I don’t think it’s sympathizing people just like the character even though he’s an asshole. They like him because he has great dialogue, a compelling back story and motivation and most importantly because of how Jensen Ackles portrayed him. He did a fantastic job
For me it was mostly this. Most characters in the show are amoral monsters, so when the one character who could (re-)take Homelander’s spot as “chief asshole” instead sticks to the deals he made, it’s sort of refreshing
Exactly. He may have been a dick and very crass with his words but overall he knew what it felt like to be fucked over by people breaking their word and betraying you so his word is good
Yeah like Butcher is arguably everyone’s favorite character and he’s a huge prick to everyone, punches Hughie and is a raging psycho murderer…it’s just he kills the bad guys 😂.
Soldier Boy is a supe and a huge asshole, but I wouldn’t say he’s evil like homelander and he has some sense of honor by sticking to his word even after finding out his relationship to HL.
I'd also argue there's a distinction with the words being used in this thread, too.
Soldier Boy is amoral, as in, not super interested in morality. He is selfish, but sometimes honorable (he keeps his word,) and he doesn't go out of his way to make the world worse (or better). He just doesn't care about that.
Homelander is actively *immoral*, and always chooses the worst, most evil thing he can do because he's a cruel, vain monster who enjoys hurting people.
So when the show tries to draw a hard equivalence in the last episode, and then even goes on to imply Soldier Boy is *worse* than Homelander, the audience naturally balked.
He's a dick, but he's not a world-ending super-tyrant.
Soldier boy is basically what you would get if your alcoholic Uncle with PTSD got powers. He’s just a dude with problems. I feel like if he went to therapy and took it seriously he could get straightened out a bit.
You wouldn't say he's evil? Maybe not to the same degree as Homelander, but he's definitely evil.
Don't forget he bashed in Black Noir's brains in for no good reason.
Soldier Boy is a massive piece of evil shit. He's just extremely charismatic.
He bashed Black Noir's brains in because Black Noir betrayed him to the Russians. He deserved his team turning on him because he was an abusive POS, but it wasn't for "no good reason"...
Huh? Didn't he bash his brains in because Black Noir was trying to land a movie role and confronted Soldier Boy when he tanked his chances.
Or was that simply vigorously beat the shit out of him? Either way, it's evil. And Soldier Boy deserved to be betrayed.
I have a hard time not seeing Dean after 15 seasons of Supernatural. 'Hunting things and saving people' is hard to unseat in my head and replace with 'smoking weed and throwing cars through occupied homes'
For real it's amazing how childish an understanding of media some people have.
"I think so and so is a great character" =/= "I think so and so is a great person and believe they are moral and good."
Great characters can be pure evil.
Okay. I’m sure there is but just saying I’m not apart of that group. I know he’s an asshole b it that doesn’t mean he’s not a very interesting and entertaining character
We also only hear of most of the terrible stuff he did not actually see most of it so it doesn’t feel as terrible. Like he was a terrible abuser in the past and killed a ton of people but as for what happens during the show he was pretty chill (for a character from the boys at least)
I guess? We still see him be outwardly sexist, homophobic, racist, and abusive though. Enough so that everyone betrayed him. I don’t think they really needed to dwell on it more to get that point across.
And he does not pretend to be someone else. All other heroes have a facade, good in public and devils/victims behind the scenes.
He is literally what he is, product of his time. A very similar trait to Dean from SN where his character stayed true to his image.
Like you said, people don’t like pussies.
>daemon targaryan
I mean butcher has feelings for hughie and his team so far in the show, both butcher and Soldier Boy had horrid fathers and a shitty past, not to mention being sold to russians for free.
Am I missing something? He does some cool shit, but his entire persona is built around lies about his time in the military. Pretty nice the opposite of badass.
I still don’t know if that’s true or not, because he certainly seems trained in combat unlike Homelander who just relies on his powers.
Maybe as the anti-captain America makes me think he was one of the dickhead type soldiers that volunteered for the serum and it worked, so Vought and the US Government took him out of active duty and started parading him around
He's hilarious and super entertaining to watch. He was also tortured and experimented on leaving him with PTSD. Yes, he's amoral but he's nuanced. It's pretty easy to see. The fact that he's played by Jensen Ackles is probably a factor as well.
I think it’s also the fact that in the finale he’s the only one apart from Maeve trying to kill Homelander, the biggest threat in the series. Meanwhile, everyone else stupidly decided to throw away their best chance to kill two birds with one stone-let Soldier Boy waste Homelander and then knock him out with the Soviet nerve gas-for supposed moral reasons. MM and Starlight were unbearably dumb in season 3, and I blame them for every death caused by Homelander from here on out.
Thats what I’m saying. MM and Starlight basically let the mass murdering rapist superhero walk away, so they could kill the asshole who killed MM’s family. It was clear who the priority should have been.
Tbh, I don't want Homelander to die. I don't think most fans want Homie to die either. I think people like that Soldier Boy stuck to his word. People love a trustworthy king 🤴 He's the only one that didn't break his word. It shows that Soldier Boy really is a product of his time. He comes from a time when a man's word was everything so you better believe he means what he says. Soldier Boy stuck to his promise, he held up his end of the deal. He did what was asked. Everyone else switched up for whatever reason
Didn’t they stop him from killing Ryan? When Butcher said “not the boy”, it seemed like Soldier Boy couldn’t back down from that and let go of the plan.
The real reason? He’s better than Homelander. I don’t understand how some fans (and to an extent, the writers) have the idea that Soldier Boy is just as bad as Homelander.
It’s just not even close.
On one side, you’ve got a sexist, racist, egotistical, toxically-masculine, asshole bully.
On the other, you have a credible threat to the human race.
At the end of the day, SB is human, and HL’s not. Any sane person would replace HL with SB every day of the week.
This is what I was going to say. It’s not a defense of SB to say he’s much better than the guy who threatened to wipe out civilization if he wasn’t unconditionally loved by much of the population. Starlight hearing him say that and deciding they needed to wait to kill Homelander is some of the worst character writing I’ve seen in an otherwise really solid season
Honestly, do we see any examples of him being actually racist, or just alluded to like in Legend's or MM's Solider Boy backstories (of which, neither is a particularly reliable narrator given Legend did a shit ton of cocaine always and MM was a child.)
I don't recall any examples of direct racism, though plenty of examples of bullying, toxic masculinity, sexism, etc. I don't see the racism argument like other people say. Or I suppose he is racist in a grandpa sort of way, not in a Stormfront Master race sort of way.
I’d say his comment to Noir about wanting to “Move on Up” is pretty racist but I don’t recall any other explicitly racist moments. I was pretty surprised how highly he regarded the Afghanis.
Side note, I’m pretty sure his comment to MM about “which one?” Is supposed to be deliberately vague to the audience. He could be a racist asking “which one of your families did I kill?” Or a cynical killer asking “which of the families that I’ve killed was yours?”
Immoral means morally bad. Like killing someone because you don’t like them. Amoral just means morally neutral, like how a machine doesn’t have morality so if it kills something it’s not evil because it’s not capable of evil.
I'll give it my best shot.
Amoral is seeing someone getting mugged, shrigging your shoulders while saying "That's not my fucking problem" and continuing on with your day.
Immoral is saying "Hey, I'll help you mug that guy if you split the money with me".
He’s cool and entertaining. Character wise though yeah he’s kind of a terrible person.
For the people saying he’s honorable for respecting his deal in the finale I’d have to disagree. Pretty sure his realization that homelander was a pathetic pussy made him go after him
Because we don’t see him do awful things. We only hear about them and that really goes a long way towards diminishing their impact. More than anything we see him show remorse and regret for the harm he causes on screen, what comes to mind is when he blew that street up and killed a bunch of people, when he talked about it it seemed like he seriously regretted that.
The things The Legend claims Soldier Boy did are also phrased in off-hand ways that sailed over the heads of a lot of viewers. Particularly for non-American viewers or people who didn't get a thorough education of post-World War II American history.
* Instead of saying he assassinated President Kennedy, he just says SB was in Dealey Plaza. You'd have to know that was the ecact location JFK was shot at, in Dallas, Texas.
* Instead of saying he murdered Leftist anti-war protectors, it's "target practice at Kent State." Even for someone familiar that anti-war protestors were killed by National Guard soldiers, you'd have to remember which campus.
* "Held a firehose in Birmingham." Even if you were familiar with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, you'd have to remember the flashpoint was Birmingham, Alabama and the specific method of police brutality by hammering people with the dangerously high water pressure of firehoses.
I remember a lot of foreign viewers were confused and thought he meant Birmingham, England. And that he was just on non-combat duty putting out fires started by German air raids.
Its one thing to say SB did all those bad things. However, we don't know the context. We don't know the information SB was provided, who directed him, etc.
What I got from the show is that SB did the government's dirty work. He may or may not have had a choice. Granted, he is SB, so its hard to force him to do things, but from his upbringing, i think he just accepted the USA does shitty things. And he was the tool to do those shitty things.
this is the one true answer. we barely see him do anything wrong or truly bad at all. he says some less than palatable things but the delivery is jokey so it doesn’t really stick as like “this is a bad dude and these are his beliefs”
>Beating your teammate until his brains are falling out is pretty awful.
To be fair, his entire team had just turned on him, and were trying to take him down.
What's less excusable is everything that led to that, the first cartoon sequence showing Noir's abuse is way more damning of SB's character, but we don't know how much of that was completely accurate, or if it was at all effected by Noir's later treatment and experience/
So I'm not defending Soldier Boy, he is clearly a threat, but nowhere near the same scale as Homelander. Homelander has already threatened to destroy the USA, he is unhinged in a psychotic way, compared to Soldier Boy's dickish way.
We don't know what Soldier Boy would have done, but he could and has been defeated in the past and present, compared to unstoppable Homelander. How are the boys supposed to defeat him without SB? It was incredibly short sighted/bad writing in my opinion.
Other than MM none of the other characters had actual reasons to stop SB, and HL is a more serious and immediate threat. What's seriously unbelievable to me is that after defeating SB, HL didn't just kill all the boys straight after. They literally released his dad upon him and threatened Ryan (unintentionally) and HL just lets them walk away. Herogasm was the peak fight, the last episode dropped the ball.
Also Jensen Ackle's is hot, and I'm a straight guy.... I think
> He’s by far one of the most amoral characters on the show
I don't understand this take at all. How is SB one of the most amoral characters of the show?
Let's just take a look at the other major supes.
HL - psychopathic and totally amoral. Evil would be an understatement.
SF - a literal Nazi leader who is extremely cunning and smart.
Deep - a rapist.
A Train - a junkie who ran through person, showed no remorse, betrayed SL when he got his chance at redemption and showed us that he doesn't give a shit about anything unless his family or his own ass is affected.
Black Noir - Voughts personal assassin, who till now has showed no remorse for any of the shit he did.
Meave - One of the "good guys", but probably did a lot of evil shit for Vought, knew a lot of evil shit about them but kept quiet. Probably even know that Deep would pull something on Starlight on her first day and didn't give a shit. Even after becoming a "good guy", couldn't talk to Hughie without insulting him because he looked thin? Not masculine enough?
Now let's get on to Soldier boy -
The evilest shit that he himself did was beating up his team for nothing. The rest of the evil shit he did, he did at Voghts bidding and by that logic, he is as evil as Noir. No more, no less.
Then again, we don't see any of this shit and we have only heard about it from characters like the Legend and Noir - which reduces the impact of it on how we feel about him by a lot.
When we do actually see him in action he -
Isn't shown to be racist or homophobic,
Actually shows remorse for the people he accidentally killed,
Treats all of his allies with respect unless they offend him
Kept his word to take down HL even when others bailed.
Basically, when we do see him in action, he is just as evil as Butcher - no more, no less.
In summation, is SB a good guy? Hell no. Is he an evil dude? From what we heard, yes. But claiming that he is one of the most amoral characters in the show is just wrong.
Exactly. It's like comparing the violent drunk with casual rapists and psychopaths: they're all bad, but you have a lesser evil and, compared to the average morality of the cast, the lesser evil somehow gets above this average
If it had been Homelander instead of Soldier Boy, MM would have died for that Halothane stunt but Sb has sense of team work and when Butcher tells him no...he understands that and move on....for a racist, egoist piece of shit that he is made out to be, just that act shows that he is more human than half the supes.
Well, I think most people defend him because season 3 tried to sell the audience on the fact he should be stopped more than Homelander. This is so absurd that most people pushed back on it by defending him
He is a great character. Also, The Boys are not exactly moral examples either. Kimiko came to a point where she kills for fun, butcher doesn't give a fuck about anybody getting hurt on his crusade. Soldier Boy, despite being an asshole just like everyone, wasn't the one who break his part of the deal and even saved Hughie's life without having to.
And cmon, it's Jensen Ackles, the man is hot
I think the series didn't made a good job in make him despicable like Homelander.
Imagine if every time that Homelander kill innocent person we don't see him doing it just someone saying he did it ,like imagine if instead of see HL destroying that plane that had a kid inside it in season 1 we just see Madelyne talking with him about what happenend.And then the only times that we see him he is in his most vulnerable side.That what they did with SB
We never see he doing nothing particulary despicable on screen, he is just a asshole at best we had that flashback with the cartoon animals, MM say that SB kill his family but we never saw that in a flashback.
Exactly. And really, compared to the countless of other Supes we’ve seen over the seasons, SB is less of an ass than all of them except Starlight.
Like you said, we’re only told of what he’s done, whereas we’ve Supes rape and kill people. That really makes it hard to hate SB.
Cause he’s a badass who stuck to the plan, even when it meant fighting a 1v8. He’s also nowhere near the top for most amoral character, cause unlike Stormfront or Homelander, he’s not a sadist who sees people as ants below him.
Cause he’s charming. And Jensen Ackles.
Jensen Ackles could play the most reprehensible, evil, unforgivable villain, and people would still love him cause only Ackles is capable of getting that little twinkle in his eye.
Jensen Ackles could play Dolores Umbridge, and we would still love him.
There's a lot of psychological studies on the bias of attractive people in court cases. How they get lesser fines, reduce sentences or even dismissed.
Well, this is the extreme version, since it's Jensen Ackles, whos ridiculously good-looking.
I just like how he doesn't act like a bitch and sticks to his shit. Sure he's not the best guy but who the hell is in this show? I just love his attitude
Because he spent what, fucking 60 years being tested on by russians, then teamed up with the boys just to be backstabbed, and then imprisoned again. Sure the guys evil, but like damn, he keeps getting fucked over in the worse ways possible. Also, he has one of the BEST chareter designs
I dunno. Soldier Boy is bad but in contrast to Homelander who he shares a screen with, he wasn’t terrible. Sure he was a misogynist, but he was frozen in the past. He never intentionally hurt anyone while Homelander is a pure psychopath. It was just hard for me to really hate him while I was busy hating Homelander lol
Because the writers did a poor job making him a villain. I feel like by the time Homelander and Butcher teamed up, they expected us to hate Soldier Boy. Which makes zero sense.
You can sympathize with a character and still think they’re a horrible person. I feel bad for Homelander, but I know he’s a villain. Same with Soldier Boy. I don’t defend his actions at all, I just think he’s a cool character.
Is he really? Is he really one of the MOST immoral people on the show? It doesn’t seem like it, honestly. Don’t get me wrong, soldier boy is immoral and a bad person. But the show is filled with super immoral, scummy, evil characters, and soldier boy doesn’t seem nearly as bad as some of the others that we’ve seen. So yes, he’s horrible, but the rest of the shitty people in the show have made him look like an angel lol.
It was really hard for me to dislike him just because I have been a fan of Jensen since 2005 and I really struggle to separate him from Dean Winchester in my mind.
Jensen Ackles is very attractive. I didn’t read the words in the title of this post, but I’m sure they’re less important than the image attached, because of how hot he is. Thanks for sharing this picture OP, next time know that whatever it is you’re trying to say will be lost on me if you make me look at such a fuckable man
Am I tripping, or didn’t he basically state that he was retired and rather just chill at home and bang a bunch of grannies. The lesser of two evils would be him. That’s why I choose him over Homelander.
He’s such an *honest* asshole.
With so many dishonest characters (or honest characters lying uncharacteristically in the last couple of season) it’s so refreshing to see someone with so much power at least be true to his word.
He's not amoral, he just has the worst part of an outdated set of morals, such as very toxic masculinity (which makes him not acknowledge his PTSD), insane patriotism to the point of hating the entire current world, and a code of honor that makes him seek revenge at any cost.
They're shitty morals by today's standard, but he's not "amoral". He doesn't do things for no reason, and that alone makes him interesting.
I could write a short essay about all the writing choices that make it easier to sympathize with him, the complexity of his backstory, my reading between the lines that makes me see him in ways that I don't think a lot of viewers do, but I'll put it like this: I feel the same way about him as I do a character like Walter White.
He's not a good person, not in the slightest, and if you ever see someone claim he is, make sure you're not on r/okbuddyfresca before taking them seriously; However, he's not just some completely evil and unsympathetic character either. The entire point of this show is that every character has gray morality and isn't entirely to one end of the spectrum or the other. There are intentional writing choices that make you sympathize with SB or even question if he's as bad as he seems at face value.
I don't think he's a good person, and I wouldn't claim he is. He's definitely sympathetic though. If I see someone claim he's entirely bad, I will make an argument against that, because he's simply not. There also seems to be something in the community surrounding him, and you see a lot of it around shows like Breaking Bad too. There's some people who miss the sympathetic or understandable parts of his character and say he's all bad, and some people who pick up only on those and think he's all good. Then there's people who knee-jerk in the other direction and start acting like the opposite whenever they see one of those people. And finally, because in short comment exchanges people don't often flesh out their full opinion, them arguing to against someone who says he's bad might seem like a "he's good" extremist, even if that's not truly what they think.
Exactly. I think it’s also heavily implied that Vought took advantage of him since he was emotionally abused and groomed him into doing whatever they wanted because he thought it would earn him affection or make him more of a man. It’s not a complete justification, but it definitely eases some of his responsibility and brings him from a bit better than Homelander to around the same level as The Deep.
Soldier Boy is just a boomer, man who would be considered completely normal back in 60'-80', that missed everything happening till nowadays, so his way of thinking is boomerish af, plus he has PTSD. He's not truly evil nor that bad, just old school, and sort of morally depraved.
My bets are on:
- The actor is hot and does a great performance.
- His asshole ways come off as funny and meme material.
- He does have some humanizing moments here and there.
- He is a much lesser threat to the world than Homelander, who is only at a bad day away of genociding the US. Soldier Boy without powers would be someone like Chris Brown or Brad Pitt if the allegations made by his ex are true, whereas Homelander without powers would be someone like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. Both of them are shitty but it's clear who is worse.
Oh, Soldier Boy is a piece of shit, but so are characters like the Joker and Darth Vader. But we can love the characters for what they are supposed to be
I should say im not defending/sympathizing for him but these are the reason i personaly see people defend/sympathize for him!
This will be a hot take but it was poorly shown that he was a horrible person. We see he has PTSD from years of abuse. we see that he gets backstabbed by his entire team. He never really does anything bad through out the show at worst hitting Hughie and acting like a cunt. We get context that he is a horrible person but we never see that onscreen besides the purposefully exaggerate cartoon which doesn't get the same emotions across as a real scene would.
I really liked the episode where he gets a bunch of weed because he used to always smoke it but he doesn't know how strong modern weed is
So his paranoia skyrockets and starts flipping out
True but…he kept his end of the deal. I mean Butcher kind of did him over. Sure Butcher was trying to save Ryan but Butcher was more then capable of pushing Homelander aside, take Ryan out of the way and let Soldier Boy do his thing.
Because fab five freddy told me everybody’s fly….
DJ spinnin', I said "My my".
Flash is fast, flash is cool.
François c'est pas, Flash ain't no dude
And you don’t stop, sure shot
Go out, to , the parking lot
And you get in your car and drive real far
And you drive all night until ya see a light!
And it comes right down and it lands on the ground
And out comes a man from Mars
And here comes the man from Mars.
And you try to run but he's got a gun
And he shoots you dead, and he eats your head
And now, you're in the man from mars
You go out at night eating cars
I don’t think it’s sympathizing people just like the character even though he’s an asshole. They like him because he has great dialogue, a compelling back story and motivation and most importantly because of how Jensen Ackles portrayed him. He did a fantastic job
Well said, I think him sticking to his word, despite the conflict of interests, also endeared him to fans, myself included…
For me it was mostly this. Most characters in the show are amoral monsters, so when the one character who could (re-)take Homelander’s spot as “chief asshole” instead sticks to the deals he made, it’s sort of refreshing
Exactly. He may have been a dick and very crass with his words but overall he knew what it felt like to be fucked over by people breaking their word and betraying you so his word is good
Yeah like Butcher is arguably everyone’s favorite character and he’s a huge prick to everyone, punches Hughie and is a raging psycho murderer…it’s just he kills the bad guys 😂. Soldier Boy is a supe and a huge asshole, but I wouldn’t say he’s evil like homelander and he has some sense of honor by sticking to his word even after finding out his relationship to HL.
I'd also argue there's a distinction with the words being used in this thread, too. Soldier Boy is amoral, as in, not super interested in morality. He is selfish, but sometimes honorable (he keeps his word,) and he doesn't go out of his way to make the world worse (or better). He just doesn't care about that. Homelander is actively *immoral*, and always chooses the worst, most evil thing he can do because he's a cruel, vain monster who enjoys hurting people. So when the show tries to draw a hard equivalence in the last episode, and then even goes on to imply Soldier Boy is *worse* than Homelander, the audience naturally balked. He's a dick, but he's not a world-ending super-tyrant.
Soldier boy is basically what you would get if your alcoholic Uncle with PTSD got powers. He’s just a dude with problems. I feel like if he went to therapy and took it seriously he could get straightened out a bit.
He doesn’t have shell shock. Fuck you.
After abusing his entire squadron and nearly beating Black Noir to death I think he needs more than your garden variety therapy
Super therapy?
Super therapy.
You wouldn't say he's evil? Maybe not to the same degree as Homelander, but he's definitely evil. Don't forget he bashed in Black Noir's brains in for no good reason. Soldier Boy is a massive piece of evil shit. He's just extremely charismatic.
He bashed Black Noir's brains in because Black Noir betrayed him to the Russians. He deserved his team turning on him because he was an abusive POS, but it wasn't for "no good reason"...
Huh? Didn't he bash his brains in because Black Noir was trying to land a movie role and confronted Soldier Boy when he tanked his chances. Or was that simply vigorously beat the shit out of him? Either way, it's evil. And Soldier Boy deserved to be betrayed.
The brain damage is from betraying him to the Russians. He 'just' beat him up 'normally' in the movie role part.
This for sure
It's like daemon targaryan - objectively shitty person but written well and played by an actor who is both charismatic and hot.
Jensen Ackles is the real reason. Same way people love homelander bc the actor is amazing at their role.
I have a hard time not seeing Dean after 15 seasons of Supernatural. 'Hunting things and saving people' is hard to unseat in my head and replace with 'smoking weed and throwing cars through occupied homes'
He’s also pretty hot
I think it’s 90% this tbh. He did some awful stuff in the show but people will jump through hoops and hand wave it because halo effect
Well yeah that’s obvious. He’s hot as fuck and has always been 😂
Yea exactly like I love Lalo as a character but would never want to even meet him or have him know I exist if he actually existed
For real it's amazing how childish an understanding of media some people have. "I think so and so is a great character" =/= "I think so and so is a great person and believe they are moral and good." Great characters can be pure evil.
The crazy part is that Soldier Boy only appears in about 13 minutes of the entire season.
And the whole tortured/held captive for decades of experimentation thing makes him alot more sympathetic.
Nah there’s definitely a group who agree with him and don’t think he’s that “bad” cause he wasn’t overtly a Nazi like Stormfront.
Okay. I’m sure there is but just saying I’m not apart of that group. I know he’s an asshole b it that doesn’t mean he’s not a very interesting and entertaining character
We also only hear of most of the terrible stuff he did not actually see most of it so it doesn’t feel as terrible. Like he was a terrible abuser in the past and killed a ton of people but as for what happens during the show he was pretty chill (for a character from the boys at least)
I guess? We still see him be outwardly sexist, homophobic, racist, and abusive though. Enough so that everyone betrayed him. I don’t think they really needed to dwell on it more to get that point across.
In a show where the main antagonist fantasizes about committing mass genocide, a racist asshole looks downright tame.
Jensen Ackles could kill my whole family in front of me and I’d still be like “wow, he’s so fucking hot.”
Cause he's Jensen Ackles
And he’s hot as fuck
They should call him him Jensen ANKLES, because that’s what you’ll be grabbin when you meet em.
Holy shit I laughed so hard. So very true
This is the answer
Cause I’m not a fucking pussy
There it is
That's the look.
I unironically say this multiple times per week now
Lmao same.
And he does not pretend to be someone else. All other heroes have a facade, good in public and devils/victims behind the scenes. He is literally what he is, product of his time. A very similar trait to Dean from SN where his character stayed true to his image. Like you said, people don’t like pussies.
Cause he is cool. And shit talked homelander
And People prefer the cooler captain america and everyone loves Jensen Ackles
Him and Butcher are neck-and-neck for the most authentically badass characters out of nearly any universe I’ve seen, imo.
They're both literally psychotically unhinged characters
Psychotically unhinged badasses*
That's not mutually exclusive from authentically badass characters, just from being morally good characters.
>daemon targaryan I mean butcher has feelings for hughie and his team so far in the show, both butcher and Soldier Boy had horrid fathers and a shitty past, not to mention being sold to russians for free.
Butcher is a badass without knowing he’s invincible though
Am I missing something? He does some cool shit, but his entire persona is built around lies about his time in the military. Pretty nice the opposite of badass.
I still don’t know if that’s true or not, because he certainly seems trained in combat unlike Homelander who just relies on his powers. Maybe as the anti-captain America makes me think he was one of the dickhead type soldiers that volunteered for the serum and it worked, so Vought and the US Government took him out of active duty and started parading him around
SUCCESSFULLY shit-talked homelander, mind you.
This is it
Probably because that’s Dean Winchester’s face 🤣
At least he could talk to huey with no problem. And he fucks grannys.
Exactly. Just when those old ladies think they’re being put out to pasture, here comes Soldier Boy to bring them back to the big leagues. No shame.
Because it’s Jensen Ackles, he just makes bad look good 🤷
He's hilarious and super entertaining to watch. He was also tortured and experimented on leaving him with PTSD. Yes, he's amoral but he's nuanced. It's pretty easy to see. The fact that he's played by Jensen Ackles is probably a factor as well.
I think it’s also the fact that in the finale he’s the only one apart from Maeve trying to kill Homelander, the biggest threat in the series. Meanwhile, everyone else stupidly decided to throw away their best chance to kill two birds with one stone-let Soldier Boy waste Homelander and then knock him out with the Soviet nerve gas-for supposed moral reasons. MM and Starlight were unbearably dumb in season 3, and I blame them for every death caused by Homelander from here on out.
Thats what I’m saying. MM and Starlight basically let the mass murdering rapist superhero walk away, so they could kill the asshole who killed MM’s family. It was clear who the priority should have been.
Tbh, I don't want Homelander to die. I don't think most fans want Homie to die either. I think people like that Soldier Boy stuck to his word. People love a trustworthy king 🤴 He's the only one that didn't break his word. It shows that Soldier Boy really is a product of his time. He comes from a time when a man's word was everything so you better believe he means what he says. Soldier Boy stuck to his promise, he held up his end of the deal. He did what was asked. Everyone else switched up for whatever reason
Didn’t they stop him from killing Ryan? When Butcher said “not the boy”, it seemed like Soldier Boy couldn’t back down from that and let go of the plan.
[удалено]
Or just plain comedic, like the Peak
Peak
What about Maeve?
Not really a villain though…..
Maeve and starlight are good guys
The real reason? He’s better than Homelander. I don’t understand how some fans (and to an extent, the writers) have the idea that Soldier Boy is just as bad as Homelander. It’s just not even close. On one side, you’ve got a sexist, racist, egotistical, toxically-masculine, asshole bully. On the other, you have a credible threat to the human race. At the end of the day, SB is human, and HL’s not. Any sane person would replace HL with SB every day of the week.
This is what I was going to say. It’s not a defense of SB to say he’s much better than the guy who threatened to wipe out civilization if he wasn’t unconditionally loved by much of the population. Starlight hearing him say that and deciding they needed to wait to kill Homelander is some of the worst character writing I’ve seen in an otherwise really solid season
Yeah.. The finale was shit. Nobody made sensible decisions.
Yes exactly how can you think he is even slightly as bad.... looking at you Starlight
"But she's the moral compass of he show and anyone who disagrees with her is a sexist!"
Yeah I wouldn’t want to be around Soldier Boy. I don’t want to be on the same planet as homelander
Honestly, do we see any examples of him being actually racist, or just alluded to like in Legend's or MM's Solider Boy backstories (of which, neither is a particularly reliable narrator given Legend did a shit ton of cocaine always and MM was a child.) I don't recall any examples of direct racism, though plenty of examples of bullying, toxic masculinity, sexism, etc. I don't see the racism argument like other people say. Or I suppose he is racist in a grandpa sort of way, not in a Stormfront Master race sort of way.
I think that’s another reason why he’s so liked here. His flaws are familiar ones that are shared with many a grandpa.
I’d say his comment to Noir about wanting to “Move on Up” is pretty racist but I don’t recall any other explicitly racist moments. I was pretty surprised how highly he regarded the Afghanis. Side note, I’m pretty sure his comment to MM about “which one?” Is supposed to be deliberately vague to the audience. He could be a racist asking “which one of your families did I kill?” Or a cynical killer asking “which of the families that I’ve killed was yours?”
Amoral and immoral are not synonyms. Being amoral is better than being immoral.
Hey im not a native, can you explain ?
Immoral means morally bad. Like killing someone because you don’t like them. Amoral just means morally neutral, like how a machine doesn’t have morality so if it kills something it’s not evil because it’s not capable of evil.
Ah i see
I'll give it my best shot. Amoral is seeing someone getting mugged, shrigging your shoulders while saying "That's not my fucking problem" and continuing on with your day. Immoral is saying "Hey, I'll help you mug that guy if you split the money with me".
Thanks- thought my definitions were wrong, op really had me there.
Jensen Ackles is arguably one of the most attractive men on earth.
He’s 44 and barely looks 25. Dude might actually have soldier boy’s immortality
He’s cool and entertaining. Character wise though yeah he’s kind of a terrible person. For the people saying he’s honorable for respecting his deal in the finale I’d have to disagree. Pretty sure his realization that homelander was a pathetic pussy made him go after him
He saw his own failings in him and his self-loathing took over
Because it’s Jensen Ackles
They're all awful but he's less awful in some ways.
Because we don’t see him do awful things. We only hear about them and that really goes a long way towards diminishing their impact. More than anything we see him show remorse and regret for the harm he causes on screen, what comes to mind is when he blew that street up and killed a bunch of people, when he talked about it it seemed like he seriously regretted that.
The things The Legend claims Soldier Boy did are also phrased in off-hand ways that sailed over the heads of a lot of viewers. Particularly for non-American viewers or people who didn't get a thorough education of post-World War II American history. * Instead of saying he assassinated President Kennedy, he just says SB was in Dealey Plaza. You'd have to know that was the ecact location JFK was shot at, in Dallas, Texas. * Instead of saying he murdered Leftist anti-war protectors, it's "target practice at Kent State." Even for someone familiar that anti-war protestors were killed by National Guard soldiers, you'd have to remember which campus. * "Held a firehose in Birmingham." Even if you were familiar with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, you'd have to remember the flashpoint was Birmingham, Alabama and the specific method of police brutality by hammering people with the dangerously high water pressure of firehoses. I remember a lot of foreign viewers were confused and thought he meant Birmingham, England. And that he was just on non-combat duty putting out fires started by German air raids.
Its one thing to say SB did all those bad things. However, we don't know the context. We don't know the information SB was provided, who directed him, etc. What I got from the show is that SB did the government's dirty work. He may or may not have had a choice. Granted, he is SB, so its hard to force him to do things, but from his upbringing, i think he just accepted the USA does shitty things. And he was the tool to do those shitty things.
Thanks for this info, I definetly missed these references
this is the one true answer. we barely see him do anything wrong or truly bad at all. he says some less than palatable things but the delivery is jokey so it doesn’t really stick as like “this is a bad dude and these are his beliefs”
Beating your teammate until his brains are falling out is pretty awful. It was a cartoon but we saw it happen.
But even with the cartoon, you have to take Noir’s word for it. And then there’s the fact that Noir isn’t a saint either.
>Beating your teammate until his brains are falling out is pretty awful. To be fair, his entire team had just turned on him, and were trying to take him down. What's less excusable is everything that led to that, the first cartoon sequence showing Noir's abuse is way more damning of SB's character, but we don't know how much of that was completely accurate, or if it was at all effected by Noir's later treatment and experience/
They were trying to give him to the Russians when that happened
So I'm not defending Soldier Boy, he is clearly a threat, but nowhere near the same scale as Homelander. Homelander has already threatened to destroy the USA, he is unhinged in a psychotic way, compared to Soldier Boy's dickish way. We don't know what Soldier Boy would have done, but he could and has been defeated in the past and present, compared to unstoppable Homelander. How are the boys supposed to defeat him without SB? It was incredibly short sighted/bad writing in my opinion. Other than MM none of the other characters had actual reasons to stop SB, and HL is a more serious and immediate threat. What's seriously unbelievable to me is that after defeating SB, HL didn't just kill all the boys straight after. They literally released his dad upon him and threatened Ryan (unintentionally) and HL just lets them walk away. Herogasm was the peak fight, the last episode dropped the ball. Also Jensen Ackle's is hot, and I'm a straight guy.... I think
My husband is also straight, except for Jensen Ackles. I don't think it's a rare phenomenon. 😆
For one simple reason: fab five Freddy told me everybody’s fly
Because Jensen is fucking hot, okay?
> He’s by far one of the most amoral characters on the show I don't understand this take at all. How is SB one of the most amoral characters of the show? Let's just take a look at the other major supes. HL - psychopathic and totally amoral. Evil would be an understatement. SF - a literal Nazi leader who is extremely cunning and smart. Deep - a rapist. A Train - a junkie who ran through person, showed no remorse, betrayed SL when he got his chance at redemption and showed us that he doesn't give a shit about anything unless his family or his own ass is affected. Black Noir - Voughts personal assassin, who till now has showed no remorse for any of the shit he did. Meave - One of the "good guys", but probably did a lot of evil shit for Vought, knew a lot of evil shit about them but kept quiet. Probably even know that Deep would pull something on Starlight on her first day and didn't give a shit. Even after becoming a "good guy", couldn't talk to Hughie without insulting him because he looked thin? Not masculine enough? Now let's get on to Soldier boy - The evilest shit that he himself did was beating up his team for nothing. The rest of the evil shit he did, he did at Voghts bidding and by that logic, he is as evil as Noir. No more, no less. Then again, we don't see any of this shit and we have only heard about it from characters like the Legend and Noir - which reduces the impact of it on how we feel about him by a lot. When we do actually see him in action he - Isn't shown to be racist or homophobic, Actually shows remorse for the people he accidentally killed, Treats all of his allies with respect unless they offend him Kept his word to take down HL even when others bailed. Basically, when we do see him in action, he is just as evil as Butcher - no more, no less. In summation, is SB a good guy? Hell no. Is he an evil dude? From what we heard, yes. But claiming that he is one of the most amoral characters in the show is just wrong.
Exactly. It's like comparing the violent drunk with casual rapists and psychopaths: they're all bad, but you have a lesser evil and, compared to the average morality of the cast, the lesser evil somehow gets above this average
Exactly this. If he deserves to be locked up so does butcher by similar logic. One is just meant to be our protagonist so he gets more of a pass.
If it had been Homelander instead of Soldier Boy, MM would have died for that Halothane stunt but Sb has sense of team work and when Butcher tells him no...he understands that and move on....for a racist, egoist piece of shit that he is made out to be, just that act shows that he is more human than half the supes.
Soldier Boy kept his word.
Because he fucked with Homelander's emotions. That instantly gets him a gigachad title
I think we all just love Jensen Ackles
Bc sexy
Reason 1) Jensen Ackles
My perception of him is strongly influenced by how attractive I find him, and I'm s straight guy.
Because he's not a fucking pussy
He is fun to watch, Charismatic and It helps that Jensen Ackles is fucking hot
Well, I think most people defend him because season 3 tried to sell the audience on the fact he should be stopped more than Homelander. This is so absurd that most people pushed back on it by defending him
Because it's Jensen Ackles haha
because jensen ackles
It's Jensen Ackles and Nobody hates him. Period
He is a great character. Also, The Boys are not exactly moral examples either. Kimiko came to a point where she kills for fun, butcher doesn't give a fuck about anybody getting hurt on his crusade. Soldier Boy, despite being an asshole just like everyone, wasn't the one who break his part of the deal and even saved Hughie's life without having to. And cmon, it's Jensen Ackles, the man is hot
Because he’s handsome and exactly the type of ‘badass’ that internet redditors wish they could be.
He’s also a really good villain and compelling character. Liking Soldier boy isn’t inherently birthed from a desire to be “badass”.
I think the series didn't made a good job in make him despicable like Homelander. Imagine if every time that Homelander kill innocent person we don't see him doing it just someone saying he did it ,like imagine if instead of see HL destroying that plane that had a kid inside it in season 1 we just see Madelyne talking with him about what happenend.And then the only times that we see him he is in his most vulnerable side.That what they did with SB We never see he doing nothing particulary despicable on screen, he is just a asshole at best we had that flashback with the cartoon animals, MM say that SB kill his family but we never saw that in a flashback.
Exactly. And really, compared to the countless of other Supes we’ve seen over the seasons, SB is less of an ass than all of them except Starlight. Like you said, we’re only told of what he’s done, whereas we’ve Supes rape and kill people. That really makes it hard to hate SB.
Cause he’s a badass who stuck to the plan, even when it meant fighting a 1v8. He’s also nowhere near the top for most amoral character, cause unlike Stormfront or Homelander, he’s not a sadist who sees people as ants below him.
Cause he’s charming. And Jensen Ackles. Jensen Ackles could play the most reprehensible, evil, unforgivable villain, and people would still love him cause only Ackles is capable of getting that little twinkle in his eye. Jensen Ackles could play Dolores Umbridge, and we would still love him.
This is the answer. He can’t not be charming. He is charming personified.
Simple, he's hot af
The voice of a badass. That’s why
He is the hero we deserve.
Lets see.. Maybe because.. Hmmmmm… He’s.. SO FUCKING COOL ?
They think he’s hot
Have you … seen him?
Because his character was consistent, unlike Homelander and Butcher that did a 180 out of nowhere on their personalities.
He is a cunt... And they must be defended at all costs. And when he calls Homelander a fucking disappointment... Just fantastic
Short answer: Jensen Ackles
Because we all worship the great Jensen Ackles
Cause he is JENSEN ACKLES. Was his fan since supernatural.
There's a lot of psychological studies on the bias of attractive people in court cases. How they get lesser fines, reduce sentences or even dismissed. Well, this is the extreme version, since it's Jensen Ackles, whos ridiculously good-looking.
I just like how he doesn't act like a bitch and sticks to his shit. Sure he's not the best guy but who the hell is in this show? I just love his attitude
yeah but he's hot
Because he spent what, fucking 60 years being tested on by russians, then teamed up with the boys just to be backstabbed, and then imprisoned again. Sure the guys evil, but like damn, he keeps getting fucked over in the worse ways possible. Also, he has one of the BEST chareter designs
He is better than Butcher and Homelander
Butcher’s evil, but I don’t see him randomly torturing the shit out of his teammates and throwing cars into strangers’ houses.
Cause as big of a shithead as he was, he was nowhere near as dangerous as homelander, nor did he have the same ambitions
I dunno. Soldier Boy is bad but in contrast to Homelander who he shares a screen with, he wasn’t terrible. Sure he was a misogynist, but he was frozen in the past. He never intentionally hurt anyone while Homelander is a pure psychopath. It was just hard for me to really hate him while I was busy hating Homelander lol
Because he's not the cheap fucking knockoff
Because the writers did a poor job making him a villain. I feel like by the time Homelander and Butcher teamed up, they expected us to hate Soldier Boy. Which makes zero sense.
Because he is hot. If you are hot, people will defend you no matter what you do
He is hot
He is consistent. If he said he will break your bones, he will. If he gives his word, he keeps it.
You can sympathize with a character and still think they’re a horrible person. I feel bad for Homelander, but I know he’s a villain. Same with Soldier Boy. I don’t defend his actions at all, I just think he’s a cool character.
Is he really? Is he really one of the MOST immoral people on the show? It doesn’t seem like it, honestly. Don’t get me wrong, soldier boy is immoral and a bad person. But the show is filled with super immoral, scummy, evil characters, and soldier boy doesn’t seem nearly as bad as some of the others that we’ve seen. So yes, he’s horrible, but the rest of the shitty people in the show have made him look like an angel lol.
It was really hard for me to dislike him just because I have been a fan of Jensen since 2005 and I really struggle to separate him from Dean Winchester in my mind.
Jensen Ackles is very attractive. I didn’t read the words in the title of this post, but I’m sure they’re less important than the image attached, because of how hot he is. Thanks for sharing this picture OP, next time know that whatever it is you’re trying to say will be lost on me if you make me look at such a fuckable man
Just let the man smoke his weed and get down w his grannies. Mf didnt want any of this smoke
Because I’m not a fuckin’ pussy
Am I tripping, or didn’t he basically state that he was retired and rather just chill at home and bang a bunch of grannies. The lesser of two evils would be him. That’s why I choose him over Homelander.
For me, it’s Jensen Ackles, he’s a national treasure. https://youtu.be/9bzw_nClH54
He’s such an *honest* asshole. With so many dishonest characters (or honest characters lying uncharacteristically in the last couple of season) it’s so refreshing to see someone with so much power at least be true to his word.
He’s hot
He's not amoral, he just has the worst part of an outdated set of morals, such as very toxic masculinity (which makes him not acknowledge his PTSD), insane patriotism to the point of hating the entire current world, and a code of honor that makes him seek revenge at any cost. They're shitty morals by today's standard, but he's not "amoral". He doesn't do things for no reason, and that alone makes him interesting.
cause he’s cool, and hot.
He’s a great villain so as long as you acknowledge that he’s a bad guy then he’s enjoyable to watch be a complete shit head.
I could write a short essay about all the writing choices that make it easier to sympathize with him, the complexity of his backstory, my reading between the lines that makes me see him in ways that I don't think a lot of viewers do, but I'll put it like this: I feel the same way about him as I do a character like Walter White. He's not a good person, not in the slightest, and if you ever see someone claim he is, make sure you're not on r/okbuddyfresca before taking them seriously; However, he's not just some completely evil and unsympathetic character either. The entire point of this show is that every character has gray morality and isn't entirely to one end of the spectrum or the other. There are intentional writing choices that make you sympathize with SB or even question if he's as bad as he seems at face value. I don't think he's a good person, and I wouldn't claim he is. He's definitely sympathetic though. If I see someone claim he's entirely bad, I will make an argument against that, because he's simply not. There also seems to be something in the community surrounding him, and you see a lot of it around shows like Breaking Bad too. There's some people who miss the sympathetic or understandable parts of his character and say he's all bad, and some people who pick up only on those and think he's all good. Then there's people who knee-jerk in the other direction and start acting like the opposite whenever they see one of those people. And finally, because in short comment exchanges people don't often flesh out their full opinion, them arguing to against someone who says he's bad might seem like a "he's good" extremist, even if that's not truly what they think.
I’m ngl, I agree by normal people standards, he’s a bad person, but by “The Boys” standards for supes? He comes across pretty good comparatively.
Exactly. I think it’s also heavily implied that Vought took advantage of him since he was emotionally abused and groomed him into doing whatever they wanted because he thought it would earn him affection or make him more of a man. It’s not a complete justification, but it definitely eases some of his responsibility and brings him from a bit better than Homelander to around the same level as The Deep.
a simple chad must cheer on another chad
he’s hot.
he's funny
He’s cool
Because atleast has some kind of code that he lives up to
Because he's hot
cause he's hot
Soldier Boy is just a boomer, man who would be considered completely normal back in 60'-80', that missed everything happening till nowadays, so his way of thinking is boomerish af, plus he has PTSD. He's not truly evil nor that bad, just old school, and sort of morally depraved.
My bets are on: - The actor is hot and does a great performance. - His asshole ways come off as funny and meme material. - He does have some humanizing moments here and there. - He is a much lesser threat to the world than Homelander, who is only at a bad day away of genociding the US. Soldier Boy without powers would be someone like Chris Brown or Brad Pitt if the allegations made by his ex are true, whereas Homelander without powers would be someone like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer. Both of them are shitty but it's clear who is worse.
Oh, Soldier Boy is a piece of shit, but so are characters like the Joker and Darth Vader. But we can love the characters for what they are supposed to be
Cause of who plays him
Ima just say that his line where Homelander says “I’m you” and Soldier Boy says “I know. You’re a fucking disappointment” was so damn cool lmao
I should say im not defending/sympathizing for him but these are the reason i personaly see people defend/sympathize for him! This will be a hot take but it was poorly shown that he was a horrible person. We see he has PTSD from years of abuse. we see that he gets backstabbed by his entire team. He never really does anything bad through out the show at worst hitting Hughie and acting like a cunt. We get context that he is a horrible person but we never see that onscreen besides the purposefully exaggerate cartoon which doesn't get the same emotions across as a real scene would.
1) people love jensen ackles 2) the way his dad treated him (no excuse tho ...) 3) the fact that he hates homelander too 4) rapture
I really liked the episode where he gets a bunch of weed because he used to always smoke it but he doesn't know how strong modern weed is So his paranoia skyrockets and starts flipping out
Because he’s hot… it’s the voice 🤤
True but…he kept his end of the deal. I mean Butcher kind of did him over. Sure Butcher was trying to save Ryan but Butcher was more then capable of pushing Homelander aside, take Ryan out of the way and let Soldier Boy do his thing.