The Boys: The Real Name Of Every Member Of The Seven

The Prime Video series "The Boys" is a satire of superhero stories, and that means that they frequently use the tropes of superhero worldbuilding. One of those is the use of alternate identities for the show's many "supes," or superhuman people who have gotten powers from Compound V. For some, the alternate identities are very important and completely secret, while others have shared their birth names publicly with the entire world. There are even different levels of privacy within The Seven, the Vought superhero team that is sort of like the Justice League if it were comprised mostly of sociopaths. The electricity-powered supe Starlight (Erin Moriarty) had her original identity in the public eye from the time she was a teenager, but Homelander (Antony Starr) has kept his true identity so secret that only a handful of people even know his birth name. 

So who are the members of the Seven, really? There have been more than seven of them since the show began, of course, as a couple have died or been replaced, but who are they? Let's take a look at their various alternate identities and try to figure out who the Seven really are without the costumes and Vought marketing. 

The leader of the Seven and its most terrifying member is Homelander. He's sort of like Superman if Superman had a milk fetish and thoroughly enjoyed hurting other people, and he's an unrepentant monster. Throughout the first four seasons, we've gotten a few glimpses at Homelander's childhood, and in season 4 we learned more about how he was tortured by Vought to test his supe powers, leading to some of his most sadistic revenge yet. 

Other than the people who knew him (and often abused him) as a child, no one calls Homelander by his birth name, which is John. He doesn't have a family so much as he was created using in vitro fertilization — his mother was an unhoused runaway and his father was Vought's very first supe, Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). From the time he was little he was molded by Vought to be the face of their supe program, so it makes sense that he identifies more as Homelander than he does as John. In fact, most of the people who even know that's his name are dead, so in a way John is dead now, too. 

The only relationship that Homelander truly seems to care about is with his son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), and he does have a slightly different identity with his son than he does with anybody else. He's not exactly Homelander the sadistic monster or the American "hero," but a more human, slightly softer version of himself, sort of what John might have been without all of Vought's meddling. Sometimes there are hints of a human that peek through Homelander's evil outer shell, thanks largely to Antony Starr's incredible performance, and it can make him a tiny bit more sympathetic. 

Like Homelander, Starlight was conditioned to be a public-facing supe from the time she was little, but unlike Homelander, she was born fully human. Like the rest of the supes in the world of "The Boys" save for Homelander and Ryan, Starlight was given Compound V and it turned her into a supe. Like the vast majority, she was given the V when she was an infant and didn't find out that her parents had given it to her until she was an adult. She's pretty tied to her real identity as a result and mostly sees Starlight as a costume. She's not even particularly attached to the costume or the name and tried to abandon them entirely and go by her real name: Annie January. 

Poor Annie has been through a lot on account of the whole being a supe thing. She was sexually assaulted by fellow Seven team member The Deep (Chace Crawford), had her choice to have an abortion made Vought News fodder, a shapeshifter sexually assaulted her boyfriend Hughie (what's with all of the sexual assault?!), plus she's been in constant danger of being killed by Homelander. Joining the Seven was one of Annie's biggest mistakes in her life, but leaving them and blowing up some of Vought's biggest secrets was one of the smartest things she ever did, so it all evens out. Annie deserves a little bit of revenge, however, and Erin Moriarty, who plays her, hopes that she gets to really get that revenge in the fifth and final season. 

Speaking of the Deep, his name is Kevin Moskowitz, and he's one hot mess of a supe and an even hotter mess of a human being. Like Annie, he was experimented on as a child and given Compound V, which caused him to develop aquatic powers including gills that help him to breathe underwater and the ability to talk telepathically to all marine animals. He's more than a little awkward around humans and his fellow supes, however, because he was that weird kid who talked to fish. He tried to change his identity as The Deep a bit when he got married and joined the Church of the Collective, but he ended up returning to the Seven and resuming his Deeply duties. 

Kevin is not super bright, to put it mildly, and it's unlikely that he's ever really thought of his own personal identity. He goes by both his human name and supe name, even using his human name with his (recently departed) eight-legged lover, Ambrosius the octopus (voiced by Tilda Swinton). There isn't any real separation between Kevin and The Deep, as Kevin is really just not that deep. 

Queen Maeve is "The Boys" version of Wonder Woman, but she didn't come from a mythical island of women. Instead, she was born Maggie Shaw, and after her parents agreed to have her injected with Compound V, she developed powers similar to Homelander's, including super strength, speed, durability, senses, and more. Her father, a gambling addict, capitalized on her powers by putting young Maggie in all kinds of young supe pageants (much like young Annie). She eventually went to Godolkin University and became Queen Maeve, a warrior woman who protects the innocent in a costume that looks like armor. 

For Maggie, Queen Maeve has always just been a costume, an alternate identity that worked well as a mask to keep her safe. In part, it helped her hide her queer identity from the rest of the Seven for a while, though Homelander eventually outed her very publicly. Thankfully, she was able to put the Queen Maeve identity aside for good at the end of season 3, when she sacrificed an eye and her superpowers in the showdown against Soldier Boy. She's been in hiding ever since, and hopefully, she gets to live happily as Maggie for the rest of her life. She's earned it. 

Queen Maeve isn't the only member of the Seven who manages something of a redemption, as the speedster supe A-Train also began his own redemptive journey in season 4. A-Train, played by Jesse T. Usher, was born Reggie Franklin, and he's one of the few members of the Seven whose family appears in the series. Reggie's relationship with his brother Nathan (Christian Keyes) has been vital to his arc throughout four seasons, and we've actually gotten to see a bit of who Reggie is when he's not pretending to be a superhero. Much like Maeve and Starlight, Reggie seems to view A-Train as a costume and an identity that he puts on and not as something that's deeply a part of him. He seems to want to be a better person (if not the kind of altruistic and selfless person that it takes to be a true hero), though how far he will get in that desire is anyone's best guess. 

When it comes to secret true identities, there was none more secret than Stormfront's (Aya Cash). The character, who was gender-swapped from the comics, showed up as a major antagonist in season 2 and was the perfect evil counterpart to Homelander. The two had a deeply disturbed romantic relationship that eventually ended when Stormfront died, but she kept many secrets even from Homelander. The far-right supe was actually born in 1919 and married the original founder of Vought, Frederick Vought, who made her the first supe with a successful Compound V injection. She hasn't aged since, though she took on other identities over the years, including the aliases Adele Vought and the superhero name "Liberty," which she used in the 1950s. It's possible that she operated under other supe identities between her stint as Liberty and her time as Stormfront, but she's always been the deeply racist, hateful Klara. She went from Nazi to neo-Nazi, but she's really always been the same awful person, just with different costumes and names. 

There isn't much known about the supe Translucent's origins, other than the fact that his last name was Schrect and his family was Jewish. He had the power of invisibility and was bulletproof because of his invisible skin, but that didn't stop Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Hughie (Jack Quaid) from killing him rather creatively using an explosive device planted inside his body. Translucent went pop and that was that, although the Seven did have a hilarious funeral for him, complete with a glass coffin that absolutely did not contain his corpse. We don't know much about Mr. Schrect as a person, only that he liked to use his invisibility to spy on people for perverse reasons, so he wasn't a good guy. What is it with supes being total creeps?

The original identity of the current Black Noir is still somewhat of an unknown, as he was replaced by Vought after the original died in season 3, but the identity of the first Black Noir is pretty tragic. His human name was Earving, and he served with the Vought superhero team Payback under the leadership of Soldier Boy. It was Soldier Boy who beat him so senselessly that he became mute and never let anyone see him out of his costume, too. He also likely suffered brain damage, as he started seeing and hearing visions of cartoon characters from his childhood as if they were living, breathing creatures in our own world. 

We'll never know how Noir saw his identity or what kind of personality he had before Soldier Boy turned him into a mostly mindless killing machine with visions of cartoon critters. We might get to know the new Black Noir a bit, but he probably won't be around for all that long, either. 

Season 4 introduced two new members of The Seven: Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Firecracker (Valorie Curry), who replaced Translucent and Starlight. Sister Sage was born Jessica Bradley, but she has a complicated relationship with her family and with non-supes in general. She's the smartest person alive, and that genius makes her feel a little alienated from the rest of humanity (and often her fellow supes, too, as demonstrated by her willingness to give herself lobotomies in order to have sex with The Deep). Jessica isn't especially tied to her Sister Sage identity and only really wears the costume/assumes the role when she has to for Vought reasons. Otherwise, she would be happier jamming needles into her brain to numb the pain of being too smart for a dumb world, which feels surprisingly human. 

The most recent addition to the Seven is Firecracker, a red, white, and blue-flavored supe based on far-right mouthpiece Marjorie Taylor Greene. Her real name is Misty Tucker Gray, and she comes from a low-income and uneducated background but managed to find fame and fortune through the same pageants as Starlight and Maeve. She had the moniker of Sparkler for a while as a teen but later became Firecracker, and she seems to identify with her supe self just as much as her human one. She knows who she is and doesn't really show different sides to different people, which is possibly her one positive attribute. No one has to wait for her to show her true colors, because she always has them on display.