News that Homelander had appeared in the guest seats with his son shot to the top of trending lists across social media. Viewers who hadn't found time to watch the tournament rushed into the livestream, along with the few people who normally couldn't care less about superhero competitions.
It was a bombshell. Not since the terrorist attack several months earlier had breaking news gripped the entire country like this.
People began digging into Ryan's background. Rumors flew, but one after another proved false. No matter how desperately everyone wanted to know who Ryan's mother was, they remained in the dark.
Homelander had been through several relationships, the most famous of them with Queen Maeve, another member of The Seven. But each of those women was ruled out in turn. People even began to wonder whether the Boy who had inherited Homelander's remarkable genes was the result of a one-night stand.
As the story spread, speculation kept piling up, but none of it went anywhere without evidence.
After the bombshell news about Homelander drove the livestream's popularity to unprecedented heights, the competition officially began.
When the feed switched to the arena, viewers found that the grounds, badly damaged by the earlier fights, had been repaired.
Repairs could only be carried out between rounds, though. As the tournament heated up, clashes between these powerful contestants were bound to cause even greater damage. Those scheduled to fight later would simply have to adapt to a battered arena.
Before the Call-Out Challenge matches that would close out the Finals, the tournament still used single-elimination rules. Each round therefore had half as many matches as the last, but the fights were that much more exciting.
The closer the tournament came to its conclusion, the fiercer the clashes grew and the more often the favorites appeared.