During the fist fight with Maeve, we see Homelander bleed. I’m not talking about his ear that everyone mentions. She punches him in the face and he gets a nose bleed, seemingly to both their surprise. We also see her punch hit a cabinet and it dents it, but not all that much. We have every reason to believe she’s not holding back and all her punches are full power. She wants him dead. Yet her punches aren’t all that strong. She, however, still makes Homelander bleed. Everyone in-verse is afraid of him and act like he could solo the world. He himself believes this. Yet, if he took a direct hit from an artillery shell, he’d be fucking toast. Man made weapons could easily kill him if a punch can cause damage. Why is everyone so threatened by him? Is it just the effect of Vought propaganda? Am I misunderstanding his durability? He threatened to destroy America to Starlight. I don’t think he could. Just wait until he’s asleep, park every battleship outside the city, and level the Seven building. Or just nuke him. Thoughts?
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He’s pretty strong but not Superman levels.
He’s probably above hero’s like Spiderman, pre infinity war Iron man. Him being “weak” compared to high tiers doesn’t matter as theres no multiverse in the boys so he’s the absolute strongest there is. He’s still scary within the show.
Powerscaling is bullshit and you shouldn’t try to apply it to anything.
There’s a few things here.
The first is that, yes, Homelander is less invulnerable than he thinks he is. Given what’s been portrayed, it seems unlikely that he could survive a direct hit from a nuke, and a proper artillery barrage might take him down. Maeve is the first time that he realizes this, in part because she’s presumably been holding back in the past, or possibly because she’s pushing herself past her limits in that fight.
On the other hand, he heals fast. It’s possible that if you parked a bunch of battleships outside Vought Tower and leveled the place, he would be badly hurt and buried by rubble, recover, and punch his way out a few hours later. It’s a hell of a risk to take.
And the biggest problem: Homeland is fast and he has incredible senses. He might be able to outrun a nuclear blast, and then you just blew up a major city and he’s flying for your head. Quite the risk to take.
Unfortunately we have to get a bit Doylaist here. The Show itself is very inconsistent with power levels. If the heroes really were swinging with their full strength, there would be amazing collateral damage. As you said Maeve’s punch (if it hurts Homelander) should be strong enough to obliterate a stone wall. But the budget for the show doesn’t allow that.
Homelander has taken much stronger hits than we see as implied by the episode where he goes back to the lab where he was raised. He was burned by insane heats, shot with guns, beaten, punched, and who knows what else. One of his early missions (in the cartoon series) has him surviving an entire exploding industrial plant.
Soldier Boy supposedly had a machine gun stuck down his throat and fired. Even the flying sheep were strong enough to resist several pistol rounds and all they got from the Compound V was flight (and a taste for man flesh). A-Train hits a stationary human with enough force to reduce her to a fine mist and he’s okay, just disoriented.
But then you have the Deep getting knocked about in a car crash. Homelander taking a steel straw to the ear and getting punctured. Some times even normal people have slapped or punched a Super and they felt it. A-Train and the deep have a silly slap fight that should have destroyed the entire hallway they were in given how strong they are. The deep is strong enough to pick up and move a large dolphin without effort, but he also has trouble punching through a drywall or flipping a desk when he fights in the Boys office.
The evidence for the feats and anti-feats is all over the place so we generally take their strongest feats and explain the lesser ones as plot, story, or budget issues.
Watsonian Time: So, yeah, Maeve in-universe is that strong. She was the second most powerful Super in the series for a long time. Even folks like Stormfront were below her. So until Soldier Boy returns, she WAS the the next strongest to Homelander and it shouldn’t be a surprise she can hurt him. But he’s still strong enough that she can’t beat him.
Yes. You are massively misunderstanding his durability by basing your estimation on just one scene which poorly portrays how much damage her full strength punch can do.
We don’t know how much of his power is pure physical resilience and how much is due to the fact he’s a supe.
The latter is more like a bit of magic (in a mere scientific sense his skin would not be able to breathe if it were physically more durable than steel).
Which means it’s possible Maeve’s powers, also being of supe nature, can at least partially counteract his – so her punches hurt him more than an equally strong non-supe force. Also since supe powers aren’t all alike, not all supes have this kind of effect on HL. (Then again who knows, others simply have never dared to go all in against him, Starlight for example simply doesn’t know if she could hurt him because if she dared, it’s do or die.)
Personal Theory, he is aging and his powers are starting to decline, he isn’t ageless in the show we can see this happening.
You can get a nosebleed really easily if you’re dehydrated TBF