Stormfront, The Fascist Wonder Woman Of ‘The Boys’, Is The Most Terrifying Villain In Years

The problem with most modern comic book villains is that they know that they’re comic book villains.

It’s become a staple of the third act of many superhero movies — wrinkly British character actor reveals their insidious intentions, turns into a big CGI beastie, and drops a speech about how it’s necessary to wipe the Earth’s slate clean. Cue green-screen battle, wry one-liner from our hero, and set-up for the sequel. Done. Dusted.

There is no nuance, sure. But that’s not really a problem — there was no nuance to the antagonists of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns either, and that’s pretty much the high-point for superhero cinema. The real issue is one of motivation. A villain like Ares (David Thewlis), the antagonist of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, has no discernible reason to be evil. He just wants to blow up the world; destroy humans. He’s not a character. He’s a plot point.

Then there’s the Joker effect. Ever since The Dark Knight, lazy writers have reached for chaos as the primary motivation of their villain, disguising lazy plotting with a few speeches about how the natural order needs to topple. It worked when Christopher Nolan did it, but it hasn’t worked — not once — in the years since.

And yet that dearth only makes the real successes of modern superhero writing seem that much more impressive. Case in point: Stormfront, the antagonist of the second season of The Boys and one of the most terrifyingly relevant, carefully-drawn villains in recent years.

The Boys Goes Dark

The first season of The Boys, based on the comic of the same name by Garth Ennis, was an impossibly zany, gonzo work of superhero satire. Filled with laser-eyed babies, gelatinous piles of blood where humans once used to be, and a general sense of off-kilter comedy, it was the most viscerally entertaining superhero product to come along in years.

Which is not to say that it wasn’t also dark — like all of Ennis’ work, the first season pivoted on a number of key moments of sexism, corruption and greed. This was a superhero show that contained an act of very serious, deeply relevant sexual violence in its first few episodes, and only got darker from there. There was no fucking around.

But if the first season of the show was the Se7en of superhero movies, then the second season is something entirely more upsetting. And that’s entirely thanks to Stormfront (Aya Cash), the show’s new primary antagonist.

Stormfront is a superhero, or “supe”, who becomes part of The Seven, the show’s version of the Justice League. In the world of The Boys, supes are social media stars with vast political power and influence. They’re also unbelievably unpleasant, none more so than The Boys‘ Superman analogue, Homelander.

Or at least, so it once seemed. Early in the second season of The Boys, Stormfront, a super-powered tyrant with an unnaturally slow ageing process and a shadowy past, begins to ingratiate herself in with The Seven. Quickly, she reveals herself to be more cut-throat than Homelander; more conniving. While they’re rivals at first, before too long, Stormfront begins a relationship with Homelander, one that allows her to wield more authority than ever before.

Her end goal? Nothing less than the desire to platform racism and fascism. Stormfront is no cartoon moustache-twirler. She is an actual neo-Nazi, driven by a moral system founded on the idea of superior and inferior agents.

Stormfront Is Fascism Personified

Importantly, Stormfront’s vast power and influence comes from her use of social media. In the hands of other writers, that might be hackneyed. But here, by virtue of taking the threat of fascism with utmost seriousness, it is eerily relevant. After all, by now we’ve all learnt that the internet is the foremost tool for the recruitment of fascists and the spread of fascist ideals. This is no arch fantasy. It’s life in 2020.

Moreover, Stormfront is skilled at using the language of woke progressiveness in order to smuggle her heinous ideas into the public eye. She is part of a drive by the powers-that-be to make The Seven appear feminist friendly, and her steely gaze and authoritarian tones are a combination of “yass kween feminism” and the ubermensch-y flair of Wonder Woman. But that’s just the thing. Such a facade is only that, a facade, and underneath she constantly espouses hate speech and slurs.

This too is part of life in 2020. Consider Captain Marvel, the Disney vehicle that was partially funded by the United States Airforce and which used the promise of progressive politics to make money for one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates on the planet. Woke culture is as easy to adopt for the capitalists and planet-killers as it is for anyone else, and Stormfront is proof of what a disparity can be drawn between the medium and the message.

Of course, none of this is precisely new in the world of comic book culture. Rorschach, the anti-hero of Alan Moore’s Watchmen, was also a product of connections drawn between the stony faces of superheroes and the imagery of fascism and control. But what makes Stormfront different is the sheer scale of her evil, and the skill at which she can cover it. Rorschach was a man in a mask who slunk around alleyways. Stormfront is an actual neo-Nazi in a position of unparalleled power, who wants nothing less than systemic racial stratification.

That is a lot for a superhero show to deal with, and if any of this felt glib or insincere it could be actively offensive. Cash, who plays Stormfront, said so herself in a recent interview with Vulture. “It felt like an exciting opportunity, but obviously I wanted to make sure that the people who are actually making the show — because I don’t write the show — were also being thoughtful about it,” she said.

Surprisingly, given how punk-rock the show can be about other things — may I remind you that there is a laser-eyed baby in this thing — the writers are thoughtful about Stormfront. She isn’t just a sly reference to contemporary politics. She is a fully lived-in horror, and one of the most terrifying characters in the modern canon.

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Season One of The Boys is available in full on Amazon Prime Video now. Season Two of the show is dropping weekly.

Joseph Earp is a staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @JosephOEarp.