One more thing i gotta say about the boys is that gross out stuff loses its appeal really fast. You can only show a guy doing some heinous act so often before people either get used to it or turn it off because they find the constant barrage unappealing. Game of thrones sufffered from similar issues
Why all the Homelander nerfs?
He went from Omni Man or Superman tier power at the beginning of the series then got reduced to maybe Captain America level and presently he's maybe even lower than that.
Even basic shit like his super hearing doesn't work correctly now.
Only thing I can think of is the writers realized it wasn't plausible for the Boys to be a threat to him and they couldn't figure out a way to organically make him get weaker so they said fuck it.
One of the keys to making a show with villain protagonist work (or a show where the villain is co-protagonist like Boyd Crowder in Justified) is to balance the bad shit characters do with having them do good shit or (as in the case of Boyd) you actively bring in a string of even worse antagonists for the bad guys to fight, either on their own or with the main hero's help.
Stormfront and Soldier Boy could have been this has they done them right.
Stormfront is a retired Voight heroine who is a retired Nazi that defected/the first person to successfully get GOOD powers via Compound V and survive the experience. She shows up and starts killing minorities who commit crime and using the media to slime Homelander as a fraud who doesn't do anything but meet and greets and photo ops. You have a legit rogue supe in her running around, not playing by the Voight handbook and tie in her return to public life to the cult Deep joins, which wants to take over the world and if they have to work with a Nazi to do it? So be it. And while she's mocking Homelander to his face, she's also flaunting her true motives in private with him while trying to seduce him to join her and the cult and rule as king and queen and ultimately her kidnapping Ryan and Becky (who she still kills) when Homelander tells her to get bent.
Meanwhile with Soldier Boy, they should have stuck with the version of him that was part of the initial leaks for season three that ultimately got changed when filming began: he's Captain America but evil (and functionally immortal), faked his death around the time of Vietnam with Voight's blessing, and was given a new identity which he used to become a major Oscar winning actor in Hollywood who (ala Marlena Deitrich) faded from public life in the early 90s at the height of his fame and success, who is brought back out of hiding (and coming out of the closet as Soldier Boy) to lead the Seven after Voight recognizes that Homelander is too screwed up to do it anymore. But in the time he's been away, he's started up a liberal version of the plot from Keeper of the Flames, seeking to insight race riots and cause other social tensions between the rich and the poor to explode so he can maneuver his mixed race bastard daughter Victoria Newman into the white house, where she will serve as his puppet to allow him to rule the United States as king.
But as it stands, they really really should have done a Lifedeath-style depowering storyline for Homelander this season. Homelander loses his powers at the hands of Soldier Boy and Ryan forces Butcher to spare him/let Ryan stay with him. And instead of killing a Starlight supporter, Homelander is put on trial for Semisonic's death instead; a murder he walks on, by Voight framing A-Train for the crime.
Homelander struggles with being normal, having no powers, and after his murder trial, fakes his death and goes into hiding amongst the rabble for a while. Meannwhile have Sister Sage come into play to fill the hole left by Homelander and be the Lex Luthor of the show and corrupting Ryan, while giving Homelander a redemption arc and heroic sacrifice death stopping Sister Sage and her plans.
