Why The Boys Creators Changed Stormfront's Gender From The Comics
Fans of most TV/film adaptations tend to get upset whenever they see changes from the source material, but not fans of "The Boys." The original comic series, written by Garth Ennis and illustrated by Darick Robertson, was so crass and shallow that it feels like a miracle the TV show's as good as it's been. Every change this adaptation's made has served to make its main characters far more compelling and sympathetic than Ennis ever managed. Homelander was a boring, one-note psychopath in the comics, but the show has turned him into one of the most fascinating TV villains of all time.
Introduced in season 2, new supe Stormfront (Aya Cash) followed the same path. In the comics, Stormfront appears only briefly, and doesn't have much to do or say beyond being evil and bad. The Stormfront in the show gets a whole season-long arc, one where her evil nature is peeled back layer by layer, and is given a whole bunch of little nuances to stop her from being one-note.
But one of the biggest changes they made with Stormfront was also one of the simplest: They switched her gender. Stormfront of the comics was a big brutish man; Stormfront of the show is a young woman. For showrunner Eric Kripke, the main motivation for this switch was that they wanted to torture Homelander some more. "We wanted to sort of create Homelander's worst nightmare," Kripke said in a 2020 interview with Digital Spy. "And his worse nightmare would be a strong woman who wasn't afraid of him and proceeded to steal his spotlight."
A slick new far-right package
The other reason for the gender swap was that the writers wanted to shine a light on how far-right ideas are now being promoted. "A lot of hate and negative thought these days, if you look online, is packaged in really slick, social media-attractive ways. It's not like the old dudes with crew cuts in the 1960s newsreels anymore," Eric Kripke explained. He and the other writers were inspired by a lot of younger alt-right influencers, "who are trying to hook in a new generation." It's hard not to look at young, "hip" figures like Posie Parker, a supposedly feminist anti-trans activist whose movement seems to have an alarming number of Nazi supporters, and not see the parallels to Stormfront. "We sort of wanted to reflect how insidious that is," said Kripke.
Another interesting benefit of the gender swap was that it allowed Stormfront to develop a romantic relationship with the heterosexual Homelander. Although Homelander was originally intimidated and angered by Stormfront stealing his spotlight, he immediately changed his tune when she revealed she was into him. Although it's not clear how long their love could've lasted if the Boys hadn't ruined it, Stormfront's ability to keep him under control for so long was genuinely impressive. She wraps him around her finger to the point where she temporarily surpasses him as the show's main villain.
For a series that's often struggled to play the long game with Homelander, this was a perfect way for "The Boys" to both flesh him out as a character and keep him around longer without testing the viewers' patience too much. Stormfront might have changed drastically from the comics to the show, but looking back a season later, it's definitely hard to argue with the results.