Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Boys season 4 premiere.
Summary
The Boysshowrunner Eric Kripke teases what’s happening inside Billy Butcher’s (Karl Urban) head at the end of the season 4 premiere. Prior to the premiere, it was established thatThe Boys' leader, Butcher, was terminally ill due to the side effects of Temp V. The serum is a modified version of Compound V, which gives users temporary superhuman abilities. Butcher exceeded the maximum dose recommended for the new drug and developed brain tumors from it. However, the show suggests there may be additional Temp V side effects he has yet to experience.
In an interview withVariety, Kripke teased what the ending ofThe Boysseason 4 premiere means when something appears to move inside Butcher’s temple. While the effects of Temp V are terminal,Kripke suggested that doctors don’t yet know everything the drug is doing to the vigilante’s body.Check out Kripke’s statement below:
We established at the end of Season 3 that the amount of Temp V he was shooting in his veins was going to kill him. And sure enough, it is. But ultimately, V is a mysterious and insidious drug, and it does really screwed up things to you. And it’s just starting to hint that there’s more going on inside of Butcher than maybe the doctors have found.
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Did The Boys’ Spinoff Already Hint at Butcher’s Fate?
While Kripke confirms some of Temp V’s side-effects have yet to be seen, he doesn’t offer any major hints about what the effect seen inThe Boysseason 4’s premiereis. The comics don’t offer any insight either, as Temp V is used frequently in the source material without adverse effects. However,The Boys' animated spinoff,The Boys Presents: Diabolical, might hold a clue about the vigilante’s diagnosis. Butcher appears to have something living or moving within his temple, which is reminiscent of a character whose tumor mutated from Compound V in the spinoff series.
The Boys Presents: Diabolicalintroduces Sun-Hee (Youn Yuh-jung), a woman with pancreatic cancer. She has only days left to live when her husband, desperate for a cure,steals Compound Vand administers it to her. Not only does she develop superpowers, butCompound V affects her cancerous cells, essentially resulting in her developing a sentient tumor.The tumor is a separate entity to her and eventually separates from her body, continuing to grow and utilize its tentacles to cause destruction before Sun-Hee uses her powers to confront it.
There are differences between Butcher and Sun-Hee regarding the types of tumors and the serums they utilize. However,seeing something tentacle-like moving in Butcher’s temple raises the possibility that he, too, could develop a living tumor.Perhaps he could even develop a superpowered tumor. A sentient tumor would undoubtedly be aligned withThe Boys' zany and disturbing inventions, and it may not necessarily separate so easily from Butcher as it did with Sun-Hee. That’s only one theory, though, and it remains to be seen what side effects Butcher will ultimately experience inThe Boysseason 4.
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The Boys is a gritty and subversive take on the superhero genre, focusing on a group of vigilantes who confront powerful superheroes abusing their abilities, exploring themes of corruption and moral ambiguity in a world where heroes are not always what they seem.
