The fact that the final battle caused even less damage than a battle from Season 3 is baffling.
Hell, you want scorched earth? Here's a guy who managed to do that by just yelling:
And he's not even a bad guy. He's just powering up so he can face a villain with regenerative powers. Yet he caused more damage in that 5-minute warm-up than Homelander did in his entire career, despite the fact that Homelander promised scorched earth to Butcher and even described to Starlight how he could easily decimate the United States if he wanted to, which was why she couldn't release the flight video.
the fact the plan was the same from when they had Soldier Boy on their side.. just hit him with the Radiation Beam, and it just works, is so baffling it really has to be studied.
Mind you, the plot of Homelander's might being overcome is the entire point of the whole series, and he's done in by something anyone could have cooked up at any time by studying what they did to Soldier boy, making all the tension of it moot.
Even with the V1, Homelander was so retardedly easy to kick the shit out of. Hell, remember Season 3, where a mid-tier supe like Queen Maeve could hurt him and make him bleed?
Get a couple dozen Starlighters, give them physical combat training, dope them up on Temp V, then lure Homelander to them. He'll be torn to pieces, V1 or not, and you can have an even bigger propaganda win by saying that the Starlighters took on Homelander at the peak of his powers and won. It's a more sure-fire victory than beating a man to death after he begs for his life.
and he's never even depicted as this world ending threat anyways, in terms of Marvel Scaling, Homelander would be a 2-10 ton range character.
Someone Spider-man could whoop.
More than half the playable cast of Marvel: Cosmic Invasion can rip Homelander into shreds in a 1v1 fight. Not just Spider-Man. I'm willing to wager that even Iron Man or Wolverine can kill him, much less Jean Grey or Storm.
Hell, if Homelander was in that game, he'd be one of the punks that Annihilus would take control of with a psychic control slug, and the heroes would have to beat the shit out of him to free him.