The Boys' Comic Books Say That Homelander Was Born Exactly Like Ryan's"Wisdom of the Ages," the fourth episode of The Boys season 4, goes deeper into Homelander's past and provides him a significant portion of Ryan's comic beginnings. Homelander spends a significant amount of the episode traveling back to the facility where he was reared in order to exact revenge on some of the employees who helped to mistreat him as a child. Everyone there has been afraid of Homelander for his whole life, according to Barbara, a major scientist involved in the project's early stages. She goes so far as to narrate his birth, stating that it was an absolutely horrific experience.The future Homelander tore himself free from his mother, having already begun to develop his powers while still in the womb. The scene is described, but it isn't displayed, which emphasizes how graphic the incident was. But the comics did feature that visual, too—just for the kid who would have become Ryan rather than Homelander. This included Becca, who met the same end as Homelander's mother and passed away from the wound nearly immediately. This alters everything else about the event, but it offers one of the comic's most brutal moments a representation in the program.How The Boys on Amazon Rewrote the Origin Story of Ryan ButcherGiving the infant to Homelander in homage to its comic book beginnings is actually a very creative way to allude to one of The Boys' most significant comic book transformations. It makes perfect sense in the show's adaptation of Homelander and explains why the scientists who were working on him were afraid of him from the beginning. It contributes to the overall investigation of Homelander's belief that humanity is beneath him, which seems to go back to his first moments of existence. The Boys use this as a deft technique to allude to a scene that was otherwise omitted and seamlessly incorporate it into their own telling of the same tale.Ryan was never given a name or even a chance to live in the original The Boys comics. The superpowered infant killed Becky Butcher by bursting out of her body, and then it attacked Butcher, her husband. Butcher, though, managed to stave off the attack and ultimately put an end to it with a lamp. Ryan is hence completely absent from the comic. This demonstrates how, in the end, the comic and the show are two completely distinct storylines. This alteration prevented Becky from living to see Butcher again years later, unlike in The Boys season 2.How The Boys Mixed Homelander & Ryan's Origins on Prime VideoThe Boys subtly alluded to one of the bloodiest scenes from the first comic books, reimagining Ryan's birth in a way that makes sense for the plot of the show. Even though The Boys is based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson and takes a similarly gory approach to the superhero genre, the two tales are ultimately extremely different. The Boys on Prime Video, which focuses on Ryan, is arguably the best example of this.Ryan is one of the most interesting characters in The Boys because of his development and possible destiny as Homelander's rival or heir apparent. Ryan is the son of Homelander and Becca Butcher. Additionally, it differs greatly from the character's somewhat shorter appearance in the comics—to the extent that the figure was given no name at all. Rather, a significant aspect of Ryan's comic book origins has been included into the show's narrative at a completely other (but entirely appropriate) location.
