A new trailer for The Boys fifth and final season was released by Amazon Prime Video today, and one thing is clear. This is Homelander’s world and everyone is just living in it.
When the hit series returns on April 8, 2026, Homelander will be the de facto leader of the United States. He spells it out for us in the first 15 seconds of the trailer: “My power is absolute, at heights no one’s even dreamed of.” We see him standing before a crowd of his fans, sitting in the Oval Office itself with an eerie grin across his face.
He’s achieved a level of power people dream of and yet, it’s not enough.
What is the one thing a narcissistic, egomaniacal demigod like Homelander could possibly want that he doesn’t already have?
Immortality.
One of the major sources of conflict in season 5 will be Homelander trying to secure a sample of the original Compound V. What that says about Homelander is more terrifying than anything his heat vision could do.
The Original Compound V
V-One was the first attempt at making what we now call Compound V and is considered to be the purest iteration of the drug. It was created by Nazi scientist Frederick Vought during World War II. Vought tested V-One on prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp. He gave the first successful dose to his wife Klara (who became Stormfront), and a dose was later given to a young soldier named Benjamin (who became Soldier Boy).
Anyone ejected with V-One is given extraordinary power, with abilities that dwarf anything the modern formula could produce. It can also be given to adults without killing the subject or causing complications like future versions of the drug would cause.
The God Who Is Terrified of Dying
Back to Homelander. Why would the most powerful Supe on the planet so determined to become immortal?
Because it’s not so much about being afraid of dying. It is the fear of becoming obsolete.
Homelander wasn’t born, he was manufactured. He never knew his parents and was “raised” by scientists who saw him as a weapon and nothing else. He is arguably the most powerful being to have ever existed, but he never stopped being a scared child looking for affection. The “love” Homelander receives from his fans is nothing but a poor substitute for the love he never received. The moment that adoration wavers, he unravels.
Being rejected by his birth father Soldier Boy at the end of season 3, rejection cut deeper than any wound could. Here was someone who could match his raw power, whose approval would mean something. And Soldier Boy looked at his own son and thought he was a disappointment. That moment confirmed Homelander’s deepest, unconscious fear: I am unlovable, even to my own flesh and blood.
While Homelander chooses to team up with Soldier Boy in season 5, it doesn’t change the fact the two have a complicated father-son dynamic.
Immortality, then, isn’t really about living forever. Homelander is ensuring that no one can ever replace him. It’s expected from someone as insecure as him, disguised as an act of dominance.
Would V-One Even Work On Homelander?
One thing that’s a mystery is whether V-One would actually work on Homelander, who’s already a Supe to begin with. He was created through a combination of using Soldier Boy’s DNA and being injected with Compound V at the embryonic stage. Injecting V-One into someone who is already a Supe, let alone the most powerful Supe ever created, is uncharted territory.
It’s very possible that V-One does absolutely nothing and Homelander’s chase would have been a complete waste of his time. Even if it did give him immortality, it wouldn’t make him unkillable. Stormfront was still able to die in season 3 after cutting off her own tongue. She also never fully recovered from the severe burns she got from Ryan’s heat vision, so how much of a power-up would Homelander get?
The flip side is that V-One does succeed in stopping Homelander’s body from aging or worse, causing his powers to grow stronger than they are now. Either scenario would be terrifying. The world would never be safe from Homelander because he would outlive everyone. You wouldn’t be able to wait out his reign of terror because it would never end.
Worse, an immortal Homelander would only justify the need to use Butcher’s virus. All Supes, even the good ones like Annie January, Kimiko and a reformed A-Train would be wiped from existence just to put an end to one really bad Supe.
What makes Homelander so interesting as an antagonist is because his villainy is the result of him being broken.
The qualities that make him monstrous: his need for affection, his rage, paranoia, the desperate urge to matter, were conditioned into him so he’d grow up to be a submissive God.
Now that weapon is in the Oval Office, chasing a serum that promises him eternity. Homelander is simultaneously at the peak of his power and more emotionally fragile than he’s ever been. Whatever happens in his quest for V-One, the whole world is going to suffer in the aftermath.
Season 5 of The Boys premieres April 8, 2026 on Prime Video with two episodes, then one episode drops until the series finale airs on May 20, 2026.
