Comic book series The Boys (2006–2012) The Guy From Vought is
Vought-American's major presence in the series, regularly sitting in on the Seven's meetings. His real name, James Stillwell, while first mentioned in #29, is not explicitly confirmed to refer to him until #63, until which point he is presented solely as the embodiment of the company, also known as the Vought Guy, first introduced in #4. An apparent high-functioning
sociopath, the Guy From Vought aims to make a profit at the expense of others, suffering no remorse for any actions. He is highly methodical and considers nothing as unimportant during planning. He also freely admits in #40 that Vought-American are gambling that
Homelander will be controllable until they've won, and if he's not they can only "try not to be there at the time". Two major developments occur by sheer accident: the death of VA's CEO by a heart attack in #34, and
the President being killed by a rabid animal in #60. When the latter happens, the Guy From Vought said he felt "cheated".
Herogasm #4 mentions he had come up under Vought's recently deceased CEO
Mr. Edgar, and #29 has Vought minutes from 1989 mentioning ‘Stillwell’ as a "keen" young man working in then-executive Edgar's office. His calm exterior is in contrast to the superhero teams he oversees: he never shows any concern in the Seven's meetings or around the Homelander, despite their powers, nor around Russian mob boss
Little Nina. He is also utterly ruthless: after ordering the slaughter of every member of the G-Men to prevent the truth of
Professor Godolkin's activities getting out (which he'd previously covered up), he then arranges for
Pre-Wiz, the children Godolkin was training and sexually abusing, to be kidnapped, locked into a large crate and finally dropped from an aircraft over the sea. Each of these acts are carried out by different groups of Red River operatives, as he thought that even Red River personnel might find the outright murder of children to be too much.
Jack from Jupiter considers the Guy From Vought to be worse than the Seven, and has said he used to have nightmares about the sort of things the executive might have had done; Homelander has shown signs of wanting to kill him, but always stops himself and seemed genuinely scared of him (or the true power he wields) in
Herogasm #5. During Homelander's attempted ''
coup d'etat against the United States government in Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men'', the Guy From Vought becomes aware that the Boys and VA had been tricked into a conflict by a third party, ultimately revealed as
Black Noir. The Guy From Vought offers medical care to a wounded Frenchman and tries to make a deal with
Billy Butcher, asking
the Boys to take a backseat role while they tried to clean up their "own shit"; Butcher refuses. After watching the events of Butcher's informational leak onto the
World Wide Web, he is confronted by Homelander, who wishes to kill him. As an annoyed Guy From Vought keeps calm in front of the insane superhuman, to the point that Homelander declares he may have finally met a real superhuman, the Guy From Vought states he was never impressed by Homelander, and regards Homelander's actions and use of his abilities to be unoriginal and unimpressive. After expressing a wish to commit
suicide to spare himself Homelander's histrionics, Homelander tells him to "keep watching" and leaves. In
The Bloody Doors Off, the Guy From Vought tells
Wee Hughie the company can survive the superhuman attack on the
White House as they were genuinely uninvolved, growing superhumans as weapons "is disturbing but not yet illegal", and most of the other revelations about them can be shrugged off; he cites
WikiLeaks, saying the general public reaction to such things is to say "the world works the way I always suspected". However, he knew they could not survive the revelation that they had tried to kill the President, and so when the Boys released everything they had on VA and the superheroes, the Guy From Vought used Jess Bradley as a scapegoat; his plan all along was to blame everything on her.
Dear Becky (2020) In the
epilogue Dear Becky, set twelve years later, the Guy From Vought is revealed to have become a bearded
hermit following his breakdown, wandering around a pineapple plantation while quoting
Milton Friedman and repeatedly muttering about good products and bad products, and is quickly dismissed by Wee Hughie as a suspect for being the individual who sent him Butcher's old diary. The character has received a universally positive critical reception.
Television series The Boys (2019–present) In the
streaming television series adaptation,
Elisabeth Shue portrays a loose
red herring adaptation of the character,
Madelyn Stillwell, in all eight episodes of the first season as a part of the main cast, who
sexually manipulates Vought's premiere
superhero Homelander, while
Giancarlo Esposito portrays a more comic-accurate adaptation of the character,
Stanford "
Stan"
Edgar, in a recurring role in the second and third seasons, following a guest role in the first season finale. Unlike the comic series, the adaptations of the Guy From Vought are respectively depicted as a
woman and
black man, embodying Homelander's positive and negative thoughts/opinions towards the Guy From Vought, while Edgar's surname is taken from the Guy From Vought's unseen (later deceased) boss from the comic series. The
short film Butcher, set between the first and second seasons and following
Billy Butcher on the run after being framed for Stillwell's murder (before he could kill her himself), briefly features him watching a television re-enactment of her death, with actors portraying both him and Stillwell. In the third season, a now
toddler-aged Theodore "Teddy" Stillwell is revealed to be one of the Supe children held in Red River, with Madelyn having been feeding him Compound V prior to her death, leading to him developing
teleportation, allowing him to escape from Butcher's bomb, while Edgar is revealed to be
Victoria Neuman's adoptive father, and to be looking for a way for Vought to get out of the
superhero industry in favor of solely focusing on their
pharmaceutical/
military clientele. In the
fourth season, Stan Edgar is freed from prison by Mother's Milk, and then further taken off the grid by Victoria Neuman.
The Boys Presents: Diabolical (2022–present) The first season finale of
The Boys Presents: Diabolical, a
prequel episode entitled "
One Plus One Equals Two", features both Stan Edgar and Madelyn Stillwell as the former orders the latter to oversee the 18-year-old
Homelander's debut as a
superhero, ignorant of her
sexual abuse/
coercion of Homelander. Wishing to eventually supplant Edgar, Stillwell attempts to turn Homelander against
Black Noir, the "Homelander before Homelander" and the most-famous Supe worldwide, claiming that he will seek every opportunity to destroy him. However, secretly guiding Noir's actions, Edgar arranges for him to cover up Homelander's accidental massacre of both a group of eco-terrorists and their hostages, claiming them to have had a bomb. In the aftermath, back at Vought headquarters, Homelander tells Stillwell that she was wrong about Noir, while Edgar and Noir watches them both. Esposito and Shue reprise their roles.
Gen V (2023-present) In the series premiere "God U.", Madelyn Stillwell cameos in a flashback to when
A-Train first joined the Seven. In the
second season, Stan Edgar manages to find
Marie Moreau along with Zoe Neuman after Zoe saved Marie's group from Vikor. In a bunker, he explains to Marie and her group that she and Homelander are the only successes of Project Odessa initiated by Thomas Godolkin, a project that Edgar closed down at the time believing that Marie was a failure for not showing signs of power. He also concludes that Cipher has restarted the project to achieve super supremacy. Edgar is unaware of how Cipher's work is so similar to Thomas's, with Thomas technically dead and any trace of him erased.
Jordan Li and
Cate Dunlap reveal that he could be alive and be the man with burns they found at Cipher's house, and Edgar deduces that Cipher is using him to succeed in his mission. Edgar then plans the possibility of using Thomas to take down Homelander and thus regain control of Vought. ==Development==