Warning: this article contains SPOILERS for The Boys Season 3 finale.
The Boys season 3 finale is here, and one scene involving the fate of Black Noir has been causing hilarious reactions from fans. The mysterious masked supe with super strength became a little less mysterious over the course of the season as viewers finally got a peek into his backstory. The last remaining member alive from Soldier Boy's Payback team, Noir happily betrayed him at Stan Edgar's request in 1984. Revealed in Black Noir's zany but tragic animated backstory, the various cartoon mascots of a Buster Beaver's Pizza parlor come alive to illustrate how Soldier Boy emotionally abused him, as well as was the one who horribly disfigured Noir's head.
All season, Noir has been avoiding Soldier Boy, but now, in the finale, it seemed he was ready to fight back. Marching alongside his animated animal companions, Noir returned to the Vought tower to prepare himself for a final showdown with his former Payback leader. Before that fateful confrontation could occur, he was instead met by Homelander, as blinded by his insecurities and entitlement as ever, who felt his most trusted ally had betrayed him by running away in his time of need. So Homelander disemboweled Noir with a single punch of his fist, leaving him to bleed out as a stuttering cartoon beaver looked on. Although their relationship wasn't explored much in a season so packed with plot, The Boys' animated spin-off Diabolical gave the Homelander/Noir friendship more contextualization.
Related: The Boys: Butcher's Backstory Reveals A Tragic Black Noir Similarity
Some fans were as gutted as Black Noir himself at the turn of events. Many of them took to Twitter to air their grievances, and mourn in the way the internet does best: memes and gifs. Although most of them seem to want to throw their TVs across the room or rage-quit the show, their reactions are pretty hilarious. Check some of them out below:
It's just like the The Boys to build up a plot thread only to subvert viewers' expectations, giving Noir a more sensitive dimension only to kill him off. Subversion can be a great device to keep viewers on their toes, and twisting known tropes of the superhero genre has been a guiding ethos of the show since its inception. Other shows have similarly deployed sudden character deaths to show the brutality and unfairness of the worlds they're set in. Game of Thrones did this beautifully (for most of its run, anyway). Go to the sudden-character-death well too many times, though, and the shock can wear thin. Call this the Walking Dead Effect, where eventually all the sudden deaths can feel meaningless. Although he's a small presence on the show, Noir has a large fanbase and his death will be a blow to many.
There's no guarantee Noir's truly dead, though. Aya Cash's Stormfront was seemingly very dead at the end of season 2, only to show up on life support for a few episodes this season. In the land of TV, until a character's death is confirmed or a body is shown, there's a chance they'll return again. This is doubly true in a world of superheroes that have regenerative healing powers. Black Noir is one such hero, and because the damage was dealt by Homelander and not Soldier Boy, who's been shown being able to take heroes' powers from them, there's still a good chance that Black Noir can regenerate and return. Who knows, The Boys may even have another supe on their side to take down Homelander if Black Noir returns for season 4.
Source: Various (see links above)