However, viewers will likely wonder why Black Noir's healing powers have not helped him recover from these injuries. He has healed from a variety of severe injuries throughout the duration of
Before Mindstorm and Crimson Countess could subdue him, Soldier Boy pinned Black Noir's face to the hood of a burning jeep and bashed his head in with his shield, severely damaging and even removing a part of Black Noir's brain, leaving him brain damaged and scarred forever.
Kimiko, who survives being shot in the head earlier in the episode, is not healing from the attack. It is likely that whatever this power is also prevented Black Noir from healing almost 40 years prior.
Regenerative Healing Factor: Noir possesses a superhuman healing factor which allows him to regenerate damaged or destroyed bodily tissue with far greater speed and efficiency than an ordinary human it seems to heal within hours or at maximum, days.
Kimiko is hit with one of his blasts before he runs off and is badly injured. Come the end of the episode she is bleeding out in the back of a van, unable to heal herself like usual because she has no more Compound V in her body.
Even though Soldier Boy could not take down Homelander with the help of Hughie and Butcher (Karl Urban) using temporary doses of Compound V, it was abundantly clear that he is still the closest anyone has been to the individual strength of Homelander.
In the television series adaption, Noir, portrayed by Nathan Mitchell and Fritzy-Klevans Destine, is instead depicted as a brain-damaged black Supe named Earving, who is loyal to Vought CEO Stan Edgar.
Even after being a ruthless hunter, he spares the life of the little kid. Later in the season, he is seen crying as he finds out about the compound V news, which hints that he might have had a good relationship with his parents and guardians, and is now disheartened thinking that they probably used him.
Homelander Kills Noir
It's a sad and shocking way to see this silent yet relatively good (in Boys/Payback terms anyway) character go. And he exhibits no remorse for it at all.
Could Black Noir Regenerate? The first way Black Noir could return is through his regeneration abilities. We have seen his character survive numerous fatal attempts on his life. The fact he survived getting his skull bashed open by Soldier Boy speaks to the supe's resilience.
It also added a new weakness, as the lethal Supe is deathly allergic to nuts. This was inspired by the real-life allergy of Nathan Mitchell, who plays Black Noir in The Boys. As powerful as Black Noir is, this nut allergy ultimately brought him down in The Boys season 2.
During Payback's fight against Soldier Boy, Black Noir received catastrophic brain injuries that left him both unable to verbally communicate and saddled with bizarre hallucinations of cartoon animals.
Black Noir doesn't speak and operates in silence. His superpowers include superhuman strength, durability, and athleticism, and he's incredible in one-to-one combat. He also is almost unkillable, as he doesn't appear to have a single weakness in the comics.
Aging. Whilst some Supes such as Stormfront and Soldier Boy don't age than their human counterparts, the average Supe ages almost identically as the average person.
Superhuman Strength: One of Queen Maeve's primary abilities is tremendously enhanced superhuman strength, far greater than that of normal human beings. She was one of the most physically powerful Supes to have ever lived, only surpassed by Homelander.
In The Boys #21, The Seven's failed attempt to save a hijacked plane during 9/11 features Black Noir falling off the aircraft and plunging his death. However, given the later reveal that Black Noir was secretly a Homelander clone, his powers explain how he survived when nobody understood how he lived.
In the finale, released on Prime Video on Thursday night, Homelander (Antony Starr) ruthlessly killed Black Noir by shoving his hand through his chest and ripping out his organs.
While Homelander always relied solely on his powers to win battles, Black Noir has all the same abilities plus actual combat training. Noir also seems even more mentally unstable than Homelander, which would likely translate to him being even more brutal in a fight.
In “Herogasm,” the show already unveiled that Black Noir betrayed Soldier Boy and sold him to the Russians.
Later, we discover that Black Noir was goaded into attacking Soldier Boy and selling him to the Russians by a young Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito), an event that left Black Noir mutilated and nearly lobotomized.
In the comics: He is a slightly more powerful clone of Homelander that Vought created to kill him if it ever became necessary. That's why he has to hide his face and isn't allowed to talk. He also is not allowed to use the more obvious powers that he shares with Homelander ie flying, laser eyes etc.
Fans of the original comics by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson (spoiler warning) will know that Black Noir is actually a secret clone of Homelander, an insurance policy on the part of Vought to kill the crazed Superman if he ever slips out of their control.
After his fight against Homelander at the White House, Black Noir was extremely weakened. This ended up causing his death, when the military and Billy finished him off by firing multiple anti-supe bullets at his body and then destroyed his brain with a crowbar.
While serving in the Payback team, he suffered severe beatings and abuse from Soldier Boy, with other supes growing resentful of him.
On a side note, the WWII version of Soldier Boy is an actual villainous parody of Captain America while the present-day Soldier Boy is a comedic spoof of Captain America. It has been noted that Jensen Ackles is portraying the original Soldier Boy instead of the current, incompetent one.