Annie January / Starlight

Annie January arrives in the Seven as Starlight, the newest member of the world's most famous superhero team, and the dream job curdles immediately. She is portrayed by Erin Moriarty and is a deuteragonist of The Boys — a woman who can blind and blast with light, fly, and take a hit, and who spends her first season learning that the team she joined is worse than the threat she trained for.

Her first seasons are built out of refusals that cost her. She stops an attempted rape by The Deep and warns him never to touch her again, then turns down Vought's prepared message and discloses her assault to the world without naming him. She uses leverage against Gecko to advance the anti-Vought effort, and when A-Train threatens to expose her she answers with evidence of his Compound V use and Popclaw's death. When Homelander orders her to kill Hughie, she is the one member of the Seven with a working conscience, and the cost of that keeps compounding.

Her defection is gradual and documented. Stan Edgar offers her the co-captaincy of the Seven and she accepts it to influence Vought from within; her plans collapse when Homelander kills Supersonic; in Season 3 she publicly discloses Soldier Boy's threat and Homelander's abuse, rejects his demand to recant while secretly livestreaming his threats and Maeve's captivity, and then discards the Starlight costume and formally joins the Boys. She resumes the public role in Season 4 for a courthouse appearance, survives being replaced by a shape-shifter who impersonates her to get close to Hughie, and in Season 5 she infiltrates a Vought shareholders meeting to leak the Flight 37 video.

Annie January is Starlight, the small-town Georgia girl who wins a spot in The Seven - Vought's premier superhero team - and discovers on her first day that the dream is a brand. Her childhood was church pews and pageant stages, her powers real and her faith sincere, and the show's sharpest irony is that the one genuine hero on the team is its newest and least powerful member.

Her arc is a controlled detonation of idealism. Assaulted by The Deep on day one, silenced by NDAs, cosplayed into marketing campaigns and ordered to smile, Annie first plays along, then leaks the truth, then goes to war - trading the Starlight costume piece by piece for something that is actually hers.

Her relationship with Hughie Campbell grounds her: two powerless-feeling people in a world of gods, building something honest amid the spectacle. By the latest seasons she is a fugitive fronting the resistance against Homelander, her idealism intact but armored, the moral spine of the fight that The Boys could not be without her.

• Photokinesis (blinding light bursts and energy blasts)
• Flight
• Super strength and durability
• Moral compass of The Seven
• Media-savvy idealism hardened into resolve

deuteragonist

Annie's romance with Hughie Campbell begins as surveillance (Butcher wires him with a bug on their first date) and grows into the show's one uncomplicated love story, tested by secret identities on both sides. Her enemies inside The Seven define her early arc: The Deep, her assailant, and Homelander, her groomer, tormentor and eventual target. With Queen Maeve she shares a wary, ultimately life-saving sisterhood - the senior woman who teaches her how the cage works.

Romantic

• Hugh Hughie Campbell — Romantic partner

Allies

• Hugh Hughie Campbell — Partner and love
• Kimiko Miyashiro — Ally
• Serge Frenchie — Ally

Enemies

• Homelander — Groomer and enemy
• Kevin Moskowitz The Deep — Assailant within The Seven

Affiliations

• The Seven (defected); The Boys (allied)

• Erin Moriarty — Starlight (live action)

No character media available yet. Photos and videos will be added in a later update.

• Official references count: 0
• Public references count: 2

• Status: Active
• Billing: Top-billed main character
• Role: main cast
• Shows: The Boys
• Seasons: 5
• Episodes: 40

• Cherry — S1E2

  She stops an attempted rape by The Deep and rejects Vought's image-management response, asserting her own boundaries.

• Good for the Soul — S1E5

  She rejects Vought's prepared message and discloses her sexual assault publicly without naming The Deep.

• Over the Hill with the Swords of a Thousand Men — S2E3

  Homelander orders her to kill Hughie while the Boys transport captive Kenji by boat.

• Payback — S3E1

  Stan Edgar offers her the co-captaincy of the Seven alongside Homelander, and she accepts.

• Herogasm — S3E6

  She abandons Vought's sanctioned hero identity and the Seven by publicly disclosing Soldier Boy's threat and Homelander's abuse.