Exclusive: Antony Starr Has Joined Marvel In A Big Villain Role
Homelander is coming to Marvel!
He may have made a name for himself as the evil reflection of Superman in Amazon Prime’s adaptation of The Boys, but now it looks like Anthony Starr is on his way to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s right, our trusted and proven source has let us know that the New Zealand born actor has been cast as a major villain in the MCU. Official word from Marvel itself is due to surface some time in the coming months.
We don’t know yet who he’ll play, but we think Anthony Starr has been recruited by Marvel to help them finally bring mutants into the MCU. We think when Marvel makes their announcement about Starr, it will be that he’s playing one of the more duplicitous mutants in the mythos — Sebastian Shaw, aka the Black King. If we’re right, this actually won’t be the first time Shaw has been brought to live-action. Kevin Bacon played the character in 2011’s X-Men: First Class.
Being cast as Sebastian Shaw would allow Anthony Starr to play to the strengths we’ve already seen on display for Marvel, while at the same time going in very different directions from what we’ve seen in The Boys. While Shaw has brawn like Homelander, unlike the leader of The Seven he’s got the brains and — more importantly — the emotional stability to match. He’s got the arrogance of Homelander, while usually preferring to fight his battles with intrigue than with his fists. His mutant ability allows him to store up kinetic energy and use it, making him the last person you would want a super strong character to punch (which is why he almost always gets punched by a super strong character).
Though we can’t say for sure that Sebastian Shaw is the character Anthony Starr will be playing for Marvel, it has the advantage of lining up nicely with other casting news we got wind of recently. Margot Robbie is in talks for a big Marvel role, which we speculated will be for the mutant Emma Frost, aka the White Queen. Both Frost and Shaw are members of the villainous Hellfire Club. More recently in the source material, almost all of Marvel’s mutants have found themselves on the mutant nation state of Krakoa, and both Frost and Shaw have become two of mutantdom’s most influential leaders. Both are on Krakoa’s leading Quiet Council, as well as heading the Hellfire Trading Company.
While we don’t think this is the most likely choice, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention another mutant villain. Anthony Starr recently responded to fan-casts as the Marvel hero Wolverine, saying that just thinking of the necessary stunt work made his “bones ache.” Though our source said Starr will be playing a villain — which likely rules out Logan — there’s always Wolverine’s nemesis, Victor Creed aka Sabretooth.
Of course, some might be guessing Anthony Starr plus Marvel means something much more predictable; i.e., something like Hyperion or the Sentry. Like Homelander, both Marvel characters are obvious Superman clones. Both Hyperion and Sentry have been villains and heroes in the source material at different times. But we don’t think this is very likely. First of all, we don’t think Starr would want Homelander 2.0. Second of all, considering the kind of casting we’ve seen from Marvel we doubt they’d be so obvious.
