The show ‘The Boys’ subverts the superhero archetype by revealing the dark and twisted side of the so-called heroes. The most mysterious and intriguing member of The Seven is Black Noir, a silent and disguised assassin who rarely reveals his feelings or motivations. Is he truly nasty, or is there more to his story? This is what we aim to investigate today as we answer the question of whether Black Noir is genuinely evil.

Article Breakdown:

• In the comics, Black Noir is definitely evil; he is a true psychopath who is legitimately responsible for every evil thing that “Homelander” has done.
• In the show, Black Noir was introduced as an evil psychopath but really turned out to be the victim of the supes as well, with an extremely tragic storyline.
• Black Nour was extremely loyal to Vought and Homelander, but due to his mental limitations, you cannot consider him to be fully evil.

The comic version of Black Noir is completely different than his live-action counterpart

Black Noir, a clone of Homelander created by Vought, was designed as a fail-safe to eliminate Homelander if he became a threat. However, Homelander proved to be a generally good person, rendering Black Noir useless. Frustrated, Black Noir grew increasingly psychotic while waiting for a purpose. To realize his goal, he orchestrated a plan to frame Homelander for heinous crimes, leading Homelander into madness. Black Noir’s true purpose was eventually revealed to Butcher and Hughie, but not before the two came to hate Homelander for 𝓈ℯ𝓍ually assaulting Becca and Starlight.

In the comics, Black Noir presents a silent and stoic exterior, but underneath lies a stone-cold psychopath reveling in various forms of depravity, including rape, cannibalism, torture, manipulation, and murder. Even when Black Noir was eventually discovered, he wasn’t at all sorry for the chaos he caused; he was cheerful and gleeful despite knowing that his life had mostly come to an end.

Based on this, we can conclude that Black Noir in the comics is truly a stone-cold psychopath; he was created to be a 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ing machine, and he was absolutely vile and atrocious being that eventually met a fitting end.

Black Noir in the show cannot truly be blamed for half of the stuff he did

Unlike in the comics, in the TV show, Black Noir was born into a regular family, but due to his talents and powers, he quickly became a member of the prime superhero team at the time called ‘The Payback.’ Black Noir was honored to be on the team, but he was slightly displeased that he had to hide his race constantly due to not exactly being marketable at the time.

Black Noir was eventually offered a role in a movie that would allow him to live and act as a member of the Payback as his true, authentic self; following this, Soldier Boy, the leader of the team at the time, beats him bloody, telling him that no one is allowed to outshine him.

In 1984, Black Noir was aiding CONTRA fighters against the Sandinistas. Stan Edgar approached him with an offer to betray Soldier Boy to the Russians, as Vought was developing a young Homelander to replace Payback’s leader. Tired of Soldier Boy’s abuse, Black Noir and Payback (excluding Gunpowder) agreed. In the ensuing confrontation, Soldier Boy severely injured Black Noir, damaging his brain and leaving him permanently scarred. This incident basically left Black Noir with the mental abilities of a seven-year-old child, meaning that even though he did commit some evil acts, he generally couldn’t be held accountable due to his unique condition.

If anything, Black Noir in the show is a tragic figure, a living testament to how Vought destroyed the lives of people who were on their side as well. Black Noir, under the circumstances, developed almost fanatical and blind loyalty to Vought and Homelander. Black Noir was generally against 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ing innocent people, but he was willing to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 innocents for Homelander.

However, as soon as Soldier Boy returned to the mix, Black Noir was willing to betray Homelander, for which he paid with his life, something that was a fact up until the trailer for the new season of ‘The Boys’ came out it apparently shows that Black Noir somehow survived their encounter.

In any case, the matter of Black Noir’s evil depends on what version we’re talking about and whether we can consider mentally challenged people to be truly evil due to not having a capacity for rational thinking.