The Boys fans don’t understand how Starlight’s powers work

Ahead of the premiere of The Boys Season 4, one fan has an incredibly important question: just what exactly do Starlight’s powers do, anyways?

Starlight is one of the central figures of The Boys, a new supe who is immediately at odds with the crass and violent world of The Seven. Her earnest nature is what turns the tide in many cases, preventing the conflict between The Boys and The Seven from exploding into all-out war.

But ahead of The Boys Season 4 premiere, Starlight’s powers caused some confusion for a Reddit user, who posed a simple question to The Boys subreddit: “what the f*** is Starlight’s power?”

“It seems to be dependent on electricity or energy? But what even is it?” BellerySticks asks. “Can she just produce heat or can she manifest electricity into something physical that she can control like a water bender?

“Because she seems to be manipulating gravity some times and she even fires laser beams. She says she can blind people on accident but hughie and a train are standing a meter away and facing her beams but they’re fine.”

Many other users on the Reddit echo BellerySticks’ concern, with one even suggestion she just has the ability to turn the screen white “so they can save on the CGI budget.”

Fortunately another reddit user, Good_Barnacle_2020, seemed to have the answer, comparing Starlight to, essentially, a fancy flash bang.

“She draws in power from the electricity around her – like light posts, car batteries, etc. Then she sends that out in different ways depending on what she’s trying to do.” Good_Barnaacle_2020 explains. “She mostly seems to use it like a flash bang. And if you could do that, I mean, why look further?”

On paper, Starlight’s power would be considered as having the ability to convert electricity. From there, she can repurpose it in a variety of ways, be it in blinding lights, short-range energy blasts, or flight. It’s not all that dissimilar from how X-Men’s Cyclops converts solar radiation into optic beams.

It is, unfortunately, a very flashy power that doesn’t appear to do all that much other than look threatening and blind foes. It doesn’t help that she’s aside more visually dynamic heroes, like Wonder Woman-pastiche Queen Maeve or the all-powerful Homelander.

With Season 4, though, the stakes are being raised higher than ever. And now that we know Season 5 will be the final season of the show, there’s definitely an opportunity for the show to give Starlight a wildly different mastery of her unique powers.

The Boys Season 4 premieres on Prime Video on June 13. In the meantime, read about whether Queen Maeve will be in Season 4, the missing superhero team fans want to see, and hints about Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s role. You can also check out all the new TV shows streaming this month.