 |
This Article Contains Spoilers -
WARNING: This article contains major spoilers. If you do not wish to know vital information on plot / character elements in a story, you may not wish to read beyond this warning: We hold no responsibility for any negative effects these facts may have on your enjoyment of said media should you continue. That is all. |
  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
- NOTE: This article is only for the TV version of Tek Knight. To see the article for the original version of him, go to Tek Knight (comics).
| “ | Digging for the truth is a rush. Oh, it's better than sex. | „ |
| ~ Tek Knight to Indira Shetty. |
| “ | You were right. I shouldn't go after the top five. They could be real earners. You, on the other hand, are just a... Well, you're just a human. | „ |
| ~ Tek Knight to Indira, explaining his plan to blame Golden Boy's death on her. |
| “ | Everybody always has the same holes. Over and over again, it gets so f**king boring. Sometimes, you just got to make your own. And then f**k them. | „ |
| ~ Tek Knight explaining to Hughie Campbell how he is going cut a hole in him and then rape him. |
| “ | Starlight: One hundred million to Black Lives Matter Tek-Knight: No, not those people! F**k you! F**k you! No! No way! |
„ |
| ~ Tek-Knight being tortured by Starlight and the Boys; his most infamous quote. |
Robert Vernon, also known as Tek Knight, is a supporting antagonist in Season 4 of Amazon's 2019 adaptation of The Boys and a minor antagonist in Season 1 of its 2023 spin-off series Gen V.
A renowned superhero and detective within the supe world, he has the ability to deduce and analyze people and environment to learn the truth. However, he uses his powers to destroy innocent lives out of enjoyment, and shows no remorse for his actions. Following Golden Boy's suicide bombing, he is tasked by Vought-International to blame a student from Godolkin University to keep "The Woods" a secret.
Later, he is recruited by Homelander and Sister Sage to help with their plans of world domination, as he controls a large amount of private prisons that they want to turn into internment camps for humans.
He was portrayed by Derek Wilson, who also played Donnie Schenck in Preacher.
Personality[]
| “ | Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna Johnny Depp someone so hard they're gonna want to crawl into a hole and die. | „ |
| ~ Tek Knight. |
To the public, Tek Knight is a renowned superhero for his detective abilities and presents himself as charming and dedicated to stopping crime. In reality, he is a cruel and callous individual, having no qualms or remorse about the lives he has ruined and finding enjoyment in doing so. He is also shown to have a bizarre fetish for objects with holes in them.
He is also quite racist, making remarks to A-Train about his family's slave-catching origins, with unironic pride. Unlike Stormfront and Homelander, his racism isn't fueled by a desire to exterminate the groups he dislikes, rather it is more a childish sense of superiority.
He is a dominant and submissive sexual participant, but to the most extreme degree. For his masochism, he enjoyed choking and would even feel pleasurable from penetration to his flesh; for his sadism, he claims to be bored of the usual holes, thus surgically cuts new orifices in a victim, and then rape the wounds. It isn't clear if his carved victims end up dead, however, his immorality and sociopathy makes it a likelihood.
His safe word is "Zendaya," which perhaps reinforces his racism, since the point of a safe word is to end sexual engagement, thus implying he finds a woman of colour sexually unappealing.
Biography[]
Background[]
Robert Vernon was born into the very wealthy Vernon family, who gained their fortune as slave-catchers in the 19th century. At some point, he was injected with Compound V after his parents accepted an offer from Vought-International. Following the injection, he was gifted with superhuman capabilities, most prominently the ability to deduce and analyze anything on a microscopic level. Vernon later lost his parents when he was young, after which he was raised by his butler Elijah, though the latter would come to loathe him for his abusive behavior and disgusting sexual preferences.
He later graduated from Godolkin University and became a superhero under the moniker "Tek Knight." He also took a sidekick, Laddio, but eventually they had some kind of falling out and Laddio would end up a sex slave in his "Tek Cave." Vernon would also continue his family's eleven-generation oppression of others by becoming the largest owner of private prisons in America.
Unbeknownst to the public, Vernon developed a sexual obsession with pleasing himself with any object that has a hole. Additionally, he enjoyed using his abilities to destroy countless lives, regardless of how it hurt innocent people. He also has a reputation of having subjects beaten into comas or dead, like Ironcast.
At some point, Tek Knight handled a hostage situation and quickly defused it, but in the process of saving the hostage, Sheila, he accidentally broke her spine, resulting in her becoming paraplegic.
Gen V[]
Following Golden Boy's suicide, Vought sends in Tek Knight to Godolkin to frame one of the students for the supes' deaths. Using his deduction abilities, he interrogates several students for information and learns from Marie Moreau that Jordan Li was the one who stopped Golden Boy. Seeing no point in incriminating the top five, Vernon decides to pin it all on Godolkin's Dean Indira Shetty for being human and failing to stop Sam Riordan from escaping from "The Woods." However, she blackmails him to end his investigation by showing him footage of him masturbating at objects with holes. Accepting the terms, Vernon goes on his show, The Whole Truth With Tek Knight on Vought+, to tell the public that nothing was behind Golden Boy's suicide.
The Boys[]
As part of Homelander and Sage's scheme, Tek Knight is recruited for his connections and wealth. He hosts a party for billionaires to gain more support. Tek expresses appreciation to Homelander for bringing him in as a partner, but Homelander angrily corrects that they are not equals and he is only a pawn that can be replaced if he doesn't adjust his attitude.
Hughie, undercover as Webweaver, infiltrates the party. Tek invites him to the Tek Cave, however, upon arrival, it is revealed to be nothing but a sex dungeon, thus the audition and role of Tek's sidekick is merely to indulge his sexual habits. A person dressed as a gimp is chained to the wall, which Tek derides as his old sidekick. Tek's butler, Elijah, is hosing the floor, and is introduced to Hughie. At first, Hughie is able to maintain cover, sitting on cake, while Tek autoerotically asphyxiates himself. The next activity has Hughie bound to a table; as a former lover of Tek's, Ashley arrives and changes into a dominatrix outfit. Hughie's bare feet a relentlessly tickled, until Ashley orgasms, afterwards leaving to return to the party.
When Tek announces the next sadomasochistic activity, Hughie's elevated heart beat makes him suspicious, thus he unmasked Hughie; Hughie apologises and tries to placate Tek by claiming that he was his favourite hero growing up, but this fails. Tek claims that he will earn credit by presenting Hughie to Homelander, but before that, wants to continue a more extreme S&M; Tek revealed surgical tools, and explains that being bored of the "usual" holes, he will cut new ones that he will rape.
Before Hughie is cut, Starlight and Kimiko arrive, managing to stop Tek. They bound Tek on one of his own masochistic props; they interrogate him, with Kimiko stabbing him with a scalpel, but his extreme habits only invite pleasure from it. The gimp breaks from the chains, rushing to a nearby laptop, which they gesture to explain that Tek's bank accounts are accessible through it. They hold Tek's eyes open so they can bypass the retinal lock; they "torture" him by donating millions of dollars to causes he hates, such as charity for the homeless and BlackLivesMatter.
Tek cracks, so he confesses that he was recruited due to his company owning the most prisons out of any private sector company, but admits he doesn't know why. Starlight and Hughie, however, realise the evil supes plan to convert his prisons into internment camps for humans. While tolerating years of disrespect, unappreciation, and cleaning up semen from everything, the reveal of Tek's collaboration in internment camps pushes his butler, Elijah, to finally snap and strangle Tek to death; Elijah reassures the Boys that it will only look like an autoerotic asphyxiation accident. The Boys leave through the elevator, while the gimp waves goodbye, and Elijah murders his employer.
Quotes[]
| “ | The Tek-Knight plumbs a whole new pit of darkness. With its soundtrack of Nirvana hits and a 12-minute sequence that's entirely pitch-black. | „ |
| ~ Tek-Knight announcing The Tek-Knight in the V52. |
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Tek Knight is a parody of Marvel's Iron Man and DC's Batman, being a billionaire superhero who lost his parents, but has a sidekick, cave and butler.
- His "mentoring" relationship with Webweaver may also be a nod to Iron Man's relationship with Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with him serving as a parental figure and tech provider to Peter Parker in that continuity.
- While Tek Knight’s original comic book counterpart was a genuinely good person who was sadly affected by a mental illness brought about by a brain tumor. Tek Knight in the show is far more vile, ruthless, disgusting, perverted and outwardly evil. This is ironic considering the show is known for humanizing its characters far more than their comic counterparts as well as not going to the same levels of extreme shock value.
- Ironically, this change is poorly received by fans because they felt his story in the comics was interesting and compelling but his counterpart in the show comes off as another supremacist character, who didn't offer much to the story.
- Tek Knight's assault on Hughie has faced some controversy due to the show's poor handling of how it affected Hughie on a very personal level, as well as the double standard of Hughie being a victim of assault compared to how the show handled The Deep's assault of Starlight or Homelander's rape of Rebecca Butcher. It became even worse when in an interview with Variety, Eric Kripke stated that he found the scene "hilarious".
External Link[]
- Tek Knight on the Boys Wiki.
