The Boys Season 4: If Black Noir Is 'Alive' So Is This 'Dead' Homelander Theory

Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) is one of the biggest mysteries in "The Boys," and it's not just because of his black, full-body super suit. The eerily quiet member of the Seven is one of the few people Homelander (Antony Starr) seems to genuinely like, and his ability to survive vast amounts of punishment makes clear that he's far tougher than your average superpowered person. Over the course of the series, the viewer gradually finds out that the character has a dangerous almond allergy, that his real name is Earving, and that he's a former member of Payback who was severely injured when he and the rest of the team betrayed Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). During the events of "The Boys" Season 3, Homelander finally kills Noir after the powerful supe finds out that Soldier Boy is his father and that Black Noir has been keeping information from him. 

That's already a lot, but there's an even bigger mystery surrounding the character. What "The Boys" fans might not know about Black Noir is that in the comic, he's Homelander's clone — created by Vought as a contingency plan to put him down in case he starts getting ideas above his station. The expectations of the comic book fans who are familiar with this major revelation have been thwarted by virtually every single revelation about the show's Black Noir — at least, up until now. 

The first teaser trailer for "The Boys" Season 4 reveals that Black Noir is somehow still alive, happily posing for cameras with The Deep (Chace Crawford) and A-Train (Jessie T. Usher). Are Earving's powers really strong enough to heal him from the damage Homelander caused ... or is this a completely new Black Noir, which would put the clone theory back on board?

There are plenty of differences between "The Boys" comic and the show, but few of them have stirred the plot pot as much as the change in Black Noir's backstory. By making him a distinctly different character and killing him off well before the eventual endgame, the show has made clear that fans of the comic have no way of knowing what's in store. However, now that Season 4 seems to be reintroducing the character, the question of who's behind the mask is once again a complete mystery. As such, the show has brought back the possibility that Vought might have stealthily brought a Homelander clone into the mix.

Before he rocked it on "The Boys" or "Banshee," Antony Starr spent years playing twins on the New Zealander crime comedy-drama "Outrageous Fortune." Combine this with his "The Boys" character's unwitting relationship with the comic book version of Black Noir, and it doesn't seem all that unreasonable to suspect that the Amazon Prime Video show might be building toward a showdown between Homelander and a version of Black Noir that's also played by Starr. Whether "The Boys" takes things in this direction remains to be seen, but until the show confirms the Season 4 Black Noir's identity, this option certainly seems to be on the table again.

"The Boys" has spent three seasons shocking the audience. Could killing off the first Black Noir to introduce the one from the comic be another example of the show subverting its fans' expectations, or does the character have even stranger surprises in store?