Homelander vs the world · City to planet
Homelander vs Deadpool
Homelander needs people to love him. Deadpool needs people to be annoyed by him. Only one of them can get what he wants.
Tale of the tape
| The Boys | Universe | Marvel |
|---|---|---|
| City to planet | Tier | Superhuman |
| Flight, heat vision and invulnerability | Strength | A healing factor that makes him nearly unkillable |
| Never trained, never tested, and desperate to be adored | Weakness | Will not stop talking |
| 4–10 | Record on Versus | 2–3–1 |
The Arena
Deadpool was eating a chimichanga in Times Square when Homelander landed in front of him, cameras following, to arrest a “dangerous mercenary” for the evening news. Deadpool looked up at the man in the flag cape and turned to the reader. “Okay, this is the guy from the show, right? The really scary one? Cool cool cool.”
Homelander frowned. “Who are you talking to?” Deadpool pointed at the reader. “The audience! Say hi!” Homelander looked at the empty air, then at the cameras, then back at Deadpool. “You’re under arrest for murder.” Deadpool shrugged. “Yeah, probably.” Homelander’s eyes began to glow.
Deadpool held up a finger. “Wait, before you laser me, can I finish my chimichanga?” Homelander lasered the chimichanga. Deadpool gasped. “You monster.”
Round One
Homelander fired his heat vision, and it cut Deadpool clean in half at the waist. Deadpool’s upper half looked down at his lower half. “Oh, come on. This suit was new.” His legs got up and walked away. His upper half kept talking. Then the two halves reattached, and Deadpool stood up again, waving at the cameras.
Homelander frowned and punched him through a billboard. Deadpool fell forty metres, landed on a taxi and got up, spitting out teeth. “Ow. You hit like a guy who never got hugged.” Homelander froze. The cameras were rolling. He hit Deadpool again, harder. Deadpool healed again, still talking.
“Seriously, though,” Deadpool said, regrowing his jaw, “did your mom ever hug you? Because I’m sensing some issues.”
The Turn
Homelander tried everything. He burned Deadpool to ash. Deadpool reformed. He threw him into the Hudson River. Deadpool swam back, complaining. He flew him into the sky and dropped him onto Times Square. Deadpool landed, splattered, and reassembled himself, live on every screen in New York.
And through it all, Deadpool talked. About Homelander’s childhood. About his milk obsession. About how his smile looked painful. About how Vought owned him like a pet. The crowd in Times Square began to laugh. Homelander heard them. Every laugh was a knife.
“Stop talking!” Homelander screamed. Deadpool tilted his head. “Make me. Oh wait, you can’t.”
The Finish
Homelander lost control. In front of every camera in Times Square, he screamed, tore down a billboard, and punched a hole in the ground, his perfect public face cracking into the rage beneath it. The crowd stopped laughing. They stared at him in horror. His approval ratings, someone later calculated, dropped forty percent in nine minutes.
Deadpool sat on the edge of a fountain, eating a new chimichanga he had pulled from somewhere. “You know what your problem is?” he said gently. “You need people to love you. And I don’t care if anyone loves me. So you can’t hurt me. Like, physically you can, but it doesn’t stick.”
Homelander flew away without a word. Deadpool turned to the reader and took a bow. “And that, folks, is how you beat a guy you can’t beat. You just keep talking until he beats himself.” The crowd in Times Square, to their own surprise, gave him a standing ovation. Deadpool was not sure how to handle that.
The verdict
Deadpool wins
Homelander can tear Deadpool apart over and over, but Deadpool heals from everything and never stops talking, and Homelander’s greatest weakness is his need to be loved, which Deadpool destroys live on camera.
- Healing factorNothing Homelander does to Deadpool sticks.
- Psychological warfareDeadpool breaks Homelander’s public image in front of the crowd.
- Not caringDeadpool has no need for approval for Homelander to exploit.
How the rematch could go differently: A Homelander who fought Deadpool somewhere with no cameras and no audience would simply be stuck in an endless, very annoying fight.
Who do you think wins?
Who would win in a fight between Homelander and Deadpool?
Deadpool wins. Homelander can tear Deadpool apart over and over, but Deadpool heals from everything and never stops talking, and Homelander’s greatest weakness is his need to be loved, which Deadpool destroys live on camera.