The Boys spoof Donald Trump digital cards: Influence of former US President on Homelander explained

Many were perplexed after former president Donald Trump teased a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” on his social media accounts, only for it to turn out to be a collection of digital collectible trading cards with his image in interesting settings.

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A trading card portraying Trump wearing a Superman-like suit, with a “T” symbol on his breast, and wearing a cape made up the centrepiece of his announcement. Naturally, The Boys HQ raised some red flags about that particular accessory because it shares similarities with Homelander, the show’s main adversary and a significant fixture of Trump-centric parody. They enjoyed themselves immensely, as one could anticipate.

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Eric Kripke, the series’ writer and showrunner, was the first to recognise the parallels between the previous president’s appearance and that of the Homelander. The Supernatural creator tweeted, “This is a funnier pay off than I could write btw. And he’s got the flag cape!!”

An official Vought International account, tweeted “Huge announcement: Official Homelander digital collectible cards have arrived!” This is according to the “in universe” account, which occasionally tweets show promotion. “Celebrate our greatest hero’s life and crimefighting career by owning an authentic and non-fungible JPEG of him. Buy now for 777 VoughtCoin while you still can!”

Since their inception, The Boys hasn’t held back from parodying or directly mocking the previous president Trump and his antics. Antony Starr previously acknowledged that the businessman-turned-politician was a direct influence in interviews.

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“It’s kind of difficult to model (Homelander) on anyone, because I know Eric also loves the idea of him, and he’s based a lot of how he’s written the character on Trump. But the irony of that is if you did make him strictly like Donald Trump then it’s sort of a bit thin. It’s kind of two dimensional. So I always take that with a pinch of salt and then try to add a little more depth to the character, to be honest, because he needs to be his own entity. He can’t just be a sort of attempt of a copy of someone else. It’s got to be a real guy with real issues,” Starr said.

Season four of The Boys is presently in production and is scheduled to air in 2023. In the first few months of the new year, Gen V, a spinoff series, is expected.