen Maeve is mostly a self-destructive hedonist and doesn't care about anything heroic. In the show, she's unambiguously heroic, albeit riddled with character flaws that keep her from being a paragon. Maeve's introduced trying to stop bank robbers, and is overall the most heroic member of The Seven except for Starlight. She even tells Starlight how excited she was to become a real heroine when she was younger, until she started to give away pieces of herself. She also beats up Stormfront and risks her life to stop Homelander and Soldier Boy.
• Adaptational Modesty: Following what happened to Maeve's "source", the cleavage-bearing suit now has a more armor-like look which covers more of her torso◊.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Comic Maeve was already the most sympathetic of the original Seven, but she's much nicer in the show. To wit, when she meets Annie in the comic, Annie's pretty upset over her degrading audition, and gushes over meeting her idol, only to be mocked in return and told to fuck off. In the show, Maeve notices Annie's distress right away and offers some comfort. She does briefly start acting like her comic book self after Elena leaves her, but eventually regains her sense of justice. Overall, the Maeve of the show is not the promiscuous hedonist in the comics.
• Adaptational Sexuality: At first, it's left unclear if she's a closeted lesbian or bisexual as she dated Homelander (in terms of Homelander, it was to keep her public image acceptable) and dated a civilian woman before, even though she is only involved with men in the comic. Homelander outs her in Season 2, on national TV no less. Elena also clarifies that she's bisexual. Season 3 also shows her having sex with Billy Butcher and having a string of casual lovers of both men and women.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Maeve in the comics could fly, while in the show it is a plot point in the Flight 37 incident that only Homelander can.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Queen Maeve was blonde in the comics, but has auburn hair here.
• The Alcoholic: She apparently has been one for awhile, as her ex notes "you're not going to your meetings". She relapses hard after Flight 37 and when Elena leaves.
• Allegorical Character: She is supposed to be for feminism and, in Season 2, lesbianism. She is branded by Vought as "Brave Maeve" and hates every second of it (since she's bi, not lesbian), but is worn down enough she doesn't bother to fight it.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Once Ashley finds Maeve in bed with two men and is informed that Elena left Maeve, the publicist starts berating her for going against her new image as a lesbian icon. Maeve weakly and bitterly responds by telling Ashley to "act like a fucking human being for once". Then Ashley sincerely apologizes.
• Badass in Distress: Homelander keeps Maeve locked up in a place powerful enough to resist her strength.
• Barefoot Captives: When Homelander puts her under lock and key, she's only provided the barest essentials, shoes not included. She eventually escapes like this and rendezvous with the Boys still looking ragged. It's mostly Played for Laughs given that she's Made of Iron and it doesn't hamper her one bit, while her dirty bare feet on his couch puts M.M. on the brink of puking on the spot.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Her first scene in the series is saving a pair of civilians from being run over by a truck.
  • She serves as this for Starlight twice in season 2, swiftly taking down those who were crushing her in battle.
• Big Sister Instinct: Sacrifices herself to protect Annie at the end of season 3.
• Breeding Slave: Homelander plans on forcefully harvesting Maeve's eggs in order to produce the perfect, powerful children he always dreamed to have with her.
• Broken Bird: Like Annie, she started off as an idealistic aspiring hero who wanted to save people before turning into Vought's puppet and Homelander's accomplice.
  Queen Maeve: Twenty-three year old, bright-eyed, ass you could bounce a quarter off of. I really did want to make a difference. I really did care. I was just like you. And then, I started giving pieces of myself away and... I guess I gave away everything.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Maeve's an Amazon-themed supe who acts aloof, but her heart is always in the right place even if her will is weak.
• Byronic Heroine: An alcoholic, cynical, broken woman who started as a huge idealist in her past, only to get trapped by the corruption of the Seven and Vought and her inner desire to do good but at the risk of her beloved ones.
• Captain Ethnic: A subtle example. Her hero persona is Irish-themed, having red hair and being named after Medb, anglicized as Maeve, a legendary queen/goddess in Irish mythology. Not to mention that her actress is Irish.
• Combat Pragmatist: While fighting Stormfront. She decks her when she's distracted with someone else, gangs up on her with two other people, stomps on her head while she's on the ground, pulls her hair... nothing is out of bounds for Maeve.
• Cool Crown: Owns a silver tiara.
• Crazy-Prepared: Judging by how quickly she came to Starlight's aid, she apparently keeps an Almond Joy close at hand in case she needs to use it against Black Noir.
• The Cynic: She seems to be the most experienced member of the Seven alongside Homelander, and is accordingly very jaded and often unfriendly.
• Cynical Mentor: She plays the role of an extremely jaded but genuinely guiding and helpful figure to Annie/Starlight.
• Death Faked for You: After being hit by Soldier Boy's blast in the Season 3 finale, she goes missing and Vought declares her dead, with Ashley erasing the only recording proving her survival and rescue by the Boys.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Flawless Token. For the majority of season 1, Maeve kept her bisexuality a secret and had to enter a relationship with Homelander for the sake of publicity and protecting Elena at the same from Homelander, who jealously murdered a man for hitting on her. When Homelander reveals her sexuality on live television to deflect the question of diversity, Maeve is beyond furious with him and Vought enveloped her by quickly marketing her as an LBGT icon. Vought was incredibly blatant about objectifying her as a gay hero despite Maeve's many attempts to tell them she was actually bisexual and extremely uncomfortable with being solely defined by her sexuality.
• Defector from Decadence: When Compound V's existence is leaked to the press, Elena suggests that this is a chance for her to leave the world of superheroes behind.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: She warms up in time to Starlight simply because she doesn't want to see Annie becoming another her.
• De-power: While she survives being at the epicenter of Soldier Boy's blast, she loses her power as a result. She's content to settle down to a normal life with Elena afterwards.
• Dirty Coward: As her ex-girlfriend Elena puts it, Maeve is afraid of standing up for herself, asking for help, and everything else. She sheds this status when she finally stands up to Homelander and refuses to back down on her threat to release the Flight 37 video.
• Disney Death: She somehow survives falling from the Vought tower along with Soldier Boy while he was using his Power Nullifier blast. Everything makes it seems she died until she appears fine (albeit powerless) afterwards.
• The Dog Bites Back: After spending much of the series being intimidated by Homelander and playing along with Vought's humiliating schemes, Maeve finally gets her own back by threatening to release footage recovered from Flight 37 to the world, exposing Homelander for the sociopath that he really is. While Homelander threatens to destroy everyone and everything if she does, Maeve retorts that she would be satisfied knowing that he would never again be adored by the multitudes, leaving Homelander speechless.
• Dude Magnet: She's a redheaded beauty that sleeps with several men to cope with her trauma and depression. It's revealed she's bisexual, and she ends up leaving with her girlfriend at the end of Season 3.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After all the crap she goes through, she gets to settle down with Elena and live a quiet life.
• Everyone Has Standards: What finally convinces her to help the Boys in the Season 2 finale is when she finds out Stormfront is a literal Nazi.
• Extreme Doormat: Hanging around Homelander and witnessing his depravity in person for so long has beaten her into absolute submission, and she acts less as a fellow superhero to him and more of a sidekick. Homelander is quite surprised when she finally stands up to him, noting he can't remember the last time it happened. She's this for Vought as well; her years working under their PR thumb has beaten any resistance to their marketing strategies out of her. Elena is dumbfounded that Maeva raises precisely zero protest to being branded a lesbian for the Brave Maeve campaign when she is, in fact, bisexual, or Vought's frankly clueless approaches to marketing her and Elena as a couple and the line of "Brave Maeve" products.
• Eye Scream: Homelander gouges out her eye during their fight in the season 3 finale.
  • According to Homelander, she saved a young girl from her insane father by flicking a pen into the man's eye.
• Flawless Token:
  • In-universe. While Maeve is a fundamentally decent person, she's far from flawless, but after being Forced Out of the Closet by Homelander on national television, Vought sees this as a marketing opportunity to extend representation and begin reworking their upcoming movie and marketing to emphasize this. Maeve is not fond of this arrangement, feeling objectified for her sexuality and not being treated as a person. As shown by her conversation with Ashley, who tried to get her back with Elena just for the cameras at the court case. When she's presumed dead, the first thing the media mentions in her memoriam is that she was a lesbian.
  • Out of universe she's still a pretty close example. She's stronger, more competent, and far more heroic than any male member of the Seven,^note Homelander slightly exceeds her in strength, but even then Kripke stated that she could beat him in a no-holds-barred fight. and in fact she and Starlight are both coincidentally the most moral members of the team and the only two females (aside from Stormfront's brief turn in season 2). She's notably never shown committing any great crimes, unlike all of the recurring male members, aside from keeping silent about Flight 37 which was only because Homelander bullied her into it.
• Fatal Flaw: Cynicism. Whatever idealism she once had was stamped out of her once she was exposed to the full depravity and vapid nature of The Seven. This makes her into a harsh and jaded individual who has become complicit in The Seven's misdeeds. She eventually grows out of it once she meets Starlight, who she sees herself in. Starlight gives her the hope and strength to finally break free from The Seven.
• Fate Worse than Death: She doesn't seem afraid to be killed by Homelander, but the thought of being kept alive so that he can harvest her eggs terrifies her.
• Foil: A subtle one to Butcher. Both of them are bitter, morally bankrupt people who practically ooze toxicity and act as a corrupting influence on their protegé figures (Annie and Hughie respectively). Maeve, however, ultimately registers how awful she's become and how her cynicism and cruelty have affected Annie, and advises her to stay optimistic and be herself. Billy, conversely, stays fixated on revenge and keeps trying to get Hughie to myopically pursue it along with him, even at the expense of their comrades. Both have had troubled relationships with their romantic interests, but whereas Maeve stays away from Elena for fear of what may happen if Homelander catches wind of them together, Billy deliberately seeks out Becca in hopes of prying her away from Vought.
• Forced Out of the Closet: Homelander tells the world she is gay (actually, bisexual) while they're on a talk show, after Maeve kept it secret with him as her beard.
• Gayngst: During Season 1, Maeve is still in the closet, to her ex-girlfriend's dismay, and one part of their relationship crumbling involved Maeve being unwilling (or unable) to come out as bisexual. Though she officially dated Homelander for a while, there's zero affection between them, indicating he was just her beard. In Season 2, Homelander spitefully outs her on national TV, with Vought rebranding her as a lesbian icon (they don't care that she's actually bisexual) and trying to get Maeve back together with Elena. She doesn't seem enthusiastic, though Maeve goes along with it.
• Good Is Not Nice: She will often insult and taunt others, especially Starlight for her naivety, seeing her as an annoying goody-two-shoes. Maeve is not a pleasant company to be around, but she was the only member of the Seven before Starlight's arrival that cared about being a genuine hero.
• Heel Realization: She gets a rather extreme one of these after Homelander talks her into abandoning a plane full of people to crash in the ocean, and again after a pretty harsh "The Reason You Suck" Speech from Annie.
• Heroic BSoD: She has one after Flight 37, getting drunk and showing up at her ex-girlfriend's house. She even tries to drunkenly make out with her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Subverted. She jumps in front of Soldier Boy's blast to save the Boys and company from it, but in the end, she survives, though powerless and badly injured from it and her fight with Homelander.
• Immune to Bullets: And is proven in the form of a tribute to Wonder Woman when Homelander shoots some ammunition into Maeve's chest in order to fake a terrorist attack.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: With a year prior present events, Maeve saved a little girl from her Ax-Crazy father who was holding a gun at her head, by throwing a pencil in his eye, from a distance of 25 meters.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Or rather, her teammate. After keeping it bottled up for years, Maeve finally tells her ex-girlfriend Elena this is the reason they can't be together. Homelander views Maeve as his, and has violently murdered at least one Hollywood producer who flirted a little too much with her. On finding out that Maeve was with Elena, he outs her spitefully in revenge on live national TV.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: After everything she's been through, Maeve is totally over the Supe lifestyle and is happier than we've ever seen her at the end of season 3, when she gets to live a normal life with Elena after faking her death after being de-powered by Soldier Boy.
• Jerkass to One: She really doesn't like Hughie or his baby-face, and never passes up an opportunity to insult or make fun of him just because. This is even after she fully turns against Homelander and Vought, and actively helps the Boys. Annie usually being in the same room as him is just about the only reason she doesn't swat him then and there.
• Kingpin in His Gym: Queen Maeve is shown easily defeating a number of burly men in her gym whom she's sparring with.
• Knight in Sour Armor: She certainly wants to do good for the world. But the idealism has been broken by all those years under Vought, as Maeve makes clear whenever she's discussing heroism with Starlight.
• Lady Legionnaire Wear: Her gear is a combination of Xena's and Wonder Woman (Rebirth)'s costumes.
• The Lad-ette: Maeve developed this personality over the years while dealing with Homelander and the toxic environment of Vought. She spends a lot of time being drunk, is verbally agresive to almost everyone, swears like no tomorrow, enjoys sparring, and has threesomes from time to time. She also quite the Miss Fanservice.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Bisexual variation of this trope. Maeve is long-haired, wears feminine clothing, and it turns out that she's a closeted bisexual (though outed as a lesbian, with Vought sticking to the label as it's "easier").
• Made of Indestructium:
  • In her first appearance on the show, Maeve stops an out-of-control armored truck with her body. She's completely unharmed, the truck all but disintegrates around her.
  • Averted when she had to save a school bus early in her career and ending up breaking every bone in her arm. It never entirely healed right.
  • Zig-Zagged in her Season 3 fight with Homelander. He does some impressive damage to her, including gouging her eye out. But at the end, she tackles a detonating Soldier Boy out of the tower, free-falling with him for several stories and survives, though all her injuries are intact because of Soldier Boy's Power Nullifier explosion.
• Meaningful Name: Her superhero name, Queen Maeve, is the Anglicised spelling of Queen Medb, a powerful fairy queen in Irish mythology who often acts as an antagonist against some of that mythology's most powerful male heroes (particularly Cu Chulainn in The Cattle Raid of Cooley). One of the Vought marketing guys also refers to her as "the Empress of the Otherworld" when he's pitching his concept for Maeve's public relationship with Elena in Season 2. In Irish mythology, the Otherworld is the fairies' homeland. It makes sense that Vought would play up a mythological angle for Queen Maeve's image, since she's their counterpart to Wonder Woman, who has a mythos steeped in Greek and Roman mythology.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: She wore bright blue in the comics, but wears rust red and iron colored armor in the show.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: While Maeve is not exactly willowy, she isn't very muscular either.
• My Suit Is Also Super: Despite taking a fair number of powerful hits, Maeve's suit goes undamaged throughout her endeavors. Even Homelander and Soldier Boy don't do more then scuff it.
• No Bisexuals: Invoked Trope and deconstructed to an extent. She ends up on the brunt end of this in the second season, when she's Forced Out of the Closet: Vought's PR staff immediately pivots towards turning her into a lesbian icon, and outright turn down the idea of acknowledging she's attracted to men because it's more cut-and-dry that way, and they believe that Viewers Are Morons.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: Throughout the first and second seasons, Maeve was crushed under Homelander's controlling thumb and was often forced to compromise her principles to go along with his will. At the end of "What I Know", she reveals the footage she has of the Flight 37 disaster, threatening to leak the footage if Homelander doesn't stop his hunt against Starlight and The Boys.
• Not So Stoic: There are occasions, such as during the Flight 37 incident where her cynical, disaffected mask slips. When she's forced to leave the passengers, including a little girl she befriended to die, she's visibly shattered.
• Not So Above It All: She's a very polite person. But when she leaves to see Elena in the hospital, Ashley's complaints about abandoning the incoming press junket lead Maeve to Flipping the Bird.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Dominique McElligot's natural Irish accent can be heard peeking through on a few occasions.
• Pet the Dog: She's the kindest of the Seven to Starlight and genuinely wants to save people even though her experiences have left her jaded.
• Preserve Your Gays: Erik Kripke declared that for all the hardships Maeve endured, he always wanted her to have a happy ending and intentionally subverted the Bury Your Gays trope for her.
• Psychological Projection: In Season 1, Maeve assumes that if she is apathetic about heroism, Starlight must be the same secretly and accuses Annie of doing the things just to keep the appearances for fame and money. Annie reveals to her that she used to read her biography asa child and believed that Maeve was truly a heroic figure. Annie ends her rant by telling Maeve she now believes all her heroic acts were probably just PR lies, leaving Maeve speechless.
• Rebuilt Pedestal: Growing up Starlight wanting to be just like Maeve (to the point she had to get second copy of Maeve's autobiography because she wore the first one out reading it so many times). Similar to the other members of The Seven, Starlight loses all respect for Maeve due to her "bottomless causal cruelty". However, when Maeve tells her that she really did use to be the hero she looked up to and that Starlight should keep being a real hero, the pedestal is rebuilt a little. It is further rebuilt when Maeve saves Annie's life against Black Noir and The Boys' lives against Stormfront.
• Revenge Before Reason: She’s usually about saving innocents first. But when the opportunity comes to kill Homelander, even when he’s trying to stop Soldier Boy from killing a child, she takes it.
• Sex for Solace:
  • She tries to hookup with her ex after the Flight 37 incident, but Elena refuses.
  • In Season 2, after Elena leaves her, she is shown in bed with two men.
  • She has sex with Butcher in Season 3 after drinking with him and realizing he's a person who hates Supes, Homelander, and themselves even more than she does.
• Shadow Archetype: Maeve is exactly what Starlight would become if she gives up on everything she stands for because of Homelander and Vought. Maeve tells Starlight that she used to be same idealist young girl, excited to be a heroine and help the people, until she started to give pieces of herself away. In season 2, Starlight starts to take same route as Maeve, by becoming cynical, giving up her Cristian faith and ideals and for a while, just doing whatever Vought is asking her.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: Shown vaping or smoking occasionally in season 2, and has a cigar box laying around in her apartment. Rather than a vector of glamor or badassery, it's instead shown in scenes where her trauma or anxieties emerge, implying it's a form of Drowning My Sorrows, alongside her alcoholism.
• The Snark Knight: She's not very social and dishes out mostly bitter snide remarks. When she tries to give a genuine advice to Starlight about not letting Vought get to her too, Starlight just tells her to make "whatever shitty comment [she] is gonna make" and live her alone.
• The Smurfette Principle: She used to be the only woman in the Seven before Starlight and Stormfront joined the team.
• Spared by the Adaptation: She ultimately survives her Heroic Sacrifice in the show. The same can't be said for her comic counterpart.
• Statuesque Stunner: She is a 5ft 8 (173 cm) beautiful redheaded woman.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: In episodes 7&8 of season 2 she manages to sneak up on Black Noir, Stormfront, and Homelander to save the day each time.
• Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: In the first episode, Queen Maeve jumps in front of the truck that was about to run someone over. She is completely unhurt, while the truck instantly has its engine crumble to pieces.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: She is usually a huge jerk, having to be on guard all the time due to Homelander's threats and mood swing, and she didn't have anyone nice to be nice back to during her time the Seven. She finally shows her good side after Starlight's arrival and getting back with Elena.
• Super-Strength: She's implied to be about the only Supe who can match Homelander in this department. Proven in the Season 2 finale, where she utterly demolishes Stormfront in a fistfight. This is later proven true in the Season 3 finale, where she manages to be the first character on-screen to make Homelander BLEED. Season 1 establishes a few hard limits for her - she broke every bone in her arm trying to stop a bus from falling off a precipice, and being in a crashing plane would kill her.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Played With. While she made an appearance first out of the universe, In-Universe, she succeeded Crimson Countess in the role of the sultry redhead who is the lover of the leader of her team and strongest superhero in the world.
• Token Good Teammate: Queen Maeve is shown to be more self-aware about how she, the Seven and other supes are not really heroes, but has just been browbeaten into accepting what is going on. She does often have a more moral reaction to some of the horrible things she sees the others do, and at other times tries to actually be heroic when possible.
• Uptown Girl: She is Queen Maeve, the dignified amazon of the Seven, in love with ordinary Elena.
• Wonder Woman Wannabe: Her "Amazon"-esque outfit and powers, along with alcoholism and cynicism make her a darker take on this trope. That said, her name and the design of her costume have more of a Celtic theme, as opposed to Wonder Woman's Greco-Roman inspiration.
• World's Strongest Woman: Appears to be the physically strongest female supe, as demonstrated by her dismantling Stormfront in their brief 1 v 1 after Stormfront had just wiped the floor with the Boys, Kimiko, and Starlight at the same time. She can also outmuscle Noir, who's been an Implacable Man in the first two seasons. She even manages to overwhelm Homelander himself in hand-to-hand combat.
• "You Used to Be Better" Speech: Starlight gives Maeve a pretty brutal one, in which she emphasizes that the older heroine used to be one of Annie's personal idols for her selflessness. It ends up leading Maeve to rediscover why she became a hero in the first place.

The Deep

The Deep / Kevin Moskowitz

"I mean, yeah, I can talk to fish. So what? How often do you need to be saved by a school of salmon?"

Portrayed by: Chace Crawford

Gills voiced by: Patton Oswalt

"I swear to God, they only call me when there's trouble at a dock. Or a river, or a lake, canal. A jetty. Fucking idiots, I could be doing so much more. But no, Vought just wants me to make my big pretty dives into the water and flash my fucking biceps for Instagram."

The "King of the Sea" and the least-respected member of The Seven.

---

• Achilles' Heel: His gills are necessary for him to breathe underwater, but they're also vulnerable to damage. When A-Train punches him right in the gills at the start of their fight in Season 3, the Deep doubles over instantly.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: He was already full of himself but in Season 3 his ego goes into overdrive, having convinced himself that he's Homelander's new favorite while unaware that he's only back in the Seven as a way to annoy Starlight.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: The Deep's comic costume is an embarrassingly goofy mishmash of a cape, a vintage diving helmet, and unflattering shorts. His appearance in the show is far more in line with what you'd expect a charismatic superhero to look like.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Oh boy. In the comics, The Deep is the least bad member of The Seven and never really does anything bad. Here, he's a neurotic sexual predator.
• Adaptational Personality Change: In the comics, Deep is a stoic guy that barely talks or does anything, virtually the opposite of Kevin, who is both a huge creep as well as unbelievably insecure and neurotic.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: Deep in the comics is a Flying Brick who got assigned the gimmick of sea-guy. In the show, he's got gills, can talk to sea animals, and can't fly.
• Adaptational Villainy: He went from being little more than the team's joke member to being the one who coerced Starlight into giving him a blowjob (and did the same to other women), whereas in the comics the Deep wasn't involved and was actually the only member of the Seven who didn't harass or bully Starlight in any way.
• Adaptational Wimp: The comics version of The Deep lacks any aquatic powers, is instead almost as strong as Homelander and can fly.
• Aesop Amnesia: He never seems to remember that his sad backstory doesn't excuse his treatment of women and overall sexual deviancy and every opportunity he's given to learn and improve himself ends up squandered.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Zigzagged. He's a rapist, sycophant, and an-all around asshole, but the huge number of ordeals and tortures he endures from so many people around him eventually becomes so disproportionate and out of hand that it will actually end up making you feel bad for him. Of course, it doesn't take long before he starts acting like a jerk again and reminds the audience why they hate him.
• All for Nothing: Despite all of his efforts in Season 2 working in the Church of the Collective in order to get back into the Seven, A-Train is chosen over him instead, much to the Deep's surprise and dismay.
  • Subverted at the beginning of Season 3 as his experiences with the Church of the Collective allow him to spin a narrative that he was a true victim of the Church, reclaiming his popularity and being brought back into The Seven. Then double subverted when the team is effectively disbanded by the end of the season.
• Ambiguously Jewish: His surname, Moskowitz, is of Ashkenazi origin.
• Apparently Human Merfolk: The Deep appears completely human at first, but is later shown to be one, with gills on his torso.
• Arranged Marriage:The Church of the Collective plan to rehabilitate his image is to marry him to one of their members, a woman named Cassandra. At first, she appears as a compassionate woman, but soon proves to be an ambitious and controlling woman with her own agenda. Despite being a terrible person, she does a good job at rehabilitating Kevin's image, until he ends up alienating her too, like all the women in his life.
• Ascended Extra: Had the least page time in the comics, with not a single story with him in an active role. He's a lot more prominent in the show, with his own ongoing, largely separate storyline in season 2.
• Awful Wedded Life: At the end of season two he marries a woman named Cassandra. The Deep complains to Alastair Adana that his wife is a "weirdo who gives terrible blowjobs". Season 3 explores their marriage, exposing Cassandra as a greedy, cruel and controlling woman who forces The Deep to endure all kind of humiliations at the cost of getting back in the Seven instead helping him grow as a person. Their sexual life is not rainbows and unicorns either. The Deep's idea of having intimate relationships in order to get closer to his wife is to engage in a three-way sexual experiences with octopuses. Cassandra feels completely humiliated by his demands and decides to finally divorce him by the end of Season 3.
• Bald of Evil: In the final episode of Season 1, he shaves his head in a fit of depression. In Season 2, his hair is slowly growing back and appears as a long buzz cut.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In Season 3 he finally gets his wish of getting back in the Seven. Just as Homelander is growing more unstable with each day, and looking for a convenient punching bag whenever he feels stressed out.
• The Beastmaster: Just like Aquaman, he can command sea creatures. Unlike Aquaman, he's absolutely terrible at using them sensibly.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: Given that The Deep can speak to sea creatures (like dolphins), he's the butt of cruel jokes by Homelander and A-Train who both say he has sex with them. Judging by his side of the conversation he has with a dolphin he attempts to rescue, there may be a grain of truth to the jokes. Further vindicated when he throws some dirty talk at his octopus friend Timothy, to the annoyance of his wife (especially since he is having sex with her at that very moment). Finally outright confirmed in Herogasm when Starlight catches him getting sucked off by an octopus.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • While he isn’t the sharpest tool in the Vought shed, and also likely the least powerful member of the Seven, he isn’t harmless. It’s just that he lacks any strategic and tactical competence to use his powers effectively. His admission that he once repeatedly dreamt about drowning A-Train to death and the fact that he almost caught The Boys by commanding sharks to attack their boat and a whale to block their path is a reminder of how dangerous he could be.
  • He's a sexual predator that has abused several women throughout his career.
  • In Season 1, we see him easily knock out two thugs with a few punches. This shows that he’s actually quite strong by human standards, it’s just that he’s weak in comparison to most other Supes.
  • In the Season 3 finale, he gets another chance to show how dangerous his powers can be when he uses his ability to breathe underwater to ambush VP candidate Lamar Bishop in the pool and drown him.
• Black Comedy Animal Cruelty:
  • Not on him so much (the dolphin was the one who wanted him to do sex stuff to it), but the dolphin and lobster he attempted to rescue both ended up dead on his watch.
  • In Season 2, a whale he brings in to stop The Boys gets fatally rammed by their speedboat!
  • A VERY dark example in Season 3; he is forced by Homelander (possibly tipped off by his wife) to eat an octopus friend of his from his aquarium who he looks at during sex.
    "He's praying."
  • The Deep eventually goes full bestiality when he gets a blowjob from an octopus at Herogasm, and later tries to rope it into a threesome with his sham wife.
• Brick Joke: In Season 1, he was trying to write his memoir Deeper but was having trouble actually putting down words. In Season 3 it's finally been published and he's peddling it for all it's worth, yet secretly admits to Homelander it's been ghostwritten.
• Broken Bird: He compares his treatment of Starlight to how he was treated when he first joined the team, saying it's just how the hierarchy works. With his love of marine life being his only redeeming feature, it's possible that he was a genuinely good guy before joining the Seven.
• Broken Pedestal: To use Starlight's own words, she "had a school girl crush on" The Deep. To say she was shocked, upset, and angered that he forced her to give him a blowjob is an understatement. When the Deep gets reinstated, Starlight nearly blacks out from fear and rage.
• Body Horror: The gills in his torso are, at very least, unsettling to look at. The Deep suffers from body image issues because of them.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: No matter how embarrassing or cringey it was, this is how he introduces himself after it is announced he won the competition show 'American Hero'.
• Butt-Monkey: While at first accomplished by ordinary standards (being a handsome, successful, and widely-beloved crime-fighter and celebrity), he was always this to the rest of the Seven. Starlight says that the others see him as a joke ("you're just the fish guy"), and he isn't seen being given any respect by them. He appears to be by far the weakest of the team as well; Starlight can shoot light, shrug off .50 caliber bullets, bench press a car, and so on, Maeve can stop a speeding semi-truck effortlessly, A-Train can run at supersonic speeds and has the Required Secondary Powers for that to work, Translucent can become both (almost) invincible and invisible, Black Noir is strong/fast enough to flatten Kimiko, and Homelander is an outright Physical God. The Deep? He has slightly superhuman strength (enough to Neck Lift a guy, make another back-flip by punching him, and punch out an A-Train who's not using his speed, and that's about it), can breathe underwater, can swim well, and... can talk to sea creatures.
  • He can't even use those powers efficiently, (see Cool, but Stupid below) and the animals he tries to save end up getting killed. So far the only time he looked threatening using his powers was in The Boys: Diabolical, when he interrogated a drug dealer with a shark and let the animal eat him alive. But in the very same episode, he's defeated by a girl with the power to control poop, in a sewer, surrounded by black water, and that gets called a better power than his. In Season 3, he gets into a fight with A-Train who isn't using his super speed, and only manages to tie. No wonder no one respects him.
• Captain Fishman: His whole deal is his Super Not-Drowning Skills and that he can talk to sea-life. Because of how specific his power-set is (and for marketing reasons), The Deep is often stuck with water-related crime fighting and resents it a little.
• The Chew Toy: He suffers a deserved series of humiliations and failures almost straight from the start. Homelander even uses an action figure of him as target practice.
• Church of Happyology: In Season 2, he joins the Church of the Collective after a few sessions meant to better himself. In reality, he was just trying to weasel his way back into the Seven. It didn't work.
• Cool, but Stupid: The only way to sum up how he uses powers, best seen when he chases the Boys in the ocean. Despite having a massive advantage thanks to the school of sharks and a sperm whale at his command, he squanders it all when instead of making use of their speed and mass to capsize their boat and leave them at his mercy, he orders the whale against all common sense to cut off the Boys' escape route by beaching herself in front of their destination so he can pose for nonexistent cameras. Even if Butcher wasn't crazy to ram the whale at top speed, the Deep never bothered to think that since the whale is now immobile and therefore useless, the Boys could just, you know, turn the boat and slightly alter their path so they would land on the coast anyways, where they would have the overwhelming advantage against him in both numbers and power.
• Composite Character: His name and ocean theme are all he really has in common with his comics counterpart, with his characterization as a sleazy, cowardly sexual predator being far more reminiscent of the comic's version of A-Train.
• Cruel Mercy: After the fact came to light that The Deep had sexually assaulted Starlight, and countless other women, he's spared any jail time, and is still a member of The Seven. However, he's exiled from New York City and assigned to patrol Sandusky, Ohio, a peaceful and relatively crime free town, and given a meager daily allowance. His main tasks are to attend local business openings and roller coaster inaugurations as well as put up with whatever vitriol the locals throw at him. When the military allows supes to volunteer, The Deep asks his handler how soon can he can join the Navy and get out of Sandusky, only to be told that for the time being, he's not allowed to go anywhere else.
• The Ditz: Definitely the dimmest bulb in the show, compounded by his inability to understand other people's feelings. In the beginning of Season 3 he bumps into Homelander who is obviously pissed off yet manages to say some fake platitudes in-between grinding his teeth. Rather than take this as a sign that he should run as far away as possible, the Deep instead thinks Homelander honestly likes him.
• Does Not Like Spam: He dislikes seafood which, given the nature of his powers, is quite justified. Even when presented with an already dead lobster, he's uncomfortable and quietly asks for some bread before reluctantly giving in to appease Homelander. invoked This gets even worse when he's presented with a live octopus (that he considers a friend) and ordered to eat it. Could be Fridge Brilliance, depending on how ambiguous his Jewishness is: lobster and octopus aren't kosher.
• Doom Magnet: Sea creatures have a tendency to suffer horrible deaths when he's around, several them because he was trying to save them in the first place.
• Drowning My Sorrows: He's coping with his Humiliation Conga in Season 1 by turning into an alcoholic, but he drops the habit once he joins the Church of the Collective.
• Dumbass Has a Point: His plan to use Black Noir as bait to lure Soldier Boy in so Vought can capture or kill him is actually a good idea. It only isn't put into motion because Homelander killed Noir a few minutes earlier unbeknownst to everyone else.
• Dumb Muscle: What he amounts to, even with the ability to control sea life — Deep is just so stupid that he never considers using his powers in ways beyond brute force. Complimenting this is that his only powers that don't relate to the ocean are Super-Strength and enhanced durability.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As awful as he is, the Deep genuinely cares about marine life and considers them his friends. This is exemplified in season 3 when Homelander forces him to eat his octopus friend, Timothy, even as the Deep practically begs for his life.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The Deep is shocked when Homelander asks him to kill the running vice president and make it look like an accident as he says this is a tantamount to treason. He's also very disturbed by animal cruelty. Specifically mistreatment of aquatic life. This is justified because he can literally hear their thoughts.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: He shaves his head bald at the end of Season 1 once he loses everything, but it slowly starts growing back in Season 2 as he resists every attempt to change himself. He's back to his initial hairstyle in Season 3 to show that he's made no progess and has stayed the same douchebag he's always been.
• Expy: Of Aquaman, being a water based hero that can communicate telepathically with sea life, who is also regarded as somewhat useless (alluding to the long disused meme of Aquaman's extreme situational prowess).
• Extreme Omnisexual: Humans and maritime life, and if he can have a ménage-a-trois with both, even better.
• Failure Hero: Anytime he does try to do the right thing, it goes hilariously wrong. Take for instance his rescue of the dolphin and the lobster.
• Fair-Weather Friend: When Alistair tells the Deep and A-Train that they're both suspects in leaking vital information to the press, Deep immediately accuses A-Train. Alistair then reassures him that this actually worked in their favour and would guarantee re-entry back into The Seven, at which point the Deep offers A-Train a high-five...only for Alistair to say that The Seven just wants A-Train back.
• Fan Disservice: His ass appears in two infamous situations; when he is about to mouth-rape Annie and in the third season, where Annie catches him getting a blow job from an octopus.
• Fatal Flaw: Inability to own up to his mistakes and Pride. A large part of the reason the Deep gets screwed over so much by everyone is that he can't acknowledge his flaws and thus tends to just brush off other's issues with his behavior. When he is finally faced with the consequences of his choices, he's too self-centered to change.
• Foil: To Homelander. Both are narcissist sex offenders and psychopathic Man Children who suffer humiliations in a way of another, but they are also very different from each other as characters. Homelander is the most powerful and important member of the Seven, being both the leader and the mascot for Vought, whereas the Deep is the weakest and least valuable member of the team. The Deep is mostly a harmless Butt-Monkey most of the time, but Homelander just becomes more and more unhinged with each humiliation he suffers, cementing his status as Knight of Cerebus with each season. The Deep is shown to be a fairly muscular man, yet he is a very weak Supe, whereas Homelander is Lean and Mean, but otherwise World's Strongest Man. They both wear pads under their costumes, The Deep for fanservice, and Homelander to make himself look more physically imposing than he is.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: While hardly the only male in the Seven wearing a fit superhero costume, Kevin's costume stands out the most as is clear that its purpose is to accentuate Deep's status as Mr. Fanservice.
• Freudian Excuse: His drug-induced journey of enlightenment has him argue with his gills about why he sexually harasses and assaults women; because he has his own insecurities about his body and dehumanizes and humiliates women before they can humiliate him first. He also talks about how his powers meant that he could hear aquatic animals begging for their lives since he was only 9 years old.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Let it be made clear that there are practically zero people who think that his past abuse and perceived uselessnes is justification for everything he has done to all the women he's subjected to Sexual Extortion. Starlight, in particular, is absolutely livid upon learning of his lack of respect among the Seven, since he had used his supposedly high rank to pull a Casting Couch.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He's the least effective member of the Seven, with the show playing up Aquaman's perceived uselessness as Homelander seems to use him the least when it comes to his plans. Compared to their powers and marketing, he's essentially a nobody, and when Starlight reveals what he did to her at the Believe Expo, Vought easily severs ties.
• Graceful in Their Element: When The Deep is in the ocean, he can be an effective hero as he was able to summon hundreds of fish to attack The Boys and he would have succeeded in capturing them if he thought through his plan more effectively. The main problem is that very few criminals or wrongdoers operate in the ocean, he didn't arrange back up or try to summon The Seven before handling The Boys, and he didn't think Butcher would be crazy enough to skewer the whale with a boat. Had he brought in backup, he would have captured them with a divide and conquer strategy, driving The Boys on to land and then ambushing them with another Supe or with a private army from Vought International.
• Green and Mean: His costume is mostly green, and while not the worst of The Seven, he's still a self-centered asshole.
• Handsome Lech: Kevin is one of the most handsome men alive, getting the attention even of someone such as Starlight, and his role in the team is to be Mr. Fanservice. On surface level, he seems like a charming, well meaning person who just happens to enjoy the attention he receives from his female audience, in reality, he always screws every chance he has to properly be with a woman by harassing, humiliating, and assaulting most of the women he encounters.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: While in general, his powers are extremely situational, his ability to talk to all marine life actually has its uses in intelligence gathering to the point where he dismisses Vought's entire intelligence section once he takes command of it because he makes them completely redundant. His ability to breathe underwater and swim to any depths also allow him to recover stuff from the sea that would otherwise be unrecoverable, such as Translucent's remains or a camera containing the footage of the Flight 37 incident.
• Hidden Depths: He can communicate with sea creatures and genuinely really cares about how badly they're treated. He even tries to rescue a dolphin and then a lobster, though both attempts end abysmally. Despite his teammates' mockery, his ability to scour the oceans turns up plot-critical stuff at least once a season (Translucent's body in season 1 and the camera from Flight 37 in season 2).
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He recruits A-Train into the Church of the Collective. When Edgar decides to take back one of the Church's Supes into the Seven, he chooses A-Train, which never would have happened if the Deep didn't recruit him.
• Higher Understanding Through Drugs: Thanks to the Mushroom Samba described below, he begins working through his insecurities in his hallucinogenic state.
• Hourglass Plot: The Deep starts Season 3 being in a stable marriage with Cassandra, his reputation is rebuilt among women and feminists, is a best-seller author with a movie adaptation of his book, and is constantly invited on popular talk shows. He ends the season with his wife leaving him after being fed up with his behaviour, she writes a book about all the abuse she aparently suffered at his hands, destroying his reputation in the process, again.
• Humiliation Conga: He suffers a rather severe (and karmic) one during the first season. Stillwell rejects and mocks his request to do something more substantive and meaningful with his fame. He then attempts to rescue a dolphin from an abusive captivity, but it dies horribly, and the incident becomes a media scandal. After his rape of Starlight is revealed, he is Reassigned to Antarctica, being sent to "guard" the calm and largely crime-free town of Sandusky, Ohio. There, he's scorned by the townsfolk, given a minuscule allowance by Vought, is relegated to publicity stunts like opening water park attractions, accidentally kills a lobster he wanted to save, and is abused by a fangirl. By the end of the season, he's on the verge of a mental breakdown.
• Hypocrite: While the Deep does appear to genuinely care about the environment (or at least oceanic animals), he drives a gas guzzling Hummer, one of the least environmentally friendly cars in existence. This is the least terrible thing about him.
  • In a commercial, he complains about polluting the ocean, only to burn said trash, polluting the air.
• I Am a Monster: How he feels by Season 2 with a combination of his powers and past actions, though there were apparently other cases of this in his past. His gills are a point of insecurity for him and his ability to hear aquatic animals begging for their lives throughout his childhood unnerved him. With the reveal that Compound V made him into what he is, he delves into this a lot more.
• Idiot Hero: He's far from the brightest Supe on the block. He makes countless impulsive, naïve and outright foolish decisions throughout the show which are all documented here. Even his attempts to do genuine good for the sealife he's supposed to protect invariably go awry due to his stupidity. He can't even properly space the title of his own memoir!
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: The Deep's stupidity is evident to everyone around him. If one were to ask the Deep himself though, he would say he has a "formidable intellect." FORMIDABLE INTELLECT! Lampshaded by A-Train.
  A-Train: You’re a joke and you’re so dumb, you don’t even know it.
• Ignored Epiphany: As noted under Freudian Excuse, his hallucinatory vision quest does lead to him recognizing his predatory behaviour towards women and the roots of its cause. His attempts to actually cease this behaviour only goes as far as trying to boost his own self-esteem however, as the remainder of the season proves he's still as self-centered and narcissistic as he was when he started.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He's a selfish, egotistical sex offender who's such a pathetic punching bag that the audience would end up feeling bad for him because he never succeeds in getting what he wants no matter how hard he tries. Not only does he always fail to save any aquatic life (to the point where he unintentionally gets them killed), but he utterly fails to get back into the Seven.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: The Deep has big blue eyes like Homelander, is a handsome man and his immature behaviour make him come out somewhat naive. It get subverted once you realize he is a sex offender too stupid for his own good.
• Irony:
  • After so many efforts, he finally gets back into the Seven in Season 3... only for the team to effectively disband.
  • He has a rather hairy chest, which wouldn't be helpful in any water sport.
• Ironic Name:
  • There is nothing very deep... about the Deep. Every time something happens to him that might teach him to grow as a person, he ignores the Aesop and returns to his shallow self, caring just for his own image.
  • The fact his real name is Kevin. Everyone who has a little bit of knowledge about kevinism, knows that people with this name tend to be unfairly seen by the society (the german one especially) as unintelligent persons prone to attention-seeking behaviour. The problem with Kevin is that he really embodies the negative reputation of the name.
• It's All About Me: He's not quite as bad as Homelander or A-Train in this regard, but it isn't saying much since he's still a self-centered jerk who sees all humans besides himself as not worth caring about. When he sees all the heads exploding on TV, the Deep is more concerned with his own safety. Even A-Train had the decency to look appalled at the carnage, which says a lot about how little the Deep thinks of others. Considering how he was mistreated by The Seven and felt betrayed when he lost his position in Vought, he likely didn't care because he believed there was a form of justice involved. In Season 3, he makes his attempts to makes amends to Starlight about himself, bragging to her about self-forgiveness and trying to bribe her into sweeping things under the rug.
• Japandering: Kirei Shoyu is a fictional Japanese food manufacturer and they employed the Deep to market their soy sauce in commercials. The commercials features the Deep speaking a broken japanese and befriending an octopus and a flying bottle of soy sauce.
• Lack of Empathy: An interesting example because he is capable of empathy, but towards sea creatures only. When it comes to fellow humans, the Deep gives absolutely no fucks as shown by the large number of women he's sexually assaulted and then forgot about.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • He sexually assaulted Starlight, making her give him oral sex. Later on, he is sexually abused himself during a one-night-stand with a psycho fan, who shoves her hands into his gills (something quite painful for him) after he repeatedly asks her to stop. Later still, in order to satisfy Homelander, the Deep has to put something in his mouth he doesn't want: his friend Timothy the octopus, who he has to eat alive as it begs for a quick death.
  • The Deep is later set up with a sham wife to help clean up his image. He complains that she gives bad blowjobs, and she is complicit in his torture.
  • When Alistair addresses both the Deep and A-Train regarding some leaked information, the Deep is quick to distance himself from A-Train. Then it turns out A-Train just got accepted back into the Seven, but the Deep is still stuck in career limbo.
  • By Season 3, the Deep is a Deconstruction of this trope, as he has terrible things happen to him so many times that starts becoming excessive, with him being forced to eat his octopus friend Timothy alive reaching Kick the Dog territory due to how mean spirited it is.
• Lethally Stupid: In Season 2, he tries to rejoin The Seven by capturing The Boys by himself. However, he vastly underestimated Butcher's ruthlessness during this attempt. He tries to force them on to land by using sharks to damage their boat and then he uses Lucy the whale to block the exit, believing Butcher wouldn't be brave enough to take on a member of The Seven and harm a whale. Except, Butcher just rams her with the boat and kills her, causing The Deep to fall deeper into his depression and develop survivor's guilt for getting Lucy killed. The Deep was operating under the belief that The Boys would act like comical goons who would give up at the sight of him.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: It says a lot about the overall moral fiber of the Seven that a serial rapist is still far from the worst member of the crew, but actually was (before the good-natured Starlight joined the team) the least dangerous one with (as far as the viewer can tell) the lowest body count.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Season 2 reveals that he was unaware that his powers came from Compound V, told that he was born with a gift.
• Logical Weakness: When they fight in the hallway in the third season, A-Train knocks him on his ass with a punch to the gills.
• Lord of the Ocean: One of his monikers is Lord of the Seven Seas.
• Manchild: The Deep, is absolutely incapable to think for himself, waits for others to take decisions for him, has the emotional intelligence of a gullible child, and believes everything he is told.
• Meaningless Meaningful Words: Deep thoughts with The Deep are a collection of youtube videos starring The Deep giving his deepest thoughts about the meaning of things. Several "gems" include: "You have my permission to love", "Real eyes realize real lies", "What if we stopped offering thoughts and prayers, and instead offered prayers and thoughts?".
• Meaningful Name: The name 'Kevin' has Irish roots and it means 'handsome'. The Deep is a handsome young man who got into the Seven because his physical appearance was all that matters to Vought. His role as a hero is to be objectified as Mr. Fanservice on Instagram.
• Misery Builds Character: Thoroughly subverted. After suffering a massive Humiliation Conga in season 1, the Deep joins the Church of the Collective, gains insight into why he acts the way he does, and looks like he's ready to make amends for what he's done. Then he stays the same selfish douche he's always been that everyone loves to hate, and ends the season in the same exact position he started in, the same exact mentality, and still clinging onto the selfish goal of getting back into the Seven.
• Morality Pet: His one redeeming quality is his compassion for marine animals.
• Mr. Fanservice: Since his powers only make him really useful in combatting water-adjacent crime, his main role on the team boils down to looking pretty on social media. He even uses booty pads.
• Mushroom Samba: In season 2 Eagle the Archer (in the interest of getting him to join his cult), slips Deep a mickey that has him working through his body issues via a hallucination of his gills talking to him.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: The most visibly muscular member of The Seven, but is a pathetically bad fighter.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Season 2 sees him go through regret for his actions and attempts to make amends, though most of the process is motivated through the chance to rejoin the Seven.
• Nature Hero: He wants to be this for ocean life, but Vought won't let him (and even makes him shill for a SeaWorld knockoff).
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Despite spending most of his time being just a Lethally Stupid Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, the Deep shows by the end of Season 3 that under a threatening commanding figure like Homelander, he can execute a flawless political assasination during the night, leave no clues behind and make it look like a drowning accident.
• Nutritional Nightmare: It's amazing he has as good a figure as he does considering he loves munching down on junk food whenever he's eating on-screen.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Pretty much every member of Seven, old or new, is usually stronger or at least smarter than him. He is aware of how overpowered is by everyone else and lashes out several time about being just the guy solving water crimes or posing for Instagram.
• Perma-Stubble: Subverted. Kevin does sports a nice trimmed stubble, but instead of being the grim badass anti-hero that comes with the trope, he is a pathetic Butt-Monkey whose all moments of badassery are sabotaged by his own stupidity.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: He becomes Homelander's unofficial cock-holster in Season 3 with some tips from his wife on how to gargle his balls. Considering that Homelander just forced him to eat his own octopus friend alive, it highlights how pathetic he really is.
• Psychological Projection: The Deep has a lot of self-esteem issues and severe body dysmorphia resulted from having gills on his torso. He sexually assaults women because he always assumes that his victims would anyway do the same to him or be too disgusted by his gills to develop a relationship with him.
• Race Lift: He's black in the comics but white in the show. Compare with A-Train, who is the opposite case.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Everyone thinks he's a massive piece of shit after he's exposed as a Serial Rapist, leading Edgar to conclude that he's permanently soiled goods that Vought won't touch with a ten-foot pole lest it starts a PR shitstorm they don't need on top of everything else.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: After being exposed for sexually assaulting Starlight (among other women), The Deep is forced to make a public apology and demoted to working in Sandusky, Ohio.
• Required Secondary Powers: He needs these to deal with the ocean water temperature and pressure. It's implied he has dived all the way down to the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth, which indicates he has the physiology necessary to survive being in water barely above freezing and immense pressure at over a thousand times that of standard atmospheric pressure.^ReferenceThe Mariana Trench has an average PSI, or Pounds per Square Inch of 16,000. Considering the human body can withstand 50 PSI of pressure in a sudden impact, or up to 400 PSI over a slow sustained increase, The Deep would need to be capable of withstanding force at least 40 times that of a normal human in a best case scenario of sustained force, or as high as 320 times in the worst case of immediate pressure.
• Secondary Color Nemesis: His costume is colored green, unlike the other members of the Seven. While almost everyone in the group is some degree of scum, it does set him apart as a more personal enemy to Starlight, who wears yellow and white.
• Serial Rapist: He extorts oral sex from Starlight, and Stillwell reveals this is far from the first time he's pulled a stunt like this.
• Sexual Karma: Unlike Hughie, The Deep's sex life is never portrayed a good light. He has a history of forcing women to give him oral sex for being their hero and when he's finally punished for his actions, he's the one who gets sexually abused when a woman refuses to stop putting her fingers in his gills, despite telling her how painful the act is to him. In Season 2 he is in an Arranged Marriage with a clingy wife that is bad at giving oral sex according to him. His tryst with an octopus is the one time he's ever shown having consensual sex.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Not that he is not a wimp, but he has to show his biceps, if he can't show his torso because of his gills.
• Spanner in the Works: He of all people serves as this in season 2. By recruiting A-Train into the Church of the Collective, he put the latter in a prime position to steal data on Stormfront's past stored in the Church's private archives and release it to the public. This leads to her downfall and slows down Vought's complete takeover of the US government.
• Stepford Smiler: He's become one after he's brought back into the Seven in season 3. He is trapped in an awful marriage and having to deal with Homelander bullying him, he makes fake smiles.
• Straw Loser: The Deep is consistently portrayed as the least powerful and competent of The Seven. Futher more he is easily one of the biggest targets for misfortune in the story, which is both portrayed was deserved and Played for Laughs.
• Therapy Is for the Weak: He rejects Eagle and Carol's attempts to have him better himself, though their odd behavior as members of the Church of the Collective also probably has something to do with it.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Discussed. The Deep complains that The Seven only send him in for things in or around water. It turns out that the rest think he's pathetic and a joke, to his annoyance.
• Trapped in Villainy: Homelander makes it clear that he will kill him if he doesn't obey his orders, including assassinating a politician.
• Trauma Conga Line: After Starlight hints that someone in The Seven assaulted her, everyone involved pretty much knows it's The Deep. It's outright stated there are other women, and with Starlight having unlocked the door, it's only a matter of time before one of them kicks it open. He is forced by Stillwell to make a public apology, then take a sabbatical from The Seven and get reassigned to Sandusky, Ohio. As Sandusky is lacking in violent crime, he's pretty much limited to water park openings. He meets a hot groupie and takes her back to his apartment for some playtime, and she rapes him while jamming her fingers in his gills (which hurts). When super-powered terrorists come to light, he's convinced he's finally going to get to come back and help out the Navy with dolphin-related secret projects, only to be told that's not going to happen. He tries to buy a lobster as a pet, only for the meat counter attendant to stab it in the head, thinking he wanted it for dinner. The last we see of The Deep, he's giving himself a Traumatic Haircut while repeatedly calling himself stupid. May or may not be enough to make you start feeling sorry for the guy.
• Traumatic Haircut: He gives himself one after being raped by a girl.
• Traveling at the Speed of Plot: A really egregious example in Season 2. He gets news at roughly the same time as the rest of the Seven that the Boys are harboring a Supe terrorist in the Atlantic Ocean and manages to find them first. The issue? He was over 700 km (about 430 miles) away in Sandusky, Ohio while the Seven were right by the coast in New York City, yet not only did he somehow cross that vast distance in an instant and outpace Homelander and A-Train but had the extra time to go around and find some local marine animals to do his bidding (although it might be possible that he was actually at the Church of the Collective, which could have a location near a coastline, or taken advantage of the city's location on Lake Erie to get to Buffalo and take the Erie Canal to the Hudson, though that would be a challenge for someone of his limited intellect).
• Unperson: Vought is seen downplaying his presence in the Seven by Season 2, much to his dismay.
• Villainous Underdog: The Deep is the least respected member of The Seven due to his abilities only being useful for water-based missions. Due to his ability to speak to aquatic animals, he's forced to stand by as he hears the animals being killed and beg for rescue from their captivity. Even worse, he's forced to support companies that pollute the seas and harm aquatic life. None of that excuses the fact that he's been sexually assaulting women.
• Villainous BSoD: Completely breaks down at the end of the first season, leading to him impulsively shaving his head in front of a mirror while crying and cursing at himself.
• Weaksauce Weakness: His gills. Getting "gill-punched" by A-Train once is enough for Deep to double over in pain.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: The Deep is an Aquaman expy, and rides very much on the "Aquaman is lame" memes. He is regularly dismissed by Homelander for talking to fish, and later shown in therapy venting his insecurities.

Black Noir

Black Noir / Earving

"..."

Portrayed by: Nathan Mitchell, Fritzy Klevans Destine (young)

"..."

The silent brute fighter of The Seven.

---

• The Ace: He's one of Vought's oldest and toughest heroes. He's not the most powerful member, but he's arguably the most competent member of the Seven. He's a highly skilled superhuman assassin and a better hand-to-hand fighter than even Maeve. He even succeeds in subduing her on Homelander's orders. He never questions orders and isn't as hedonistic and vulgar as most Supes. He's sent out to clean up the mistakes made by other members of the Seven, like being sent to kill the superpowered terrorist created by Homelander. He's also quite cultured, as he's seen drinking tea, practicing Buddhist meditation, drawing cartoon characters, and playing the Minute Waltz by Chopin on piano; Noir is one of the very few people Homelander actually respects.
• Adaptational Badass: Despite having considerably fewer (and weaker) abilities than his comic counterpart who is a clone of Homelander with all his abilities, Noir in the comics doesn't do much fighting and is most likely as untrained as the rest of the Seven. However, Noir in the show is an expert combatant and a master of several martial arts as well as weapons, all this despite sustaining severe, incurable brain damage in the 80s.
• Adaptational Heroism: In the comics, he was a clone of Homelander who committed many atrocities while impersonating him, which included rape, murder, and eating children. He was also the one who raped Becca, and he was one of the Supes who sexually harassed Starlight. Here, not only is it shown that he's not Homelander's clone due to being a black man, but The Deep is the only one of the Seven who sexually harasses Starlight and we learn that Homelander really did rape Becca. He's also seen briefly trying to comfort a child after he had just killed some terrorists in the household, he looked appalled when he saw the whale Billy impaled, and when the truth about Compound V comes out, he's shown crying. Additionally, The Boys: Diabolical reveals that while he is responsible for Homelander's villainy due to being the one who taught him how to use PR to cover up his mishaps, this is mostly due to him being The Dragon to Edgar and paints Noir as an Unwitting Instigator of Doom, while in the comics he drove Homelander to villainy so he could replace him.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In the comics, Noir is not only one of the three Seven members who sexually assault Starlight on her first day, but he's generally a complete deviant, being responsible for the rape of Butcher's wife and is heavily implied to have done the same, if not worse to others. Comic Noir's depravity knows no bounds, and he also sexually assaults Hughie for laughs during Herogasm. In the show, Noir doesn't display any sort of sexual interest towards anyone, and it's debatable whether he even can, given his severe brain damage leaving him with a stunted, child-like mentality.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: In the comics, Black Noir is shown to be a Flying Brick with Eye Beams when he finally gets serious. In the show, he has a Healing Factor.
• Adaptational Sympathy: Noir's Dark and Troubled Past with Soldier Boy, who abused him significantly like everyone else in Payback, all because he wanted to make something for his life and stand out as a comedic actor that led to him suffering permanent brain damage during the Nicaragua mission when finally jumping Soldier Boy, which paints him in a vastly more sympathetic light than that of his comic counterpart who was bred as a weapon solely to dispose of Homelander should the need arise and went crazy enough from waiting to fulfill his purpose that he jumped the gun to framing Homelander for atrocities he didn't commit.
• Adaptational Ugliness: While the comic Noir (as a clone of him) looked exactly like the handsome Homelander, here his face is covered in gruesome scarring.
• Adaptational Wimp: In the comics, he's at least as durable as Homelander, but here he's injured by Kimiko and later a bomb. Going off of how Hughie's bullet went right through his hand, he's not even bulletproof, although unlike his comics counterpart he compensates for his relative lack of durability with a Healing Factor. He also has a tree nut allergy that hospitalizes him before the Season 2 finale, was severely wounded by a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Soldier Boy, and finally killed via Homelander, whom he had killed in the comics instead, disembowling him.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In the comics, Black Noir turns out to be Homelander's insane clone and the one responsible for most of Homelander's most heinous actions, including the baby eating and the rape of Butcher's wife and instead of being killed by Homelander as in the show, in the comics Noir is the one that brutally murders Homelander.
• Adaptation Distillation: The comics have him be a clone of Homelander who committed most of the crimes the latter was believed to be guilty of, such as raping Becca. Here, while Black Noir is not Homelander's clone, it is revealed in The Boys: Diabolical that he is still responsible for the worst of Homelander's actions because he covered up Homelander's initial botched mission in a way that absolved him of all blame, causing Homelander to adopt his Never My Fault attitude. Additionally, while in the comics Black Noir was designed as a contingency plan in the event that Homelander went rogue, here Stan Edgar explicitly has him around to act as The Handler for Homelander.
• Age Lift: In the comics, Black Noir and Homelander were the same age. At least, physically. As a clone, Noir would actually be far younger. In the show, he's a contemporary of Edgar, making him much older than Homelander. Season 3 and Diabolical both show he was an experienced veteran hero long before Homelander came into the picture.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite his ruthlessness, one can't help feel pity for him when he was murdered by Homelander, the son of the man who relentlessly bullied and scarred him. He's mourned by his imaginary friend, Buster Beaver.
• Ambiguously Evil: Black Noir is shown to be a very morally ambiguous individual. As he's shown to not be necessarily evil or manipulative as other members of The Seven (besides Maeve), though he is willing to enact any form of assassinations that are needed by Vought. However he Would Not Hurt A Child and in his backstory he is seen to be quite meek as well as having aspiring hopes to be an actor. It's safe to say he wasn't a horrible person, but is a man who now only follows orders as well as having a hidden innocent mindset due to the brain damage caused by Soldier Boy.
• Atrocious Alias: His name literally translates to "Black Black".
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Black Noir doesn't talk and is among the most brutal supes in the Seven. He had some military interventions on his record that should get him arrested for war crimes and he tends to not care about collateral or even killing friendlies in gruesome ways.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Similarly, Black Noir is incredibly silly on occasion and provides some excellent Silent Snarker comic relief when not in battle. But when he is in battle, he is a fierce no-nonsense Implacable Man.
• The Blank: His mask has this effect, resembling Batman's empty cowl. The lack of speech or physical quirks makes him seem almost robot-like.
• Body Horror: Underneath the suit is what can be best described as a walking corpse; Black Noir is covered by years of bruises, burns, and scars that, while mostly healed, are still largely physically intact. This is also the reason why he's unable to talk as he sustained a lacerated throat when fighting in the Contra war. Also he got a serious brain damage fighting Soldier Boy.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite being completely silent and a ruthless assassin, Black Noir is seen doing some silly things in the background, which includes dancing at club, failing to get the attention of a waiter, playing a surprisingly upbeat piece at a restaurant (Chopin's Minute Waltz), and dramatically sobbing when the secret behind Compound V is revealed. He also enjoys drinking tea and has a hobby drawing cartoon characters.
• Canon Character All Along: Inverted. Black Noir isn't a clone of Homelander, but a new character named Earving.
• Captain Ethnic: Zig-Zagged: He is indeed an African American man underneath the helmet but the costume was designed specifically to hide his ethnicity and improve his marketability. Any hopes he had to reveal his blackness to the public was shot down by his disfigurement during the mission in Nicaragua.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Downplayed; He hallucinates speaking with friendly cartoon characters when thinking about his past and whether or not to fight Soldier Boy after he returns. It's implied he's been hallucinating ever since Soldier Boy gave him permanent brain damage.
• Co-Dragons: Serves as Stan Edgar's most trusted agent on the Seven, with many of his actions being undertaken on his direct orders, although Victoria Neuman is Edgar's most valued agent in political matters.
• Color Character: Black Noir.
• Combat Pragmatist: Black Noir seems to prefer knives, smashing his opponent against the environment and strangling in his fighting style. He also prefers silent takedowns and getting the drop on enemies over engaging them head-on, but his hand-to-hand combat skills and durability still put most to shame.
• The Comically Serious: At social gatherings, he can be seen drinking from a straw or playing the piano. All while wearing his intimidating costume.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Unlike most of the supes who are parodies of DC and Marvel heroes, Black Noir is an evil version of Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe. The black suit, face concealing helmet, ninja swords, and being unable to speak due to a past injury all resemble to the American ninja hero.
• Cowardly Lion: He freaks out upon learning that Soldier Boy is alive and leaves Homelander to face him on his own as he was the one who sold Ben out to the Russians. Considering how Soldier Boy treated him in Payback and the injuries he inflicted upon him before being subdued by the rest of the team, he's right to be frightened. The cartoon animals he hallucinates afterwards once he retreats to an abandoned Suck E. Cheese's to cope with his issues frame it as him suffering a panic attack underneath his silent exterior, encouraging him to face Soldier Boy again despite his fears toward his old abuser.
• The Cowl: Fitting for a Batman counterpart. Focusing on silent take-downs, lurking, and fighting with his bare hands, he's trained to work in secrecy and is assigned more covert operations. He has a similar position in the Seven as Batman does in the Justice League, being one of the "big three" along with Maeve and Homelander, just like Batman is one of the Justice League's three biggest names along with Wonder Woman and Superman.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Gets his guts ripped out by Homelander after the former feels betrayed by Noir withholding information from him about his relation to Soldier Boy.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Starlight, Kimiko, and Naqib don't stand a chance against him. Neither do street thugs, obviously.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: While they're unable to stop him and would've been killed had Edgar not called Noir off, Butcher, Hughie, and MM do inflict some good damage on him during their fight. They set up booby traps that ruin his stealthy approach, resulting in him triggering homemade bombs that leave noticeable wounds on his body. He's later taken off guard by Hughie with a pistol and, while the rounds bounce off his armor, at least one manages to hit home and penetrate his hand.
• Decomposite Character: The comic book basis of Noir is split across several characters besides himself.
  • His role as the one who raped Becca is given to Homelander himself, instead of Noir merely framing Homelander as part of a gambit to drive him insane. This along with many of his other Kick the Dog moments and role as the true Big Bad are seemingly just transferred to Homelander.
  • Stormfront also takes over his role as the one who corrupts Homelander, though still downplayed as he was already a monster and she's just making him worse.
  • His comic aspect of being a countermeasure for Homelander is transferred to the show counterpart of Noir's comic book son, Ryan.
  • As a black man who stays out of the spotlight and is considerably less depraved than his teammates, he's similar to the comic version of the Deep.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of The Team Normal as demonstrated by Batman and Black Panther. He's the most "normal" of the group in that he chooses to fight with bare fists and weapons and is responsible enough to not display any vices. It ends up making him more alien as opposed to humanizing him, due to his enigmatic and robotic nature and knowing that he's still capable enough to keep up with the rest of The Seven.
• Dented Iron: His healing factor and resilience has been tested since the Cold War, while still strong he can't talk anymore because of damage sustained to his vocal cords and brain.
• Department of Redundancy Department: "Noir" in French means black. So his name is "Black Black".
• Devious Daggers: Noir is a silent, stealthy hero who wields short blades and throwing knives.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: The third season reveals that he is unable to speak at all because of injuries that Soldier Boy inflicted on him, when the comic made it clear that he was able to speak in spite of being silent for the majority of the series. It's also implied that the injuries left him blind in one eye.
• The Dog Bites Back: Attempted to fight back against Soldier Boy in Nicaragua with the rest of Payback (sans Gunpowder) after all the abuse they suffered at his hands, and while successful in disposing of him, Black Noir suffered immense physical injuries and severe brain damage that permanently handicapped his higher functions including speech.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Black Noir was the person that planned and got a green light from Edgar to let the Russians kidnap Soldier Boy. Got extremely injured to the point of face mutilation and permanent brain damage in the process, but in the end they were successful.
• The Dragon: On top of being Co-Dragons for Edgar, he's also Homelander's most trusted associate, sticking by his side even after Edgar is ousted from Vought. It doesn't last long, as Noir leaves the moment he learns Soldier Boy is back and is killed by Homelander once he returns. Of Homelander's remaining subordinates, Ashley is too much of a doormat and the Deep is too incompetent to properly fill the now vacant role.
• The Dreaded: Black Noir is deeply feared by criminals, the Boys, and even his fellow superheroes and the general public at times. Even Butcher, who is one of the very few people who aren't scared of Homelander, is noticeably worried when he realizes Black Noir is spying on him and the Boys. Noir is even more feared than Homelander (in general) due to the public being unaware of Homelander's true nature, which gives the Boys a small but specific weakness to exploit. The Boys have nothing to bargain with when it comes to Black Noir as he is such a mysterious character that their threats and bribes do not affect him, Butcher was only able to call him off by blackmailing Stan Edgar, not Noir himself.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He gets unceremoniously killed by Homelander (or so it seems) for hiding the fact that Soldier Boy's his father.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's genuinely upset by the gruesome death of a whale, and doesn't have any desire to hurt children (as seen in Naqib's compound). He's also disgusted by Soldier Boy's actions and calls him a "piece of shit" for all the abuse he put Payback through. This loathing of Soldier Boy was great enough to the point that he eagerly agreed to get rid of him when Stan Edgar requested it.
• Evil Counterpart: Downplayed. He and Kimiko both are the silent brutes of their groups with a lot of blood in their hands, but Black Noir will kill innocent people too, unlike Kimiko. He is also a False Friend to Homelander, while Kimiko stays loyal to her group, and keeps her word to Butcher to complete the mission in Russia despite their rocky relationship.
• Expy:
  • He is not only one to Batman, but also one to Marvel's Deadpool. As they are both horribly scarred, yet extremely durable super powered assassins with a tenuous grip on reality and a tendency towards hallucinations.
  • His silent, obscured appearance, terrifying presence in a battle and altered perception of reality around him through a more child-like lens makes him have multiple similarities to The Pyro.
• The Faceless: His head and face are always completely covered by a black mask.Underneath, he's apparently badly disfigured and suffering old injuries from Payback's betrayal of Soldier boy at Nicaragua, including having a noticeable gash in his skull caused by the latter's shield. Beforehand, he was fairly good-looking and even considered a career in acting, but afterwards, he's a mangled mess underneath his intimidating appearance.
• False Friend: Homelander mistakes Noir's reliability as friendship, since Noir has been helping him ever since his first day as superhero. Noir doesn't particularly care about Homelander and just stay close for Vought's interest. Considering Homelander is secretly the son of Noir's old abuser, Soldier Boy, their superficially-close relationship as perceived by outsiders and Homelander himself takes on a level of dark Irony. Although there are hints that Noir did grow to care for Homelander while keeping tabs on him.
• Fatal Flaw: Submissiveness. Black Noir has no agency of his own and will not make any meaningful decisions without permission from an authority figure, such as Stan Edgar or Homelander. This causes him to spend who knows how long being abused by Soldier Boy during his early days, only rebelling when given the green light by Edgar, causing him to lose half his face and some brain matter in their fight. To make matters worse, Homelander mistakes Black Noir's meekness and willingness to do as he's told as loyalty and friendship, so when Black Noir runs away from the Seven to avoid Soldier Boy, and later is exposed as having known about Soldier Boy being Homelander's father, Homelander kills him for his apparent disloyalty. Had Black Noir shown even a little bit of personal initiative, he might have avoided his final fate.
• Fights Like a Normal: As a member of the Seven, Black Noir is confirmed to have super powers, but he doesn't use any onscreen besides the bare minimum superhuman strength and durability needed to fight against the Female.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When offered a candy bar by a Vought employee, he has her throw it away instead. In "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker", it's revealed that he has an allergy to tree-nuts.
  • In the flashback to Mallory's recollection of the mission at Nicaragua, in the aftermath of the attack she stumbles across the badly-burned and helmetless Black Noir, apparently caught in an explosion during the attack, with a noticeable gash cut deep into his skull. It's later revealed this wasn't because of the attack by the russians, but Payback collectively turning on Soldier Boy to give him his due comeuppance, eventually subduing him with nerve gas, but not before he painfully mutilated Black Noir's face on a burning car hood and caved his skull in with his shield, causing him long-lasting brain damage.
• Funny Background Event: Quite a few.
  • In Season 1, a scene at a club shows Noir dancing in the background.
  • During the movie pitch for Dawn of the Seven, Black Noir is shown to have fallen asleep.
  • During Vought's PR event, Noir and Homelander are seen distributing blankets. No one takes Noir's blankets and Noir lowers his head in sadness.
• Glass Cannon: In relative terms. Black Noir definitely has considerable Super-Toughness, as he can take punches from Kimiko and Starlight and wasn't reduced to giblets by Naqib's explosion. However he seems far more fragile than other high-tier supes, especially to impacts other than blunt force trauma; Naqib's explosion visibly wounded him, as did a smaller one back in Nicaragua, and bullets are shown to penetrate his skin. It seems he actually has use for the armor he wears. Despite all this he's still more than strong enough to beat nominally tougher supes to a pulp. Homelander disembowls him with a single hit in the final episode of season 3, while he needs many hits to inflict any notable amount of damage on the not-that-much-stronger Maeve and Soldier Boy.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Noir isn't nearly as durable as the likes of Maeve or even Starlight, with even a pistol round at close range going right through his hand. He makes up for this with his Healing Factor and implicit immunity to pain.
• Graceful Loser: While Soldier Boy cost him his chance to become a movie star, he doesn't seem too broken up about Eddie Murphy getting the role of Axel Foley, and in fact tries to follow his example.
• Guest Fighter: Appears as an Operator in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II during a limited time event.
• Handicapped Badass: Given the revelations about his past in season 3...
• Healing Factor: Implied. Noir has been visibly injured several times in the course of the series but seems to bounce back almost instantly, most recently when Hughie shot him in the hand at close range and the bullet went straight through his palm with a visible plume of blood. Not a minute later he's giving Butcher a Neck Lift with the same hand and isn't even bleeding. Although as we see in Season 2, the scars from burns and injuries stay on him permanently. Also it can not heal serious brain damage
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Attempted to invoke this to help further his career. Sadly, it might have helped protect him a little had he chosen to wear it when taking on Soldier Boy.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Shown when he wordlessly glowers at a pianist until he steps away from the piano, then sits down by it himself and plays the Minute Waltz, a much faster and upbeat piece than what the other guy was playing. Also, in a promotional video shot by Vought to showcase the members of the Seven, Black Noir's personal hobby is revealed to be drinking green tea according in the practice of the Japanese tea ceremony - an art with Zen Buddhist undertones.
  • After the truth behind Compound V is revealed, he's shown watching the news on his phone and apparently quite upset.
  • Shortly after he assassinates Naqib, he plays with the toy of a child witness to cheer him up.
  • He puts his hand over his heart when he sees eviscerated and dying Lucy the whale.
  • Despite his many quirks, non-verbalism and being the relatively least flashy superhero out of The Seven, The Boys: Diabolical reveals that he was Vought's top ranked hero prior to Homelander's debut, is popular to the point where the spotlight is quickly shifted over to him despite Homelander's first impression and is quite acknowledgeable in PR tactics to which he taught Homelander on how to maintain his public image. Season 3 implies that this is because he has a Villainous Friendship with Stan Edgar, who may have helped him with this as compensation for how badly Black Noir was injured in the mission in Nicaragua.
  • Is revealed to have attempted to make it big as a comedy actor in Beverley Hills Cop. These dreams were ruined due to Soldier Boy spreading false information about Noir to the director.
  • Going off a comment by his hallucinations when Homelander eviscerates him, he's a member of the Christian faith.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Black Noir, the clad in all-black superhero whose alias literally means "Black Black" in two different languages, is secretly a black man because black supes polled low in the Deep South when he was introduced.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Notably played straight as he is quickly spotted by Butcher on a rooftop, wearing all black in broad daylight. He also sets off every trap the Boys plant on him, destroying an entire living room in the process. However, given his skill in stealth showcased in the rest of the season, it may be that Black Noir simply didn't care about stealth against a group of non-supes and wanted to send a message that they couldn't hurt him.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Homelander sees him as this (even though Noir certainly does not see himself as a sidekick). Noir is the only one that Homelander praises during meetings and although Homelander has shown a disdain for "cripples", he highly respects Noir. When Soldier Boy returns, Homelander says he's glad to have Noir on his side at a time like this (seeing Starlight and Maeve as traitors and A-Train and the Deep as useless. Homelander even says that Noir was worth more than A-Train and the Deep combined.
• Immortal Assassin: So far, he's managed to shrug off almost every attempt to stop him and almost invariably manages to kill his target, barring exceptional circumstances. Kimiko survives her apparent death at his hands because of her hitherto undisclosed Healing Factor and Butcher manages to get him off the Boys' backs by blackmailing Edgar with Homelander's rape of Becca. Even Starlight was on the receiving end of a beatdown by him and it is only with Maeve's intervention that she manages to escape.
• Implacable Man: He never stops coming, literally walking through all opposition. Given he suffered multiple physical beatings at the hands of Soldier Boy, survived Homelander trying to kill him after a failed mission and even survived a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown from Soldier Boy that would have easily killed a lesser man, albeit not without cost, it's likely simply that there's little else anyone could do to him that he hasn't already endured.
• In Name Only: Aside from his superhero codename and aesthetic, Black Noir is a radically different character in the Prime series. While he does play the role of being The Corrupter to Homelander like in comics, the circumstances are very much unintentional and different as well.
• Irony:
  • When he was younger, Noir hated his silent ninja gimmick and wanted to stop wearing his mask so he could market his face. Said face was horrifically scarred and his vocal chords were destroyed minutes later and he put the mask back on so he could hide his injuries.
  • His name means "black black," his costume is black, his weapons are black, everything about him is black. Yet 30 years ago, he couldn't take off his costume and show his skin is black because America was far more racist back then. By the present day when Vought would happily let him take off the mask and cash in on diversity points with the public, it's far too late as his face is too scarred to show off.
  • As an assassin, Black Noir often killed people from the shadows and had the element of surprise. In a majority of fights against The Boys, he's often defeated by being caught off-guard. When he fought Kimiko, he wasn't expecting her and was unprepared to fight another Supe as he planning to kill Frenchie at the time. He almost killed Butcher, Hughie, and M.M. but had to retreat after Butcher blackmailed Stan Edgar into making him back down. He nearly killed Starlight but was incapacitated after being force-fed an Almond Joy by Maeve to trigger his tree nut allergy. Finally, he was killed by Homelander when the latter put him in a false sense of security and got him to reveal that he knew all along that Soldier Boy was his father.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Back in the Eighties,before being permanently scarred by Soldier Boy, Black Noir was a conventionally handsome young black man.
• Jerkass: Though he's not as abrasive as most examples and he genuinely just follows orders most of the time. He blows off Starlight's attempt at an introduction and intimidates a musician into letting him play the piano and cuts the throat of an old female bystander in Syria, though he Would Not Hurt A Child. He also allies with Homelander, despite knowing full well how horrible he truly is, though it's later revealed that this is at least in part damage control for Vought's public image so he can clean up Homelander's messes if necessary and he personally doesn't really care about Homelander as an individual. However, in the Season 3 finale, it's shown that he does consider Homelander to at least be somewhat of a friend. .
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though rarely shown, Black Noir is one of the few supes who isn't a generally or outright callous individual. As he's shown to have a soft spot for children being that he wouldn't dare hurt or kill one and he is overall very cordial albeit silently. He is also shown to care for his teammates in his backstory by all of them agreeing to stand up against Soldier Boy for his abusive behavior towards them.
• Knight of Cerebus: Black Noir was the first real threat from The Seven to The Boys: Maeve was never completely on Vought's side so she never fought them directly, Homelander never recognized Butcher as a threat and often played with his prey, A-train was more concerned about his status in The Seven and avoided The Boys until he was forced to fight them, The Deep only had an advantage when he was in the ocean and Translucent was the first member of The Seven to officially be killed by The Boys after carelessly bragging about his powers (which allowed Hughie to figure out that he was vulnerable to electricity). Unlike A-Train or Homelander, Black Noir was nowhere near as theatrical as he hid in the shadows and silently killed everyone who got in his way. The few times he actually fights the Boys, they are quickly backed into a corner and outmatched until Noir is caught off-guard or forced to retreat. Black Noir fought Kimiko and inflicted heavy damage on her but retreated after leaving her to bleed out. He nearly killed Butcher, Hughie, and M.M. without taking much damage and only backed off when Butcher told Stan Edgar he had incriminating photos of Ryan's existence. Noir nearly killed Starlight but was defeated by Maeve after being caught off-guard and force-fed an Almond Joy. It's also worth noting that in the fight against Noir, Butcher initially chooses to hide with his aunt, Hughie, M.M., and Terror rather than try to taunt Noir or fight him one-on-one.
• Laser-Guided Karma: It's more tragic than most examples, but his death is ultimately this. In season 3, he abandoned Homelander during a time when he was most vulnerable and in need of emotional support, despite Homelander genuinely considering him his friend. Homelander would end up paying him back in a way, after Black Noir inadvertently presses his Berserk Button by revealing that he knew Soldier Boy was Homelander's father but never told him. And as he had an indirect role in Homelander becoming a violent maniac, he also directly paid the price for it.
• Locked Out of the Loop: He sobs when reacting to the breaking news story about Compound V and the origin of superpowers, implying that he had no idea that his powers came from Compound V.
• McNinja: His public persona. A black American whose abilities and character are centered around East Asian hobbies and aesthetics.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He's on the receiving end of this when it's revealed that Soldier Boy brutally assaulted him when he attempted to branch out into doing films. Soldier Boy is also shown to be the one that gave Noir his burn scars and caused his mutism by bashing his brains in.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently during the Time Skip between seasons 2 and 3, he did something to a Hard Rock Cafe in Lagos that Robert Singer calls a war crime and which his Imaginary Friend, Buster Beaver, had to comfort him about.
• Not His Sled: With the partial reveal of his face in Season 2 that is explored more in a flashback in Season 3, it's confirmed that unlike the comics, this version of Black Noir is not a clone of Homelander.
• Not So Stoic: When the news about Compound V breaks out in Season 2, he is shown sitting on the floor in a hallway silently crying.
  • When Noir finds out that Soldier Boy is alive and coming after him, he immediately decides to flee the Tower and literally rips his tracking chip out from the flesh of his arm. Mind you, this is the same guy that's never been scared of getting hurt or fighting other super powered people.
  • Additionally, when he's forced to remember what Soldier Boy did to him, the memories make him visibly flinch and recoil.
• Older Than They Look: Well, Noir doesn't really look like anything, however he moves and fights like he's in the prime of his life. But he'd have to be in his late 50s at the minimum in the present day, making him the oldest of the Seven by at least 20 years. He likely ages differently thanks to Compound V, but it's unknown if he's The Ageless like Soldier Boy and Stormfront, or simply Long-Lived.
• Out of Focus: Being faceless and wordless, he gets the least focus of the Seven in Season 1. This ends in season 3, with the return of Soldier Boy and his Revenge against his old team Payback, of which Noir was a primary member, for their betrayal of him in Nicaragua. Noir is not only shown without his helmet and allowed to emote vocally, his current silent, obscured appearance is revealed to be because of injuries inflicted on him by Soldier Boy's brutal beatdown, with it revealed that Noir suffers various hallucinations and an altered perception of reality underneath the mask.
• Professional Killer: While he's publicly shown as a member of the Seven, his true job seems to be as Edgar's personal hitman.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Black Noir is ruthless and will kill whoever his bosses tell him (and whoever gets between him and his target), but unlike the rest of the Supes he's not particularly depraved outside of that. His hobbies (like piano-playing and tea-making) are mundane, he doesn't go out of his way to torture his targets, and he won't kill anyone he doesn't need to (e.g. he spared the child witness of his assassination of Naqib). Epitomized in his confrontation with Butcher and the Boys: he goes from ready to disembowel them to walking away without incident (despite them having shot him) the moment that his boss takes them off the hit list. Season 3 reveals that, due to severe brain damage, he may not even possess the moral agency to know that what he's doing is wrong.
• Punny Name: Black Noir is a black-skinned man, dressed in black from head to toe.
• Put on a Bus: His allergic reaction to the Almond Joy in "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker" puts him out of commission for the last episode. He recovers in the 1 year timeskip between seasons 2 and 3.
• Race Lift: Season 2 Episode 7 reveals that Black Noir is a very scarred and burned black man, whereas in the comics, he was a clone of Homelander, who's white and blonde.
• The Reliable One: Homelander praises him as this when the rest of the Seven's mishaps begin piling up. In Season 2, Mr. Edgar uses him to clean up the mess that Homelander has created, tracking down super terrorist Naqib and later Billy Butcher. Even in his younger days as just another supe, as a member of Payback, he and Soldier Boy are the only supes who show any kind of competency during the Sandinista attack, to the point that the only reason Noir was as disfigured as he was in said attack being because it came at Soldier Boy's hands.
  • By the time Season Three rolls around, even throughout his Sanity Slippage, Homelander continues to genuinely praise Black Noir, being the only one of the Seven he doesn't bully or intimidate. He thanks Noir sincerely for having his back... right before Black Noir pulls a Screw This, I'm Outta Here as soon as they part.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The previously reliable Noir rips out his locator and makes a run for it the moment he realizes Soldier Boy is back and Homelander is out of sight. It's subsequently revealed that Soldier Boy is not only arguably the most-dangeorus Supe in the world besides Homelander with a grudge against Noir, he also used to physically abuse him when he was a member of Payback, and is even the one who permanently disfigured him and gave him brain damage during the Sandinista attack, resulting in Noir's mentality becoming child-like and delusional inside his scrambled mind. Solider Boy is a walking Trauma Button for Noir, making his instant escape extremely justified.
• Silent Antagonist: Vought's deadly assassin who never speaks.
• Skull for a Head: His helmet evokes this image.
• The Spook: His voice is never heard, he never appears without his mask, and according to official source materials, his height and weight are said to frequently change. Even Homelander doesn't know what he looks like. He was just a regular glory seeking Supe up until Soldier Boy destroyed his face and vocal chords, forcing him to wear his costume all the time to hide his injuries.
• Stealth Expert: Takes out an entire terrorist compound by himself without being detected until the end. He later ambushes Starlight in the middle of a lit hallway without her noticing him.
• Suddenly Speaking: He appears unmasked and speaking normally in a flashback during Season 3, Episode 3. It's implied that his mysterious persona originally was just a publicity scheme, as Stan Edgar says that "ninjas are popular with boys aged between 7 and 10" when Black Noir demands losing the mask. In said flashback, it's implied his vocals chords were destroyed and he endured brain damage, which is why he is unable to speak in the present.
• Super-Speed: Billy claims he can outrun a car.
• Super-Strength: Rips apart a terrorist's head by tearing off their jaw, hands Kimiko, Starlight, and Maeve their asses on separate occasions, and can easily smash through thick concrete walls and pillars.
• Super-Toughness: Deconstructed. He walks away from multiple explosions throughout Season 2. Notably, he isn't even bulletproof; when Hughie shoots him in the hand at a close range the bullet goes straight through with a visible plume of blood, suggesting his toughness comes from a Healing Factor rather than the more conventional kind of durability. Said toughness clearly has its limitations however, as whilst he survived what would have been a fatal beatdown for anybody else at Soldier Boy's hands, it came at the cost of his face, vocal cords, and some of his brain. The deconstruction comes in when surviving that beat-down basically ruined his life, and his super-toughness keeping him alive basically resigned him to a Fate Worse than Death as a living weapon for Vought.
• Tap on the Head: Gruesomely so, as this is what really rendered him mute, as Soldier Boy caved his brains in with his shield after attempting to fight back against him for his repeated abuse and only surviving thanks to his Healing Factor. The consequence of such damage left him just barely a functional Manchild who is capable of following orders as the only way to cope with the trauma.
• Taught by Experience: His near-death experience at the hands of Soldier Boy really left Black Noir with both the fortitude and experience of going toe-to-toe against another Supe that's far above his weight class. This is best shown in The Boys: Diabolical, where he mainly spent the entire "fight" against an inexperienced Homelander by running away, dodging his attacks and countering them with knives, and eventually outsmarted him.
• Team Killer: During his time in Payback he seems to have cut down people on his own side on reflex.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: He was a member of Payback before joining the Seven in this continuity.
• Terminator Impersonator: He's got a cowl that looks like a skull with black lenses, a muscular build hidden under a black suit, doesn't talk, and is able to withstand some horrific disfigurements without even flinching.
• Terror Hero: Publicly lauded as a hero and celebrity, yet intimidates nearly everyone that he encounters.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: A scene from his POV shows his thoughts via talking cartoon animals that he sees and interacts with.
• Token Minority: Played for Laughs by Homelander, who claims that Black Noir doesn't identify as any race. He briefly gets unmasked in "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker," showing that he is black.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: When he was younger, he was a pretty outgoing hero who wanted to make more of a name for himself. Somewhere between his first maiming and the present, he became a totally ruthless and brutal assassin who was willing to cover up Homelander's lethal outing in the field. Getting his acting career ruined, getting the shit beaten out of him by Soldier Boy and/or suffering brutal brain damage may have had something to do with it.
• Toxic Friend Influence: It's revealed in Homelander's Origins Episode in The Boys: Diabolical that Black Noir was ultimately responsible for Homelander's Never My Fault personality by covering up Homelander's botched mission in a way that absolved Homelander of all responsibility. This becomes pitch-black ironic with the reveal that Homelander is actually Soldier Boy's son, as Noir's more pragmatic and merciless nature that taught Homelander the wrong lessons when dealing with his mistakes was something that was created because of Noir's abuse and mental damage at Soldier Boy's hands, making it an indirect life lesson from father to son.
• Tragic Villain: Frightening and deadly he may be, Black Noir's past and experiences in Nicaragua are bleakly sad. He was simply someone who was excited to be a superhero and part of a team led by Soldier Boy. And then Soldier Boy was a controlling and abusive boss who bullied Earving out of being in a movie and when he and the rest of Payback fought back, Earving received the worst of it, having his brain caved in and left with permanent scars as well as being unable to speak. Suddenly, his silent nature and him abandoning Homelander seems a lot more melancholic than you think. He also seems lonely and desperate for companionship he finds in imaginary cartoons from Buster Beaver's Pizza Restaurant. It's implied the place is of importance to him as he visits it as an adult even after he paralyzed a kid in the exact same place at 9 years old, maybe even because of it.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Apparently paralyzed someone when he was only 9 years old and then hid in a ball pit. Since it is listed off with other events Noir considers to be bad memories (along with a boner in 7th grade and a Hard Rock Cafe massacre), it could have been unintentional.
• Two-Faced: The reason why he wears his mask all the time, following a botched military expedition in Nicaragua.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Flashbacks show Black Noir used to be a fairly talkative guy who simply wanted to be known and acknowledged for his efforts. Although, it is mentioned that he paralyzed another kid when he was 9, but it is unknown if it was accidental or not. Soldier Boy sabotaging him then viciously beating him for calling him out hardened him. Then the horrific brain and face injuries he took while getting revenge has left him a hollow shell that can barely even be called human anymore.
• Uncertain Doom: After Homelander confronts Noir with the realization that he always knew about his relation to Soldier Boy and never told him for all the years they'd been working together, he punches him in the stomach and rips out a length of his intestines, leaving Noir to bleed out on the floor afterwards. Whilst this would be fatal for anybody else, and Homelander afterward talks about him like he considers him dead, Noir's Super-Toughness and implied Healing Factor, not to mention the fact that he managed to survive Soldier Boy violently smashing out part of his brains, leave it ambiguous as to whether or not the damage done was too great for him to recover from.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As revealed in The Boys: Diabolical, him carrying out Vought's wishes and cleaning up Homelander's botched first mission in a way that absolved Homelander of all responsibility ended up creating the self-serving psychopath who would end up becoming the world's biggest threat.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • Besides Queen Maeve (until season 2), Black Noir is the other member of the Seven who Homelander sees as a genuine friend. This makes sense in Homelander's Origins Episode in The Boys: Diabolical, where it was Black Noir who taught Homelander how to appeal to the public and cover up his failure to save the hostages. However, Season 3 initially appears to have been a False Friend and he didn't care for Homelander as an individual and was only around due to Vought's orders and loyalty to Stan Edgar. Once Soldier Boy came back into the picture, Noir doesn't hesitate to make a run for it when Homelander needed his support at the time. However, after he is convinced by his imaginary friends to return and face his fears, he shares a hug with Homelander and cartoon hearts appear, indicating that Noir did grow to care for Homelander while keeping tabs on him.
  • Season 3 reveals that he is friends with Stan Edgar, having been close enough to his boss that he could speak freely with Edgar regarding issues with his costume. In turn, Edgar was on a real-name basis and honest to Noir about why the outfit was chosen, but avoided being condescending with his reasoning. This closeness remains in the present, as Noir is one of Edgar's Co-Dragons (the other being his adoptive daughter Victoria Neuman).
• The Voiceless: He doesn't talk onscreen and it's not clear whether he can. Considering he's missing his vocal chords, he can't anymore.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He has a tree nut allergy, so Maeve is able to defeat him by stuffing an Almond Joy down his throat.
• The Worf Effect: He handily takes down Kimiko aka The Female, The Big Guy of the Boys, a Wolverine Expy who up until that point had been portrayed as a nearly unstoppable fighter, leaving her for dead with multiple knife wounds that would have killed her (or perhaps did kill her) if not for her healing factor.
• World's Best Warrior: Of all Vought's Supes, Noir is implied to be the single most skilled fighter, which paired with his immense strength makes him probably the second most potent combatant after Homelander. Across the first and second seasons, the only person he doesn't completely steamroll is Maeve in their first fight (who's just under Homelander and Soldier Boy in terms of strength), and even then she only beats him by exploiting his Weaksauce Weakness. However, he later succeeds in kidnapping her on Homelander's orders. While he was incapable of really damaging the guy, he also managed to survive his first fight with Homelander through skillful use of the environment and his agility. In his backstory he proved absolutely no match for Soldier Boy in a fight but was also the only member of Payback to hurt him at all (bloodying his mouth with some punches). Mindstorm and Crimson Countess were only able to faze him through telepathy and poison gas, respectively, while he seemed to just no-sell blows from them and the TNT twins. It also helps that he has no issue stealthily assassinating someone or using a weapon like poison gas on them.
• Wicked Cultured: He's shown making Japanese-style tea and playing the piano.
• Would Hit a Girl: While clearing out the building where Naqib is, he slices open a woman's throat without a moment's hesitation. He also has no qualms about beating and apprehending Starlight when she turns against them, or gutting Kimiko down.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: In Naqib's compound, he uses a stuffed animal to entertain a child despite the kid being a witness to his crimes.
• You Don't Look Like You: On the surface, Black Noir's aesthetic is similar to his comic counterpart, except underneath that mask is a heavily scarred black man instead of an identical clone of the white Homelander.
• Your Size May Vary: His character profile lists his height and weight as "unknown" and for some reason frequently changes.

Translucent

Translucent

"No, I don't actually vanish. My skin turns into this carbon meta-material that bends the light. Like an invisibility cloak."

Portrayed by: Alex Hassell

"My superpower ain't invisibility - it's reading people. Watching them when they think they're alone. I see people for who they really are."

The Seven's invulnerable and quasi-invisible member.

---

• Achilles' Heel: Translucent's power isn't actually to go invisible but turning his skin to various carbon-based compounds, including a metamaterial and diamond-like substance. Unfortunately, this makes him vulnerable to electricity. Likewise he's only invulnerable from the outside. Not the inside.
• Action Dad: The second season reveals that he has a son named Maverick.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: Looks like a normal guy unlike his comic counterpart Jack from Jupiter, who is a hairless, orange-skinned, noseless supposed "alien" wearing a pair of briefs and a cape.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Slightly. While he's undoubtedly a creepy pervert like his comic counterpart, he never displays Jack from Jupiter's racist tendencies.
• Adaptational Seriousness: In the comics, Jack from Jupiter is mostly just a joke character who pretends to be an alien. Translucent however, is a legitimate threat and looks like a regular human to better fit with the more grounded tone of the show.
• Adaptational Sexuality: In the comics, Jack from Jupiter's favorite pastime is having group sex with pre-op transgender prostitutes. Translucent is married with a wife and a son and despite being a massive creep, doesn't show any significant interest in pre-op transgender people or in having weird sex parties.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Hughie has this reaction after Starlight tells him that he was one of the less dickish members of the Seven, and had a son he often saw.
• Artistic License – Biology: Even if he can turn his skin into carbon-based materials, that just means he's resistant against piercing weapons–it should not protect him from blunt-force trauma. Getting hit by Billy's car should've given him an extreme concussion at best.
• Ass Shove: Frenchie shocks him into unconsciousness and then shoves a lump of Semtex into his anal cavity, reasoning his outsides are invulnerable but his insides aren't.
• Break Them by Talking: Tries this with Hughie. It backfires, literally.
• Canon Foreigner: He's a completely new character for the prime series.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: He's an original character to the show, replacing the comic's Jack From Jupiter. However, while Jack is alien-looking, basically ignored by the media and generally just considered pathetic, Translucent actually seems somewhat respected.
• Dirty Coward: He talks a big game, but when the Boys find out his weakness, he's quick to sob, grovel, and sell out anyone if it means saving his own skin.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In spite of being a jackass, he is said to have loved his son Maverick dearly. Maverick clearly reciprocated those feelings, seeing as he was in the front row at his funeral.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Did this unknowingly with his interview on Jimmy Fallon. Hughie catches that his skin turns into a carbon meta-material, giving him the idea to shock him due to carbon's highly conductive nature.
• Expy: Of Jack From Jupiter. Being a member of The Seven, has similar Nigh-Invulnerable powers, and have their own, humorous moments relating to an Ass Shove.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: No one ever never mentions him again throughout the series after his funeral in Season 2, not even his fellow members of The Seven.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He is described as a loner by Starlight, and isn't cared much about by his teammates. When he is missing only Homelander is concerned, and only because he views an attack on the Seven as an attack on him. A deleted scene shows Maeve and Homelander looking at his corpse and Homelander saying he prefers him this way.
• Full-Frontal Assault: He can only turn his own body invisible, not his clothes. Anytime he is involved in heroics (or other violence), he has to be naked.
• Hoist Hero over Head: Does this to Hughie.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite being a Grade A Invisible Jerkass, Translucent is shown to be really good with finances, keeping track of how much the Seven has made over the year, and how much people have made from pirating off from their merchandise.
  • Hughie finds out that Translucent is a dad, and not a bad one since he spends almost all his spare time with his son. He only learns this after he's dead.
  • He correctly predicts that the aloof and narcissistic Homelander will be personally concerned enough to come to save him after only a day, which potentially implies an understanding and appreciation between the two that Homelander doesn't seem to have with any of the other heroes except Queen Maeve and (to a lesser extent) Black Noir. It might have been interesting to see what sort of dynamic the two of them had, one-on-one.
• Informed Attribute: In-universe, he claims to be extremely skilled at reading people, making him good at gathering information along with his invisibility. In reality, he's so bad at reading people that it gets himself killed.
• Informed Judaism: According to a bar mitzvah photo featured at his memorial. He wore a yarmulke.
• Invisible Jerkass: Translucent nearly kills Hughie when he won't tell him why he placed a bug in The Seven's boardroom before Billy intervenes.
• Invisible Streaker: His clothes are unaffected by his powers, so he has to be completely naked to be undetectable.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: The Boys think that it Takes One to Kill One but when Butcher shoots him with a bullet made by Frenchie out of the same material as Translucent's hardened skin, it just bounces off instead of piercing through.
• Logical Weakness:
  • In order to become invisible and more durable, his skin forms into different carbon compounds to bend the light and protect him. Carbon being conductive gives him a vulnerability to electricity, which Hughie takes advantage of.
  • While his skin is unbreakable, it comes with several openings in the form of orifices, such as the rectum.
• Ludicrous Gibs: The bomb in his ass pretty much turns him into paint when Hughie detonates it.
• Male Frontal Nudity: We get to see everything when he turns visible inside the women's bathroom.
• Manipulative Bastard: He took his shot at this, but failed so miserably it turned him into Ludicrous Gibs.
• Mythology Gag: His comic counterpart, Jack from Jupiter, can make himself invulnerable but the process makes him feel like being hit by 'ten thousand volts up his ass'. In the series, Translucent is naturally invulnerable, but is defeated by electrocuting him in the ass.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: When invisible, he is borderline Nigh-Invulnerable to blunt force damage and can shrug off damage that would be many times lethal to a normal human. He can laugh off Frenchie's specially modified .50 caliber sniper rounds fired from Butcher's gun at point-blank range. For comparison, one of the above two was enough to harm Starlight. He also shrugged off getting hit by a car hard enough to be sent flying and crater a wall.
• Nonindicative Name: As Butcher points out, if he really were "translucent" then he would actually still be visible.
  Butcher: "Translucent" doesn't even mean "invisible." It means "semi-transparent."
  • In a more metaphorical way, his constant attempts to learn others' secrets and emotionally manipulate them, which is only see-through in the sense that he's bad at it.
• The Peeping Tom: He uses his power to creep on women.
• Power Perversion Potential: He hangs around the women's bathroom in The Seven's HQ.
• Reading Lips: He can and does do this.
• Sherlock Scan: He claims that this is his real ability — he's extremely skilled at reading people and learning what makes them tick. It doesn't work on Hughie, who promptly kills him.
• Smug Snake: He thinks that he's some sort of master manipulator, who has the ability to read people like books and easily manipulate them without effort. Believing that he knows exactly how people will act and rationalize themselves so that he can persuade them into doing whatever he wants. When in reality he is a deluded pervert who has no real clue about what people are like, as he has no empathy for them and no ability to talk them into anything. This is emphasized greatly when Hughie kills him out of sheer rage for trying to convince him to let Translucent go.
• Starter Villain: The end of the first episode and much of the second revolve around Hughie and Butcher, shortly after their first meeting, running afoul of him, capturing and attempting to figure out a way to put him down as he tries to escape.
• Spared by the Adaptation: To a degree. While he dies after Hughie detonates the bomb in his ass, it's nothing compared to in the comic book, where his counterpart Jack from Jupiter is blamed for the death of Butcher's dog Terror, and ends up having his throat crushed while being repeatedly stabbed and slowly disemboweled by a grief-stricken Butcher. A process that a sadistic Butcher drags out for so long that Jack passes out from the pain, only to later wake up to him still being gutted.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Jack From Jupiter in the comic book, whose spot on the team is directly replaced by Translucent on the show. They are both massive perverts who both have temporary invulnerability as their main power.
• Super-Toughness: His skin is as hard as diamonds (when invisible), making him Immune to Bullets among other things. He also withstands an amount of electricity that would kill or severely harm a normal person while invisible, as well.
• Too Dumb to Live: You'd have to be a certain type of arrogant idiot to brag about what your superpower is and how it works, making it possible to exploit its logical weaknesses, which is made even worse by the fact Translucent does this in-front of people who have the fullest intention to kill him. Also; thinking you can manipulate an emotionally unstable man, who just developed a strong hatred of you personally and Supes in general, and is possession of a trigger for a bomb inside your anus, is probably the surest way you can end up as a visceral modern art piece across the wall.
• Villain Has a Point: Even though he fatally underestimated Hughie, Translucent was pretty accurate when he said that Hughie wasn't thinking straight and not 100% with The Boys. The problem was that he didn't expect Hughie to see through his feigned compassion and actually kill him.
• Villains Want Mercy: He offers to tell the Boys any of Vought's secrets he's learned over the years in exchange for his life.

Lamplighter

Lamplighter

"Maybe I just like watching people burn."

Portrayed by: Shawn Ashmore

"So why didn't you stop me? Maybe you like watching people burn, too."

A former member of the Seven now retired.

---

• Adaptational Heroism: Much more willing to work with The Boys than his comic counterpart.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: To a degree. His killing of Malory's grandchildren was accidental, and is something he's deeply ashamed about to the degree of offering himself up to Mallory. In the comics, Lamplighter has absolutely zero remorse for what he did.
• Adaptational Sympathy: He's beyond horrified at the realization that it was Mallory's grandchildren, not Mallory that he ended up burning alive. He's so broken by this that when confronted by Mallory, who in the comics brutally kills him, she actually feels some level of sympathy for the bastard.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Is blond in the comics, while brunet in the prime series.
  • His superhero costume is dark green with yellow highlights here compare to the bright blue and yellow in the comics.
• Arch-Enemy: Is this to Frenchie, since he was unable to stop him from burning Mallory's grandchildren. While Mallory believed that she could move on from the past, Frenchie swore revenge.
• Assassination Attempt: Was actually trying to do this to Mallory. Failed, but still got The Boys off of The Seven's trail years ago.
• The Atoner: Somewhat, as he follows The Boys after the events at Sage Grove and willingly holds himself at their mercy after they discuss their past encounter from years ago. He voices regret in what he did that night and personally kept the existence of The Boys from Vought.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Lamplighter's ability, though powerful, has very limited utility outside Kill It with Fire. For one, he's not shown to have the Super-Toughness or Super-Strength of almost every single other supe. For another, while he can control the strength of his blasts, he can't put out his fires once they start. His death even reveals that (barring his hands) he doesn't have resistance to his own flames.
• Badass Longcoat: Wears one as part of his costume. The Boys think otherwise.
• Casting Gag: Isn't it ironic that the pyrokinetic (false) superhero is played by the same actor who portrayed the mutant who can manipulate ice? Counts double giving that Iceman battled against another villainous pyrokinesist in this saga. Even better, Lamplighter use a lighter for his power like Pyro does in X2: X-Men United.
• Coat, Hat, Mask: Coat, hood, and goggles, worn during his days before retirement.
• Collateral Damage: When his powers manifested, the first fire that he lit burned his entire house down. His father didn't care - he was just happy to see his son be a Supe.
• Composite Character: Being the only member of The Seven whose superhero costume is seen as tacky brings mind of The Deep's costume from the comics.
• Cruel Mercy: Living with the haunting memory of burning Mallory's grandchildren alive, Frenchie and Mallory leave him alive to live with his guilt, along with being able to use him in their plans.
• Death Seeker: He is tortured by the memory of mistakenly killing innocent children and is willing to let Mallory take revenge if The Boys allow it. Furthermore, he wants to end his life for being unable to make his father proud as a Supe.
• Didn't Think This Through: When they get to the Seven Tower he quips that his biometric scan will either work or he and Hughie will be immediately swarmed by Security when he tries.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: He burns himself alive in the conference room. In the comics, he was killed by Mallory as revenge for killing his grandchildren, only to be partially reanimated by the Compound V in his system.
• Driven to Suicide: Immolates himself in the Seven conference room. He intended to do it in front of his statue, but finds they've already replaced it with Starlight's.
• Ethical Slut: He's hedonistic, as shown by his lighter reading "Titty Committee", his sexual history, and the fact that he spends his final day by forcing Hughie to watch porn parodies with him. He deeply regrets killing Mallory's grandchildren and he helps The Boys in their mission against Vought.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He is willing to burn Sage Grove's subjects alive and was intending on killing Mallory in the past, but he draws the line at harming minors. He hesitates killing a patient who is only a teenager, and he honestly regrets the burning of Mallory's grandkids.
• Expy: Of Green Lantern, possessing a similarly themed name, association with a lamp, and a green color motif. Though powers wise they are very different, with Lamplighter having Playing with Fire powers while Green Lantern generates Hard Light constructs.
• Fiery Cover-Up: Is assigned to do this to Sage test subjects.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: He heavily regrets killing Mallory's grandchildren and isn't pleased with his position in the Sage Grove facility. He eventually comes with the Boys to go along with their plans, even protecting them from Stormfront when she returns to the place. While willing to cooperate, he's also suicidal and needs to be kept from bailing on his planned testimony, and he doesn't regret his hedonism as a career Smug Super.
• The Hedonist: He spends the day smoking and watching porn parodies with a reluctant and disgusted Hughie.
• Hookers and Blow: Two of his vices are smoking and having sex. Since he knows he's going to die once he testifies at the hearing, he decides to spend his remaining time watching porn parodies of The Seven and smoking.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: He laments having been retired by Vought, growing up as a child prodigy, and seeing how proud his father was when his powers manifested.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: The Boys laugh at his superhero outfit, thinking that it makes him look like a baton-twirling majorette.
• Improbable Weapon User: A lamp on the end of a staff. Granted, it was just for channeling his powers and not hitting people as far as we know. After leaving the Seven, he switches to using a small lighter for the same purpose.
• In the Hood: Wears a hood under a leather coat as his supe ensemble.
• Jerkass Façade: Taunts Frenchie over being unable to stop him from burning Mallory's grandchildren, claiming that he may also be as much of a pyromaniac as he is. He then drops it when admitting that he didn't mean to kill them.
• Kill It with Fire: His go-to method of dealing with situations. First it's an attempt to take Mallory out, then it's for getting rid of Sage Grove's patients when they are no longer of use to Vought. Finally, it's on himself.
• Movie Superheroes Wear Black: He wears a darker, robe-like costume completed with a hood in the prime series, completed with a staff lamp. However, his costume gets made fun of by The Boys and Mallory for its tackiness.
• Murder by Mistake: The reason why he torched Mallory's grandchildren is because he intended to kill Mallory that night, aiming for her bed.
• My Greatest Failure: His accidental killing of Mallory's grandchildren. While initially it's assumed that he killed them intentionally, it turns out that it was a tragic mistake that broke him mentally.
• Not Worth Killing: Though he managed to get The Boys to stop their investigation into Vought and The Seven, nothing ever came of The Seven knowing their existence. When they meet him again, he makes this the reason as to why The Seven never retaliated. The truth is that he never told anyone.
• Playing with Fire: He has the power of pyrokinesis, channeled through his staff (and later a lighter) that enabled him to throw fireballs alongside other uses of fire.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: Offers this to Mallory when they cross paths again.
• Power Incontinence: He recalls how his powers first manifested, when he burned his entire house down discovering them.
• Pyromaniac: When Frenchie asks why he torched Mallory's grandchildren that night, he responds by saying that he "like[s] watching people burn." This is an act, and he drops it when prompted further.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Was moved from a frontlining celebrity Supe to burning Vought's Compound V test subjects. He's not exactly happy with his job, and they're still keeping him in the dark about more of what they're planning.
• Required Secondary Powers: Averted. He is not immune to fire, which allows him to easily burn himself to death.
• Retired Monster: He's mentioned to have retired shortly before the start of the series and he murdered Grace Mallory's grandchildren. As it turns out, killing Mallory's grandchildren was Murder by Mistake on his part and he's truly haunted by it. That being said, he still doesn't regret his hedonism during his Supe career.
• Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: In-Universe, before testifying against Vought he chooses to watch porn parodies of The Seven and forces Hughie to watch them with him. Unlike Lamplighter, Hughie and Starlight's mom are both uncomfortable and disturbed by them since they include Starlight as well.
• Self-Immolation: How he disposes of himself.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Of course, he still dies, however it's at a much later date, and by his own hand when he sets himself on fire. In the comics, Lamplighter is beaten and tortured to near-death by the Boys, before getting shot in the head by Mallory. He is then brought back to life by Vought as an emaciated, braindead zombie chained up in a Vought facility basement completely caked in his own excrement.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Ever since his powers manifested, he wanted to make his father proud with a Supe career. His last words before he dies are regret in not being able to do so.
• Would Hurt a Child: He murdered Mallory's grandchildren when she and Billy got too close to Vought's secrets. He wouldn't have done it if he knew that they were there.
• Would Not Hurt A Child: When discussing killing a teenage test subject at Sage Grove with Stormfront, he clearly expresses his hesitation over the phone. This also foreshadows his real feelings about burning Mallory's grandchildren.

Mr. Marathon

Mr. Marathon

Mr. Marathon as he appears on a poster for Dawn of the Seven

A former member of the Seven and their first speedster.

---

• Alliterative Name: Mister Marathon.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": The image that we briefly see of his design gives him a costume with the letter "M" at the center of it.
• Expy: To The Flash, even having a costume with a cowl unlike the other speedsters.
• The Ghost: There's a glimpse◊ of him in a Dawn of the Seven storyboard and the movie's poster, as well as mentions from Ashley and Lamplighter, but he doesn't appear in-person.
• Legacy Character: Not his name, but his role as a speedster on The Seven. A-Train and Shockwave eventually took his place.
• Non-Indicative Name: A marathon, while a race, is more a test of endurance than speed.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Possibly. He's killed on 9/11 in the comic in the incident that serves as the basis of the Flight 37 incident. The show seems to hint he simply got slow and was replaced, probably by A-Train. Seven on 7 with Cameron Coleman later reveals he is alive and apparently still active is some form, having had a race against A-Train that was canceled.
• Super-Speed: His name and A-Train and Shockwave replacing him describe him as this.

Later Members

A-Train

Reginald "Reggie" Franklin / A-Train

"I'm A-Train. I'm the fastest fucking man alive!"

Portrayed by: Jessie T. Usher

"Here comes the A-Train!"

The Seven's Compound V-addicted speedster and accidental kickstarter of the show's plot.

---

• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • He's still a villain in both versions of the story, in the comics though, he participates in Starlight's sexual assault, openly mocks her in front of the entire Seven at Starlight's first meeting and tries to do it a second time before Starlight stops him. In the show, The Deep was the only one who did the deed and A-Train had no involvement in it.
  • In the comics, A-Train is a straight-up Hate Sink who is almost exclusively shown to be a wimpy jackass and who somehow is an even bigger douchebag than Homelander in that he couldn't even pretend to act nice, even in comparison to most other Supes. A-Train in the show, while still cowardly and a bully is humanized considerably, showing him to have a soft spot for his family, has legitimate relationships, and has some nuance in his thoughts about the wrongs he's done as a member of the Seven.
• Addled Addict: He started using Compound V as a performance enhancer, but becomes addicted to it and makes terrible choices trying to fuel his dependency.
• All for Nothing:
  • After everything he sacrificed in the first season to hide his Compound V addiction and ensure he kept his spot on The Seven, Homelander ultimately replaces him anyway because the abuse has left him on the constant verge of another heart attack. Some of Ashley's throwaway dialogue also heavily implies that the speedster heroes that Vought employs regularly burn out from the physical strain too, meaning all that A-Train did was delay the inevitable.
  • In Season 3 he tries to make amends with his brother after their falling out in Season 1 by attempting to call out Blue Hawk, a police-themed Supe who murdered an innocent black man and lied about his aggression on the news. He tries to bring this up in a Seven meeting only to get sidelined by The Deep, who Homelander sides with for the sake of spiting A-Train's disability and lack of use to him. Despite this awful treatment he decides to remain loyal and rats out Starlight and Supersonic's attempted betrayal to secure his safety. For his commitment they give A-Train zero notice that they are bringing Blue Hawk over for a talk where he makes excuses for his actions and hastily have him set up a public apology at a neighborhood community center, which ends not just with Blue Hawk horribly trying to further justify his actions to them, but also attacking the crowd, injuring and possibly killing several, and crippling A-Train's brother in the process. Worse still, Blue Hawk gets away with it by blaming the entire incident on the crowd and labeling them as ANTIFA members. Shortly afterwards, A-Train takes advantage of the chaos caused by Soldier Boy attacking Herogasm to kill Blue Hawk, which does nothing except provide a moment of personal satisfaction for getting revenge as his death is blamed on Soldier Boy and any chance for public or legal reckoning is lost. After A-Train's brother learns about this, he cuts A-Train out of his life.
• Arch-Enemy: To Hughie. At first, Hughie is an Unknown Rival to A-Train, due to A-Train's carefree attitude toward Robin's death. However, after A-Train is forced to kill Popclaw, he blames Hughie for it and makes it his priority to hunt Hughie down.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • He receives one from Hughie. "What's better? The rush, or knowing that as long as you take it you're the fastest?". A-Train takes a few moments to respond before agreeing to Hughie's demands.
  • In "The Last Time To Look On This World Of Lies", Starlight calls him out for betraying Supersonic and demands to know why he's so deperate to gain the approval of Homelander who evidently could not care less about him and does not respect him. A-Train has no answer.
• Beyond Redemption: While Nathan has always tried his best to support his little brother, he does find it grating that he doesn't do anything with his gifts except carry out endorsement deals and live it up as a premier superhero. When A-Train takes Vought's offer to cover up his slaying of Blue Hawk and depict the violent supe as a martyr, Nathan finally decides that helping A-Train is a waste of time and breaks things off.
• Big Eater: He maintains a 30,000 calorie a day diet to power his super speed. Once his Compound V abuse makes using said speed potentially lethal, this diet starts to put pounds on A-Train, much to the consternation of Homelander.
• Blue Is Heroic: Invoked with his costume, which is primarily blue, and is a contrast to his rival Shockwave, who has an orange costume.
• Break the Haughty: Initially considered to be the fastest in the world, he goes through a series of misfortunes brought about by his own actions and ego that causes his smug attitude to be knocked down several pegs. He's forced to kill his girlfriend, gets humiliated by Hughie and Kimiko blindsiding him, has a near-fatal heart attack from his Compound V abuse, gets blackmailed by Starlight over his killing of Popclaw, and then gets kicked out of the Seven once his ability to perform is compromised by the lingering effects of said heart attack.
• Broken Pedestal: Hughie was a big fan of A-Train, so much so that Hughie had several action figures of him (even rare limited edition ones). However, after A-Train ran completely through Robin, Hughie is angered by the mere sight of him.
• Brought Down to Normal: When Kimiko breaks his leg, A-Train is reduced to nothing more than a disabled black man, and even has to deal with a racist security guard.
• Brought to You by the Letter "S": Associated with the letter A. He has an "A" for a belt buckle, one on his shades, and is shaved into part of his haircut.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Deconstructed as him running through Robin is the decisive event that begins the show's storyline and is the source of A-Train's problems in life going From Bad to Worse. Given how utterly dismissive and forgetful he is of Robin's death, the show makes it clear that this isn't the first time this kind of incident occurred for him, with A-Train practically forgetting that this even happened in a short time. Unfortunately for him, this isn't something the victim's boyfriend forgot at all, which leads to a lot of trouble for A-Train and the Seven as a whole in the long run. And if he hadn't filed it under "Tuesday" and forgotten about it, he could have begun derailing The Boys' plans much earlier. That said, it's suggested that his abuse of Compound V has scrambled his mental faculties, impairing his ability to connect the dots until it was too late.
• Captain Ethnic: Attempted by him, ruthlessly deconstructed and mocked by everyone else. At the beginning of Season 3, A-Train is attempting to rebrand himself as a hero who stands for the Black community by returning to his African roots as a way to earn brownie points with the public in the same way that Starlight's efforts to diversify The Seven are being met positively. His attempts to do so are constantly commented on as being soulless and clearly cynical, and his brother even calls him out for it, stating that people who actually know A-Train know that he doesn't actually care for the Black community, and that if he actually wanted to make a difference, he'd actually do something to try and effect positive change.
• Category Traitor: In season 3, he's conflicted about his ties to Vought and his community and pushed in to reparations after Blue Hawk executes an innocent black man for walking behind a frightened white woman. A-Train does try to help but Vought either ignores it or doesn't understand the true weight of the situation as they make him perform in a soda advert and arrange a disastrous meeting between Blue Hawk and the community. His brother believes A-Train should be on their side and believes he should do more with his powers than appease the masses. After waking up in a hospital bed after giving himself a heart attack by exceeding his powers to kill Blue Hawk for crippling his brother, Ashley offers him the chance to keep his money, be absolved for killing Blue Hawk, and A-Train's reputation will be restored in exchange for going along with a fake story that turns Blue Hawk into a martyr. However, by doing so, Blue Hawk's crimes will be dismissed and his victims will be denied justice. After agreeing to the offer, Nate disowns him for denying him the chance to receive justice and denying his children the chance to see Blue Hawk behind bars.
• Church of Happyology: He joins the Church of the Collective at The Deep's invitation, and begins following them when Alastair offers to keep his spot in The Seven. His time with them is rather short, and he doesn't buy into any of their teachings.
• Cool Shades: Blue protective glasses that have a letter "A" on them.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: He worked hard to help his family escape from poverty, he partnered up with Vought and become a member of The Seven but he became so greedy and narcissistic in the process that he forgot why he wanted to be a hero in the first place.
• Dented Iron:
  • His abuse of Compound V catches up to him over Season 1.
  • As of Season 2, it seems going into action so soon after a heart attack may not have been the best idea, and it costs him his spot on the team.
  • He's still not fully recovered in Season 3, as several characters remark that he's not running as much as he used to and he even had to postpone a public race against another speedster because his powers are still failing him. Hughie is even able to land a punch on him and A-Train is genuinely surprised as his reflexes and perception would normally allow him to easily dodge it.
• Devoted to You: Despite his Vought-managed public persona as a swinging single, A-Train is going steady with Popclaw and there's no sign that he's cheating on her, despite what she thinks. He even turns down offers for hook-ups from attractive women after her death. This shows how he prefers to wallow in guilt and thoughts of revenge rather than get on with his life, in contrast to Hughie moving forward with Starlight.
• Dirty Coward: A-Train at heart is a glorified bully who talks a big game when picking on those of lesser power and status, but folds faster than when he got his leg broken, whenever his wallet or reputation is at stake.
• Enemy Mine:
  • A-Train decides to help Hughie and Annie in exposing Stormfront for being a Nazi. He does this mainly because Stormfront being in the Seven blocks him from returning, rather than any genuinely good intentions.
  • Subverted in Season 3, where after Supersonic tries to involve him in a plan that would take Homelander down a notch, having witnessed A-Train's frequent mistreatment by the latter, A-Train pretends to be on board but then immediately rats Supersonic out to Homelander to bolster his standing.
• Even Evil Can Be Loved: A-Train might be a self-interested jackass who thinks nothing of extra-judicial murder, but he's still Nathan's brother, and Nathan loves him dearly.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He has nephews and an older brother named Nathan who coaches and supports him. After finding out A-Train is still using Compound V, he abandons him for ignoring his advice. A-Train also genuinely loved Popclaw but was forced by Homelander to kill her, he still refused to take responsibility for this and blamed Hughie for it.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • While he kills Popclaw for betraying his trust by jamming heroin needles into her arms, it's made clear that he took no pleasure in doing so. He's visibly shaking as she lies there dying, and hangs his head in shame when she finally expires.
  • Like many others, he hates Stormfront for being a Nazi.
  • He's visibly shocked at the courtroom massacre where numerous people heads randomly blow up.
  • He's also visibly surprised when The Deep immediately throws Eagle the Archer under the bus after having described him so positively.
  • In Season 3, once Nathan draws his attention to Blue Hawk's continued profiling and killing of black men, A-Train seems appropriately disgusted by it, even though he at first refuses to do anything about it due to a fear that getting into political topics will be bad for his image as a carefree speedster.
  • In the season 3 finale, he shoots a disturbed look at Black Noir's helmet, which Homelander just brought in as a murder trophy/threat, after Homelander has the hypocritical balls to castigate him for going against "his own kind" by killing Blue Hawk.
  • He give a look of disgust to the Deep after learning he fucked an octopus.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He's so self-centered that he believes his brother advising him to stop abusing Compound V for his own sake is just a case of You're Just Jealous. He also fails to comprehend why Hughie would want revenge, to A-Train, it was just an accident and he was the bigger victim.
• Fastest Thing Alive: He has a reputation as the fastest man alive, and he feels it's the reason why he's in the Seven. Keeping this title is his biggest priority, and eventually destroys his personal life. However Homelander's actually way faster than him.^note His peak speed was recorded as 371 meters per second (Mach 1.08) during his race with Shockwave. This required a steroid overdose that nearly killed him. Homelander can outfly F-16 fighter jets (which have top speeds over 670 m/s or Mach 2+) without even being winded, was recorded on the Boys' devices as flying over 1,100 mph/492+ m/s while looking for Translucent, and casually claims to have broken the sound barrier before he turned 8 years old. That said, it's possible A-Train in his prime was indeed faster than Homelander.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride and greed. His need to be the best caused him to develop a dependency on Compound V that drove his older brother away. His addiction and refusal to take responsibility for his actions also caused the events of the series.
• Faux Affably Evil: Acts like a friendly and upbeat athlete/superhero when in public. Behind closed doors, he's an apathetic, self-absorbed coward.
• Feeling Their Age: He's reaching the age when athletes start losing to younger competitors no matter how hard they train. This drives him to abuse Compound V as a performance enhancer in order to compensate for the age barrier and keep his title.
• Fetish: Enjoys having his toes sucked on.
• Foil:
  • To Hughie. Hughie is a middle-class tech salesman, while A-Train is a famous super-athlete. Both men have killed people, but while A-Train put the blame on his victim to rationalize his kill (presumably because this is something he's likely to do again), Hughie came to terms with what he did and avoids killing anyone else. Both also have super girlfriends, but while A-Train hides his relationship with Popclaw out of cowardice and yields to Vought's demands about their love, Hughie isn't the least bit ashamed of dating Starlight and furiously goes against Butcher for threatening her.
  • To the Deep. Both are Supes whose actions result in one person growing disillusioned with superhero culture (Hughie for A-Train, Annie for the Deep), and who are portrayed as vastly flawed individuals. Both also have extrememly specialized powersets that define their characters — A-Train cannot stand others taking his title of fastest man alive, while Deep is regarded as a laughing stock due to his ability to talk to marine life. The similarities end here, though. While the Deep is portrayed as a rapist who can't have good sex even when it is consensual, A-Train was in a happy, committed relationship with Popclaw and is deeply saddened when Homelander bullies him into killing her. A-Train is very effective at using his powers when not high on Compound-V, while Deep's major outing in season 2 has him use his powers in an astronomically stupid manner that allows the Boys to escape him. Finally, while both characters have had hardships growing up (poverty for A-Train, bullying and body image issues for the Deep), A-Train's character arc shows that he is capable of moving beyond these and, slowly, turning away from his heinous actions to become a genuine hero. Deep, meanwhile, is repeatedly shown to be unable and unwilling to change his ways, and suffers the consequences for it.
• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: It's implied growing up in poverty, he never learned how to handle his money well and constantly blows his giant salary. After he's kicked out of the Seven and the money dries up, he's forced to sell personal belongings to make ends meet and Alastair reveals he's in severe seven figure debt.
  • According to a deleted scene, despite making $40 million a year before taxation, he only has $240k left in his account. While some of it goes to necessary personnel like his lawyers, agents, and an accountant, most of it was wasted on things like his 13 houses, a private jet that a man with Super-Speed doesn't need, a private island he's never been to, and having the ashes of Jan-Michael Vincent shot into space. It's so bad that paying the accountant is also a waste of money because A-Train refuses to listen to his advice.
• Formerly Fit: Downplayed in Season 3. As a result of no longer running as much due to the lingering effects of abusing Compound V and on top of continuing his usual diet of consuming 30,000 calories per day, A-Train starts to gain a bit of a gut.
• Freudian Excuse: Season 2 implies that his egotistical mindset, greed for money and need to be the best stems from his poor childhood, and his desire for everything comes from having nothing growing up.
• Fragile Speedster: He becomes one due to his use of Compound V. His brother points out that his bones have gotten weaker and more brittle. Unfortunately for him, this makes it way too easy for Kimiko to break his leg.
• Glass Cannon: His super speed makes him a very powerful striker even by supe standards, hitting like... well, a train. However his durability isn't up to par; Kimiko easily breaks his leg with a single hit from a metal pipe and even the Deep is able to floor him with a sloppy bullrush.
• Greed: Season 2 makes it clear his main motivation, as a black guy growing up in a bad neighborhood, is money. Endless streams of it. When Starlight threatens to expose Compound V's existence to media, he's more concerned in personal monetary loss this could bring than anything else.
• The Heavy: Homelander is the Big Bad, but the events of Season 1 are kicked off by A-Train's accidental murder of Robin, which motivates Hughie to join Butcher and subsequently leads to the Boys being reformed. He's the most consistently appearing Supe the Boys face over the course of the season, even fighting him in the climax as they escape Vought's black site. Later seasons see him as just another member of the Seven.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Has a serious issue with sticking to either his redemption path or continue being a selfish prick. Whenever it seems he might be slowly trying to do something good for a change, it is soon undermine by his ego or opportunistic behavior (or the good deed is revealed as opportunism itself).
• Heel Realization: A few times, but never enough to stick.
  • He gets a tiny one when holding Mr. Campbell hostage, and rummaging through Hughie's room. When Hughie comes as agreed to surrender in exchange for his dad's safety, A-Train notes that Hughie got rare merchandise of the Seven, and finds out that he was the guys' favorite Supe. He says quietly, "You were a fan" and not a typical kid on the street asking for a selfie.
  • During his confrontation with Hughie at the climax of season 1, A-Train admits to both Hughie and himself that he was the one who killed Popclaw. He actually seems affected by his own admission and looks down in regret for a few seconds, but quickly rallies back and says "but it was your fault" before attempting to kill him.
  • After Blue Hawk crippled his brother, Nathan, in a senseless, racially motivated attack, A-Train goes ballistic and calls out Ashley for being dismissive of the attack and only lightly punishing Blue Hawk for what he did. Only to be taken aback when Ashley calls A-Train a hypocrite for relying on Vought for similar damage control after the people he killed so carelessly (i.e. accidentally killing Robin in season 1 by running through her). After realising that Vought won't help him and will continue to cover for Blue Hawk, he takes it upon himself to avenge Nathan by hauling a still-conscious Blue Hawk for miles behind him along an asphalt road, resulting in Blue Hawk dying violently as he's left as a mutilated carcass on a destroyed road (which also results in A-Train having another heart attack as he exceeded his limit out of vengeance). He also gives a sincere apology to Hughie about Robin, finally understanding his anger and desire for revenge.
• He's Back!: By the end of season 2, he's fully recovered from his V addiction, and is let back into the Seven following Shockwave's death.
• Hero with an F in Good: He'd like to be a good person, or at least like to see himself as one - it's just that his attempts often fail due to either Vought's influence, his own impulsiveness, his own moral failings, or a combination of all three.
  • A-Train does see the writing on the wall after being informed of how Homelander and Stormfront are inciting white supremacy and radicalising their audience and tries to reconnect with the black community. However, Vought removed all subtlety from his plan by making it appear insincere by attempting to appease the masses. As shown by the "A-Train to Africa" poster, the disastrous energy drink commercial, and his inability to convince the Seven to help him stop Blue Hawk. Nathan even tries to direct him on how to help the community but A-Train has put his public image first despite the fact that he wants to help.
  • He brings the racist supe Blue Hawk to a recreational center to apologize. It goes terribly, with Blue Hawk assaulting several people and paralyzing A-Train's brother. He later tries to make up for that not by getting any sort of justice, but by brutally murdering Blue Hawk, martyring him. As his brother says when he tries to help it makes things worse.
• Hidden Depths: After he was ejected from the Seven, it's shown that he's a surprisingly effective detective/saboteur, being the one to find damning evidence on Stormfront's Nazi origins. Presumably before this, he simply never needed to use his speed in such a way.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In "You Found Me", his Compound V abuse gives him a heart-attack, and over the first half of Season 2, Homelander learns this from A-Train's heartbeat, and kicks him out of the Seven after he concludes A-Train cannot run as fast as before.
• Humiliation Conga: Experiences this in Season 2. After recovering from his heart-attack, he knows Annie is working against The Seven and can't do anything about it. He continues to experience heart problems as he runs, causing Homelander to take notice and kick him out of the team to keep up appearances. This means that all of his efforts to stay in The Seven as the Fastest Man Alive, from abusing Compound V to killing Popclaw, have gone to waste, and Ashley makes sure that he complies with their plans. In an act of desperation, he accepts The Deep's invitation into the Church of the Collective.
  • It continues in Season 3. He's still struggling with his powers, he's not as popular as he used to be, Homelander frequently uses him as both a verbal and physical punching bag and at one point chooses to side with the Deep over him and his attempted rebranding around his African-American identity is so transparent, self-centered and amateurish nobody buys it for even a second.
  • And just to add a little more humilitation, After killing Blue Hawk by dragging him along for miles at super-speed and nearly dying from a heart attack, A-Train wakes up in a hospital bed learning that Vought have given him a heart transplant with Blue Hawk's heart. Just imagine knowing you now have the heart of a lionized racist bigot who terrorised black people and crippled your own brother.
• Hypocrite:
  • He says he has the moral high ground over Hughie in their confrontation in season 1, because him killing Robin was an accident, while all of Hughie's criminal activity was on purpose. Except he also killed Popclaw, gave weapons to terrorists, threatened to kill Hughie's uninvolved dad, and later sold out Super Sonic so Homelander could kill him, none of which was accidental. Also, since he killed Robin in the process of committing another illegal act, the crime is still murder.
  • In season 3 he insults the Deep for being such a suck-up to Homelander, when he's just as bad if not worse.
  A-Train: Listen, Homelander's a great man, but the way that you kiss his ass is fucking gross.
  • He's enraged that Blue Hawk is able to get away with crippling Nathan due to a Vought coverup. Ashley absolutely tears into him over how much work has been putting into covering up his crimes.
• Ignored Epiphany:
  • He admits to Hughie with pain in his voice that he was the one who killed Popclaw. For a brief moment, A-Train stops antagonizing Hughie as he seemingly realizes how his own terrible choices led to the destruction of his personal life. The moment then passes, and A-Train goes right back to blaming Hughie for making him do all those terrible things.
  • He has another moment in Season 3 when he sees how easily Homelander will throw away any of his lackeys on a whim. It doesn't take long before he's crawling back like a battered housewife, showing that he's become as pathetic as the Deep.
  • He seems to finally get over being a physical and moral Dirty Coward for the last three seasons in "Herogasm", when he acknowledges that Hughie has every right to hate him and seemingly sacrifices his life to kill Blue Hawk. But when he unexpectedly lives and is offered the chance to keep his money and reputation in exchange for going along with a fake story that turns Blue Hawk into a martyr, with the side effect that both his and Blue Hawk's crimes will retroactively be swept under the rug and the latter's victims denied justice, he jumps back on without hesitation. He even goes back to sucking up to Homelander, being one of the only other two remaining members of the "Seven" along with the Deep. At this point Nate is done with giving him more chances and tells him to get out of his life.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: A-Train is so wrapped up in being the fastest man alive that he's paranoid of any other speedster taking that title and replacing him in the Seven, to the point where he's willing to abuse Compound V to maintain his place. His paranoia is however well-justified - when being temporarily Brought Down to Normal due to a broken leg, he's instantly a victim of Profiling, as his entire gimmick is being the fastest guy on Earth.
• Informed Flaw: The after-effects of his V addiction supposedly left A-Train with a coin toss on whether or not he'll die the next time he uses his powers, yet he had no problem using them for most of Season 2 and 3, even using it for filming a commercial. Though, the commercial could very well have used CGI for his super speed.
• It's All About Me: It's all about the A-Train in this station. When Popclaw dies, he's more upset about how he lost someone close to him and moreover, he killed her himself, and in general he'll toss away his loved ones in a heartbeat if it means keeping his place in the Seven for one more day. When Hughie finally confronts him about how he killed Robin, his response boils down to "yeah, but what about my pain?"
• Jerkass: He is an arrogant douchebag who treats everyone like crap, including his brother, Nathan, when he expresses concern about A-Train's drug abuse, and extorts Popclaw into doing what he wants by holding their relationship hostage.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • His remark that "There are more important things than money" is something only someone who didn't grow up poor would say, does ring true from a certain perspective. If you don't have enough to take care of your basic needs, those "more important things" become a whole lot less important.
  • Subverted when he tries to justify his actions to Hughie by claiming he didn't intend to kill Robin. While that's definitely true, not only was A-Train not remorseful in the slightest, he even went as far as to crack a joke at Robin's expense not knowing that Hughie was watching him on video. Whether or not he intended to kill Robin is irrelevant to Hughie's suffering, as he's still fully aware that he did so and didn't care. That is, until season 3 where he grows to understand Hughie's suffering after Blue Hawk cripples his brother. Causing A-Train to understand Hughie's anger and even deliver a genuine apology.
• Jerk Jock: He's the best runner in the world and he's gained an ego to match it.
• Karma Houdini:
  • He gets away with basically committing DUI manslaughter with nothing but an insincere apology which would usually result in several years behind bars, and later laughs about it. Hughie's fury about A-Train's lack of punishment and remorse is what leads him to join the Boys and make A-Train pay by any means necessary.
  • By the end of Season 2, he's been brought back into the Seven after he helps The Boys take down Stormfront and seems to have at least partially recovered from his heart condition, undoing the punishments brought on him by the end of the first season. At least the he made up for the former by exposing Stormfront first.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: While Season 2 does end with him being let back into the Seven, Season 3 reveals that he's still a No-Respect Guy who's powers are failing him and who's still on the risk of dying due to his Compound V abuse. He's also been kicked down to Butt-Monkey status by Homelander, frequently overlooked in favor of the Deep and his one attempt to do a genuinely good thing (confronting Blue Hawk about his repeated Police Brutality) ended in disaster.
• Kick the Dog: The night after he ran over an innocent woman, he's seen laughing it off in a private conversation with another superhero. Downplayed later, when he seems to show some regret for the incident.
• Lack of Empathy: He outright laughs about killing an innocent woman, and doesn't even bother remembering her name by calling her an "accident." Subverted later on in Season 3, when he starts to feel guilty about the damage he's done in the past. He even apologizes to Hughie for running through Robin.
• Legacy Character: A colder approach to this given the show's commentary on superheroes as a corporate product. As "A-Train" is their trademark, they intend to give the title and costume to Shockwave when he formally replaces the current A-Train on the team, much to his protest.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: A-Train is shown to be unrepentantly selfish and has engaged in manslaughter and murder, but he's usually portrayed as having the moral high ground compared to The Deep. The Deep is shown to be an unrepentant Jerkass who never owns up to his crimes, while A-Train at least has some remorse for what he has done. Additionally, while The Deep is a Weak-Willed Dirty Coward who is easily cowed by figures of authority (see how he folds before the Church of the Collective), A-Train is more assertive, only backing down in the face of Homelander. Season 3 expands on this — while both betray someone who trusted them to secure their spot on the team (A-Train tells Homelander about Starlight and Supersonic, leading Homelander to murder the former to make an example to Starlight, while The Deep eats his own octopus friend alive to regain a place in the Seven), The Deep largely uses this as an opportunity to advance himself. A-Train, meanwhile, tries to use this goodwill to help improve things with other African Americans, and genuinely puts an effort into making amends with his brother.
• Makes Us Even: After Hughie and Annie hold the fact that they saved him when he went through a Compound V-induced heart attack at the end of Season 1 over his head, he decides that providing intel on Stormfront to take her down settles things. The less-than-altruistic motivation hampers this, however.
• Meaningful Name:
  • His superhero name and the blue color of his uniform are derived from the New York City Subway service, a service that has sociological significance for connecting New York City's two largest African American neighborhoods (Harlem and Bedford–Stuyvesant).
  • Whenever he uses his superspeed, he gives off a sound similar to a train horn as he breaks the sound barrier.
• Mirror Character: With Blue Hawk. Despite A-Train being black, and Blue Hawk being Police Brutality embodied as a supe, it's made particularly clear by Ashley that there's similarities. As she points out, A-Train has committed just as many (if not more) crimes such as running through Robin and killing her. In addition, both of them barely regretted the collateral damage they caused, both giving extremely bored, boilerplate apologies. To drive some of this home, A-Train is given Blue Hawk's heart after killing him.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After his brother is crippled and Ashley gives him a brutal dressing-down when he demands justice, A-Train becomes riddled with guilt over getting the person he loves the most hurt to the point he finally gives Hughie a genuine apology for killing Robin. It happens again when he realizes he's killed any chance of reconciling with Nate by murdering Blue Hawk and letting Vought cover up the truth.
• Named by the Adaptation: His real name was never revealed in the comics. Here, he's given the name Reggie Franklin.
• Never My Fault: A-Train pins the blame of Popclaw's death on Hughie and the Boys since them blackmailing her is what led to him to killing her, ignoring the fact that he was the one who went through with ending her life. Interestingly Double Subverted in the Season 1 finale, in which he admits that Popclaw's blood is on his hands in the final episode of the first season, but points out Hughie's involvement is still what led to Homelander ordering her death. He still could have refused, of course.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After many prods from his brother, A-Train finally arranges for Blue Hawk to at least deliver an Ordered Apology to the black community in Trenton, in a first in ages good deed. The resulting conference is a total disaster, and in the end Blue Hawk ends up crippling Nathan, leaving him in a wheelchair.
• No-Respect Guy:
  • Gets demoted to this after Homelander kicks him out of the Seven. It's so bad that even Ashley refuses to put up with his bullshit anymore and overrides any objections he may have under threat of terminating his severance package.
  • This continues even after he's been let back into the Seven in Season 3. Homelander frequently belittles and mocks him for the loss of his speed, even at one point bullying him for allegedly getting fat due to overeating (even though A-Train points out his powers make him require more calories than the average person). His popularity is dwindling and his attempts to re-brand himself around his blackness are so transparent even Ashley hates them. To put the cherry on top, even the Deep, the show's desginated Butt-Monkey, has no respect for him anymore and mouths off to him.
• Not So Similar: He's distraught over Popclaw's death and tries to compare his situation with Robin's death to guilt Hughie. Hughie notes how what they went through is vastly different.
• Older Than They Think: In-universe, Vought publicly hails A-Train as the "first black member of The Seven" while zealously hiding that the very oldest member of the team, Black Noir, is black.
• Only Sane Man: Downplayed, but after Black Noir's apparent death, Maeve's "demise" and Starlight's Resign in Protest, he is the only sane if unscrupulous person in what was left of the Seven; Homelander is an Omnicidal Maniac who could snap anytime, the Deep is a Lethally Stupid rapist and animal fucker, and Ashley is a Beleaguered Assistant to Homelander going bald from stress.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: After Blue Hawk shoots down an unarmed black man, attacks a small crowd of black people, and cripples A-Train's brother, A-Train finally gives him what's coming to him by dragging him on a road for miles at super speed, leaving Blue Hawk nothing more than a horribly mutilated corpse.
• Pet the Dog:
  • When Translucent can't visit a terminally ill Make A Wish child in the hospital, A-Train fills in and makes a genuine effort to cheer him up. It goes horribly wrong on several different levels but he gave it the old college try.
  • In Season 3, he makes a genuine effort to reconnect with his brother, and arranges for Blue Hawk to at least offer an Ordered Apology to the black community in Trenton. Blue Hawk turns things into a fiasco due to his own racism, and ends up crippling A-Train's brother such that he is left permanently paralyzed.
  • In relation to the above, A-Train also sincerely appreciates that Starlight stands up for him when he announces that Blue Hawk is engaging in Police Brutality.
  • When he meets Hughie at Herogasm, A-Train sincerely apologizes for the first time about Robin and acknowledges that Hughie has every right to hate him.
• Playing the Victim Card: Whenever someone confronts him about his actions, A-Train's first response is to feel sorry for himself and tell everyone that he was not only forced to do what he did, he was also the true victim. When Hughie confronts him, A-Train starts lamenting on how he suffered more than Hughie and that killing Robin was just an accident. Something Hughie attacks and points out, "That accident had a name."
• Pragmatic Villainy: In Season Two, he's shown to be willing to work with Annie and Hughie, both people who he despises, to get Stormfront out of his path of rejoining the Seven.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: He gets into a contest with the Deep throughout season 3 to see who can more effectively suck up to Homelander. He even goes out of his way to refer to Homelander as "a great man" when no one else is around, just in case Homelander might be listening, and sells out the only supe who showed him respect because it meant he could better get into Homelander's good graces.
• Race Lift: White in the comics but black in the show. Compare with The Deep, who is the opposite case.
• Rags to Riches: He's a classic story of the American Dream, going from a poor black boy from the South Side of Chicago who grew up to a single mother working two jobs to make ends meet, to a celebrity superhero and athlete making millions a year. Unfortunately, his lack of financial skills means he's fast on track to go from Riches to Rags, especially after he loses his income as a member of the Seven.
• Required Secondary Powers: On top of the general Super-Strength that most supes seem to have, A-Train has enough physical resistance to survive running at supersonic speeds, and enough lower-body strength to pull a freight train with a broken leg.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: He kills Blue Hawk for attacking and killing several black people and paralyzing his brother, but this ends up sweeping Blue Hawk's crimes under the rug and making sure that the people he murdered will never get their justice. Nathan disowns him after finding out about this.
• Secret Relationship: He has one with Popclaw. His refusal to go public about it is what drives her to eventually cheat on him.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A-Train's fear of being replaced and need to be number one led to him abusing Compound V to stay on top. However, this ends up causing him to have a heart attack that cripples his performance and causes exactly what he wanted to avoid.
• Signature Sound Effect: When passing by using his super speed, a sound akin to a train's horn is heard.
• Spanner in the Works: It's ultimately him who took the first shot at Stormfront after it's made clear she's the reason why the Church won't seriously consider him for reinstatement into The Seven.
• The Speedster: As the Seven are a darker take on the Justice League, A-Train is their equivalent of the Flash, possessing Super-Speed as his only superpower.
• Sticky Fingers: Homelander gave him Compound V so he could give it to terrorists around the world and create Supe villains to help Vought get a military contract, but he's been filching some so he can fuel his addiction and keep his spot in the Seven.
• Story-Breaker Power: He's the only recurring threat with Super-Speed besides Homelander, and while Homelander is plainly incapable of using his own speed for anything other than flying in a straight line (as his underwhelming fights make clear), A-Train is actually capable of fighting at super speed, at least in bursts (albeit, not at the same speeds he can run in a straight line). Ordinarily this would make him a rather hard antagonist to write; he can pummel basically any supe who's not massively stronger/tougher than him (e.g. Homelander and Soldier Boy) effortlessly with them not really being able to retaliate (as shown by his Curb-Stomp Battle against Kimiko and Starlight), and he can flat-out liquify normal humans by running through them. You can't even avoid him. A stopgap measure in season 1 was having Kimiko break his leg in an ambush (taking advantage of the fact that he has to turn on his Super-Reflexes rather than just always perceiving the world in slow motion), but he recovered. Luckily, he's suffering from a heart condition due to his heavy usage of Compound V, which limits how often he can use his main power, and conveniently causes him to collapse right before he can deliver the coup de grace to Starlight and Hughie at the climax of season 1. He spends the next two seasons neutered and is told that he only has a few more runs left before his condition outright kills him, and suffers another heart attack in the course of killing Blue Hawk, which he only survives through getting a transplant... from Blue Hawk.
• Super-Reflexes: A Required Secondary Power so he can control his Super-Speed. The finale shows his reflexes are such that he perceives and moves as if time is flowing normally for him, but everything else is moving incredibly slow. It's a sign of his decline in season 3 that Hughie is able to punch him in the face to which A-Train responds with genuine shock as his powers usually allow him to effortlessly dodge attacks.
• Super-Speed: His main superpower. He also trains and competes with this skill similar to a professional racer.
• Super-Strength: He backhands Kimiko right through a concrete wall.
• Super-Toughness: It's a required secondary power for a speedster like him, allowing him to withstand powerful impacts. However, as his brother reveals his abuse of Compound V is weakening his bones, like some real-life steroids.
• Taking You with Me: When Starlight inflicts this by ruining their reputations with blackmail, he tries to turn it around against her. It doesn't work since she'd be fine with it anyway and more importantly, she's aware A-Train is bluffing, since he would only dig himself deeper when trying to drag her down.
• Token Minority: He's the only black member of The Seven and officially the first African-American to join. Until Black Noir's Dramatic Unmask reveals that he's black too.
• Two First Names: Both "Reggie" and "Franklin" are usable as given names.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • It seems Starlight and Hughie saving his life hasn't bought them any capital with him. When he finds out Starlight is smuggling out Compound V, he threatens to take it to Homelander and shows glee at her impending painful death. This is later downplayed come the second season finale where he gives Starlight and Hughie crucial info on Stormfront, and calls it his way of returning the favor, but it's more of a means of getting back at Stormfront and requisitioning his position in the Seven in reality.
  • In Season 3, Supersonic is the only one in the Seven who's still kind to him and even helps him after a fight with the Deep. When Supersonic informs him about his and Starlight's plans to fight Homelander, the first thing A-Train does is run to Homelander and tattle so he'll get his standing back.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: A-Train accidentally killing Hughie's girlfriend, Robin in a high-velocity impact causes Butcher to seek out Hughie to join The Boys. This results in Hughie killing Translucent thanks to A-Train's actions.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: A-Train is suggested to have been a good guy before he joined Vought: as he has shown to care for his brother, his relationship with Popclaw was genuine and he really did overcome a less than ideal home-life. Fame and fortune from being on the Seven, his desire to be the best (to maintain his position on the Seven), and his ensuing dependency on Compound-V made him forget why he wanted to be a hero in the first place.
• Villain Has a Point: A-Train starts out as a jerk and gets worse from there. On at least one point however, he is right: his killing of Robin wasn't intentional, while the same can't be said of Hughie's acts with the Boys. However, A-Train's other devious acts, including murdering Popclaw, arming terrorists with superpowers, and telling Homelander about Supersonic's conspiring with Starlight, were intentional.

Starlight

See Starlight's character page here.

Stormfront

See Stormfront's character page here.

Shockwave

Shockwave

Portrayed by: Mishka Thébaud

Another Supe with the power of super-speed.

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• Always Someone Better: Rivals A-Train in speed, and while he loses their public match, it's only because A-Train was abusing Compound V to enhance his powers. Brief glimpses of his exploits in Season 2 show him improving his speed, and he eventually takes a spot on The Seven.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Shockwave comes across as one of the more stable and sincere Supes, but whether or not this is an accurate reflection of his character or simply reflecting the fact that We Hardly Knew Ye is unclear.
• Cool Shades: Like A-Train's.
• Expy: Of The Flash. A speedster with a lightning-themed costume. His status as a Superior Successor to A-Train specifically makes him possibly this to Wally West, the third and most powerful incarnation of the Flash.
• Flat Character: There's no information on this guy that isn't tied into his rivalry with A-Train.
• The Generic Guy: He's a speedster. That's all there is to him. He may be one of the top speedsters in the world, but having super speed isn't exactly a rare ability for Supes.
• Irony: Shockwave, with his great speed, is initially not fast enough to produce a proper shock wave^DefinitionA disturbance from when something moves faster than the local speed of sound.. His speed as seen in "Get Some" was 342 m/s, just one short of being as fast as the speed of sound in dry air at 343 m/s.
• Orange/Blue Contrast: He wears an orange costume against A-Train's blue one. It's especially clear in their race in "Get Some".
• The Rival: To A-Train, though how much of this is just for publicity is unclear. He does give a smug smirk when he replaces A-Train on the Seven.
• Super-Speed: Similar to A-Train.
• Your Head Asplode: Along with Vogelbaum and numerous others, at the Congressional hearing on Compound-V, by Victoria Neuman.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: As mentioned above, his tenure in the Seven is cut short too soon.

Supersonic

Supersonic / Drummer Boy / Alex

Portrayed by: Miles Gaston Villanueva, Luca Oriel (Drummer Boy)

Formerly the Young Americans member Drummer Boy and Annie's ex-boyfriend.

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• Adaptational Attractiveness: Supersonic is a very attractive man, unlike his comics counterpart Drummer Boy, who is a skinny blonde kid in a domino mask and a garish costume, wielding an actual drum.
• Adaptational Badass: He actually helps Hughie and Annie, unlike his comic counterpart, who appeared exactly once, being caught cheating on Starlight with a nun-themed Supe.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the comics. Alex's only appearance was as Drummer Boy. And his only notable appearance is when he is caught cheating on Annie with another member of the Young Americans. Here, he is supportive of Annie even at the risk of his own safety.
• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul:
  • In the comics, Drummer Boy and Starlight are actually still together at the start (or at least, that's what Starlight thinks), only to permanently split on bad terms after Starlight catches him having sex with a fellow member of the Young Americans. In the show, Supersonic and Annie broke up long ago, and they're on genuinely friendly terms.
  • In the comics, he never interacts with Homelander or Hughie.
• Adaptation Name Change: An in-universe rename, as he appears in season 3 having been rebranded as Supersonic.
• Amicable Exes: Him and Annie used to date, but they're still on pretty good terms. So much so he's willing to be part of the Seven even after Annie tells him what they're really like, solely so Annie will have at least one friendly face to look to.
• An Arm and a Leg: His corpse is missing an arm, and his right leg has been torn off his body with the other visibly damaged.
• Ascended Extra: He's seldom seen in the comic, with his biggest appearance being a brief scene where Annie walks in on him cheating on her.
• Body Horror: The state of his body after Homelander kills him is beyond horrific. His left arm and right leg seem to have been ripped off, he's got severe burns from Homelander's heat vision and his face has been caved in, presumably by a punch from Homelander.
• Boy Band: Used to be part of Super-Sweet, a band reminiscent of Backstreet Boys and N Sync.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: What Homelander did to him wasn't pretty. One of his legs is severed from the thigh down and his face is completely caved in with his jaw visibly hanging off what's left of his head.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: According to him, his grandmother didn't approve of him dating Starlight because of interracial reasons.
• Death by Adaptation: Unlike the comics, he dies in Season Three as an example by Homelander.
• Disposable Woman: A Rare Male Example. He exists solely to give some further insight into Annie's past, becomes a major blow to her current boyfriend Hughie's self-esteem, then gets brutally Killed Offscreen by Homelander to show that Homelander isn't playing around anymore. Homelander even shows Annie his horrifically disfigured corpse to intimidate her.
• Facial Horror: When Homelander shows Annie his corpse, his face is quite literally caved in with a mush of gore hanging off what's left of his head. The behind the scenes photos are even worse, with part of his cheekbone sticking out through his cheek and parts of his skull poking through what used to be his eye socket.
• Former Child Star: After his pop-stardom as Drummer Boy, he supposedly fell victim to the typical pitfalls of teen celebrities. Rebranding himself as Supersonic is at least partly a way for him to make a clean break with his past.
• A Friend in Need: He joins the Seven, even after Annie warns him of what it is like, to look out for Annie. Too bad he's killed off the following episode.
• Hidden Depths:
  • According to him, he had to deal with systematic racism during his rise as a superhero.
  • He's also initially implied to be a little smug, and probably interested in getting back together with his ex Starlight, making Hughie dislike him. However, as it turns out he is pretty humble, really is just friends with Annie, genuinely likes Hughie and risks everything to help the two of them against Homelander, even though it gets him killed.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Trusts A-Train with the plan, believing that the disgraced speedster may be willing to make a Heel–Face Turn. Instead, A-Train rats him out to Homelander, leading to his death.
• Just Friends: With Annie in present-day. While Hughie is quite jealous initially, it turns out him and Starlight really are just good friends and allies, and that Alex likes Hughie and has no issue with him dating Starlight.
• Killed Offscreen: We only learn what happened to him when Homelander shows Starlight his maimed carcass.
• Nice Guy: He doesn't show any signs of being a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and is much friendlier than most of the other Supes on the show, he even joined the Seven to look out for Annie. His kindness, unfortunately, leads to him being betrayed by A-Train and killed by Homelander.
• Old Flame: For Annie, being her ex-boyfriend from her time in the Young Americans.
• Old Shame: In universe, he considers his hit song "You Got Your License To Drive (Me Crazy)" to be this. When he has to perform it again for the first time in years, it becomes clear why, since it's explicitly about a sixteen year old girl who has just passed her driving test.
• Primary-Color Champion: He wears a costume that's red, blue, and white, and unlike most of The Seven, he's a genuine superhero.
• Race Lift: In the comics, he is a Caucasian blond man, while here he is Latino and has dark hair.
• Shockwave Clap: One of his listed powers, although we never see him use it before Homelander kills him. They are, however seen in his music video "Rock My Kiss".
• Suicide by Pills: Combined with Never Suicide. Vought covers his actual cause of death with a fake story about a drug overdose.
• Super-Strength: His other power.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Homelander goes after him to hurt Annie.
• Teen Idol: Was a member of a supe Boy Band, and is still popular with prepubescent girls.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Luca Oriel plays him as a teenager while Miles Gaston Villanueva plays him as an adult.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: A genuinely kindhearted and supportive guy who's brutally murdered by Homelander in an attempt to cow Starlight into submission.
• Unintentional Period Piece: In-universe, his Boy Band's main hit is riffed with references to celebrity couples of the time that have broken up since. To make it worse, the lyrics reference the singer's crush being 16, so he cannot sing it in the modern day without sounding creepy.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By blindly trusting A-Train with Annie's and Queen Maeve's secret plans, he makes a deadly mistake. A-Train rats them out to Homelander, which leads to Annie being constantly humiliated, the kidnapping of Queen Maeve and his own death.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He doesn't last long in the Seven before Homelander discovers he's working with Starlight against him and turns him into a pile of entrails.

Firecracker

Firecracker

Portrayed by: Valorie Curry

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• Canon Foreigner: She was created specifically for the show.
• Guest Fighter: Firecracker became a new Operator on January for both Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone, before even making her debut in the show.
• Miss Fanservice: Firacracker is advertised as the new sensual heroine for the show. She wears a body fitting romper-like superhero gear with boob window, which contrasts the superhero gear of the other newcomer, Sister Sage, whose costume is more modest and conservative.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Queen Maeve, she is another sultry redhead joining the Seven. In the teaser trailer, she even plays Maeve in what looks to be a musical or Theatrical piece.

Sister Sage

Sister Sage

Portrayed by: Susan Heyward

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• Alliterative Name: Sister Sage.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: She wears a pair of round glasses with her costume, and is shown allying herself with Homelander.
• Genre Savvy: From what is shown about in the teaser trailer, she is well versed in the psychology of the masses, history and politics, and knows exactly how to get under Homelander's skin to convince him to see the things from her point of view.
• Meaningful Name: Not her civilian name, but her hero alias. A "sage" is a person known for their profound wisdom and intelligence. From little of what was shown in the teaser about Sister Sage, she has shown to be cunning, tactical and manipulative.

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