The Boys Season 4's Weirdest Scene Left Homelander Actor Antony Starr Totally Shocked

The hit Prime Video series "The Boys" has no shortage of weird moments, but one in particular stood out for Antony Starr, who plays the megalomaniacal supe Homelander. Throughout the series, Homelander has shown a particular predilection for milk — specifically human breastmilk. It honestly makes a lot of sense since Homelander is an overgrown man-toddler who never really matured beyond his most childish tendencies, but that doesn't stop it from being kind of weird and occasionally a little shocking.

Starr is actually partially to blame for Homelander's ongoing milk fetish, as he encouraged showrunner Eric Kripke to take the gag further after being tickled by an initial breastmilk scene in season 1. It seems like Kripke got the last laugh, however, when he managed to surprise Starr with a scene that wasn't just one-upping the breastmilk and cow milking scenes in earlier seasons — by giving him something of a lactation love scene with one of his newest co-stars.

In the first season of "The Boys," Vought Senior Vice President of Hero Management Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) used her own breastmilk to try to wrangle Homelander and keep him under control, and in season 4, fellow supe Firecracker (Valorie Curry) decides to try and control him the same way. She reveals that she can lactate by squirting Homelander in the face and surprising him, and he's pretty darn delighted. The two then share a rather intimate moment as he suckles from her breast, cementing that she now has power over him as a kind of mother figure. 

In an interview with Collider, Starr revealed just how shocked he was by the tenderness of the scene considering the context:

"That's one of my favorite scenes in the whole season. That's the weirdest scene I think I've done. [...] But for me, with that, it was the Oedipal thing and what ended up happening on the day, which is that I get hit with breast milk in the face. It doesn't look like it's going very well between Firecracker and Homelander. All of a sudden, there's this reveal of what she's done and the loyalty that she shows, and then it becomes basically a love scene. It became this incredibly intimate, emotional moment."

While many of the other breastmilk scenes have been played entirely for laughs, there's something more sincere happening in the season 4 scene, and that's what makes it such a surprise.

While the initial squirt of breastmilk on Homelander's face is certainly a surprise, it's the way Firecracker tenderly takes him in her arms and lets him nurse, swathed in his American flag cape. Throughout the season, Homelander has tried to kill all traces of his childhood, human self, distancing himself from "John" to become the ultimate all-American killing machine he wants to be. After killing those who hurt him so much as a child, it would seem that there's no one left who can reduce him to his broken former self, but then Firecracker gives him the chance to feel like an infant once more. 

It completely changes the power dynamic between Firecracker and Homelander and even gives her the upper hand against Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), who had previously been puppeteering Homelander using her genius intellect. It should set up an interesting power struggle in the Seven in the upcoming fifth and final season, and all because of a little hormone engineering and some, uh, mother's milk.