How did Elisabeth Shue’s The Boys character Madelyn Stillwell leave the hit show? Amazon’s R-rated superhero series The Boys is based on the comic book of the same name by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson but there are several differences between the show and its source material. One major change made in bringing the comic to the small screen was gender-flipping the character of Vought executive and superhero handler James Stillwell, who became Madelyn Stillwell in the show and was played to perfection by Elisabeth Shue.
Replacing James Stillwell with Madelyn allowed the show to craft a much more complicated relationship between the superhero handler and narcissistic golden boy Homelander (Antony Starr). While she’s outwardly more kind than her comic book counterpart, Madelyn was still just as calculating and perhaps even more so when it comes to Homelander. Stillwell used the superhero's mommy issues to her advantage to establish a twisted mother-son dynamic with Homelander that had disturbingly Oedipal undertones.
Throughout The Boys season 1, Madelyn alternately used both Homelander’s longing for a mother figure and his sexual attraction towards her to keep the sadistic superhero under some kind of control. All the while, Madelyn was feeding Homelander a series of lies which would eventually prove to be her downfall. When Homelander discovered that Madelyn had lied to him about the fate of Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten) – the former Vought employee he assaulted and impregnated – and the fact she was raising their child in witness protection, Homelander exacted some truly brutal revenge on his boss/lover/surrogate mother.
In The Boys season 1 finale “You Found Me”, Becca Butcher’s estranged husband Billy (Karl Urban) took Madelyn Stillwell hostage with the aim of blowing her up in front of Homelander to avenge his wife who he mistakenly thought the superhero had killed. Rather than trying to save his Vought handler, Homelander shocked both Billy and Madelyn when he killed the latter by using his laser vision to melt her eyes and fry her brain after revealing he knew all about her duplicity.
Although the season 1 finale seemed to spell the end of Elisabeth Shue’s time on The Boys, the actress did briefly return to the show. The season 2 episode “Nothing Like It In The World” showed Homelander meeting up with Shue's Madelyn Stillwell at a remote cabin where they seemingly resumed their weird relationship. However, it soon turned out that “Madelyn” was actually Doppelganger – a superhero with shape-shifting abilities first introduced in The Boys season 1 that took on the form of Stillwell to satisfy Homelander’s perverse fantasies.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/3GVTVxF
0 Comments