About

Homelander Gets Applause, also known as Homelander Laughing or Homelander Smiles, is a video and GIF caption meme format based on a scene from the Amazon superhero series The Boys in which the character Homelander, played by Antony Starr, smiles and laughs after the crowd supports him over murdering a man who threw a can at his son. The format gained virality on Twitter and other social media in mid-July 2022 following season three's finale.

Origin

On July 8th, 2022, episode eight, titled "The Instant White-Hot Wild," of season three of the superhero TV series The Boys premiered.^[1] In the last scene of the episode, the main antagonist Homelander murders a man who threw a can at his son Ryan in front of a crowd of fans by shooting lasers from his eyes to blow his head off. The crowd then starts cheering for Homelander in approval, with Homelander, initially unsure of the reaction he would get, smiling and laughing as his actions are accepted (scene shown below). During the scene, a violin composition of "I Can Do Anything / Finale" by Christopher Lennertz plays.

On July 9th, 2022, Twitter^[2] user @CBMshots posted a GIF based on the scene, praising Antony Starr's performance, with the tweet gaining over 3,100 retweets and 36,800 likes in five days. On July 12th, Twitter^[3] user @callouswayne posted a video caption meme using the clip, writing, "Christopher Nolan when the studio allows him to detonate an actual nuclear bomb for Oppenheimer." The post accumulated over 12.8 million views, 17,300 retweets and 178,300 likes in two days (shown below).

Spread

In the following days, the video gained virality on Twitter as the source material for video caption memes, with users adding new captions to @callouswayne's upload. For example, on July 12th, 2022, Twitter^[4] user @rodbalderson captioned the video, "when I tweet something out of pocket and nobody unfollows," with the post gaining over 12,900 retweets and 93,800 likes in two days (shown below).

On July 13th, 2022, Twitter^[5] user @PeterOliva00 made a tweet about the character Eren Yeager from the Attack on Titan series that gained over 140 retweets and 1,400 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

The meme format saw active use on Twitter,^[6] Reddit^[7] and other platforms in mid-July 2022.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References