Homelander (Antony Starr) is the biggest villain of The Boys. He’s literally unstoppable, and he’s climbed to the very top of Vought International's power structure over the course of three seasons.
With Season 4, though, Homelander is said to have met his (mental) match with Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), and showrunner Eric Kripke explains how hard it is to write for a character who is supposed to be the “Smartest Person in the World.”
Who is Sister Sage?
Sister Sage is one of the new characters introduced in Season 4 of The Boys. As mentioned before, she’s described as the “Smartest Person in the World,” and Homelander himself recruits her to be part of The Seven. After realising that he’s surrounded himself with “Yes Men” who are too afraid to tell him he has a bad idea, HL recruits Sage intending to have someone on the team who could challenge him.
When it comes to archetypes, Sage is this world’s version of Ozymandias, a.k.a. Adrian Veidt, a character from Alan Moore’s Watchmen who was also touted as the “Smartest Man in the World.” Kripke also mentions that "there might be a little Lex Luthor" in the character.
The Smartest Person in This World
With a character as powerful as Homelander, anyone looking to face off against him usually has to resort to manipulating him–which is something Sister Sage would specialise in.
Talking to IGN, Kripke says, “It's actually a lot harder to write because the challenge of writing the world's smartest person means that we have to be smart as writers, and then that is sometimes a very tall order… She's very challenging because every single thing she does, she's eight moves ahead and she's brilliant. Getting yourself in that head space is really hard because we're not nearly as smart as her. I'll tell you, writing dumb characters is much easier than writing smart characters.”
With everyone holding Homelander’s leash in previous seasons out of the picture, fans can expect HL to be in over his head when he puts Sage on his radar—she likely has her own agenda for becoming a member of The Seven, and it was her plan all along to have HL come and recruit her.
Then again, that could be giving the character too much credit.
Creating Sister Sage
Regarding brainy characters in comic book stories, Kripke also mentioned that they are usually just ‘reedy white dudes’. Talking to EW, Kripke explains that they decided to cast Sister Sage as a black woman because “We wanted a Black woman who was raised in a low socioeconomic area, so no one f***ing listens to her… It's both commentary and satirical that you have literally the smartest person in the world that could cure all of society's ills, but she just can't get anyone to listen to her. So then she becomes a bitter misanthrope."
It’s unclear what kind of arc Sister Sage and the Seven will experience this season, but anyone who knows the comic book genre knows that brainy characters are always more dangerous than ones that can fly or lift steel beams.
Catch The Boys Season 4 now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.