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This article contains spoilers for The Boys season 4 episode 4.
It’s not looking good for Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher on The Boys, with the season 3 finale warning fans that the foul-mouthed cockney has only 12-18 months to live (if he’s lucky). With Butcher being the backbone of the series and leader of the titular Boys, we were worried that we’d be going into the fifth and final season without Billy by our side. Don’t worry though, because season 4 episode 4 might have just given him a new lease of life.
It doesn’t take the intellect of Sister Sage to figure out something’s not right with Butcher but “Wisdom of the Ages” introduces a potential get-out-of-jail-free card. We saw the side effects of Butcher injecting Temp V in season 3, leaving him with an inoperable brain tumor. While it all seems pretty finite, and Butcher himself claims he’s counting down the clock, an episode of the animated spinoff The Boys Presents: Diabolical could hold the key to his survival.
Throughout the four episodes of The Boys’ latest season, we’ve seen Butcher’s condition worsen. After repeatedly experiencing visions of his dead wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), he later collapses in the shower. Fans originally thought this was due to his tumor, but in one of episode 4’s big reveals, he confirms he’d taken a permanent dose of Compound V to try and cure himself. Although it looks like Compound V hasn’t worked on giving Butcher any powers, a mysterious worm slithering around his body is giving us some serious Venom vibes.
After the episode aired, fans on Reddit compared the Butcher situation to Diabolical’s “John and Sun-Hee.” The animated anthology episode followed an elderly married couple, with Vought janitor (John) stealing Compound V and administering it to his wife (Sun-Hee). Like Butcher, Sun-Hee was dying from cancer, but in the end, her powers manifested as a tentacled monster that grew inside her. The cancer eventually breaks free from Sun-Hee’s body, and after she develops powers of her own, she goes to fight it as the episode ends.
Although most of Diabolical’s eight-episode run is considered separate from the events of The Boys, showrunner Eric Kripke highlighted “John and Sun-Hee”, “One Plus One Equals Two”, and “Nubian vs Nubian” as the only ones that are canon with the live-action series. Butcher actually appeared in Diabolical’s non-canon “I’m Your Pusher” episode (voiced by Jason Isaacs), so it seems odd that Kripke would give a heart-warming love story like “John and Sun-Hee” the nod unless it was important.
There’s more evidence that Butcher’s powers are manifesting in unexpected ways, and like how Sun-Hee wasn’t in charge of her superpowered cancer, there’s an important moment when Butcher loses control in episode 4. When confronting Ezekiel (Shaun Benson), Butcher is nearly killed when the stretchy supe chokes the life out of him. As the imaginary Becca pleads for Butcher to keep fighting, he seemingly blacks out. When he comes around, Ezekiel (or what’s left of him) is strewn over the trailer. Like Sun-Hee’s cancer took on an entity of its own, it’s suggested that these powers might not be Butcher’s.
For now, it doesn’t seem that the worm is helping Butcher much yet, as when Homelander learned of the tumor in season 4 episode 1, he estimated Billy only had about six months left to live. Even though Butcher himself tells Hughie in episode 4 that taking Compound V had actually accelerated his deterioration, we doubt this is the case. Similar to how Sun-Hee’s cancer could consume bullets and kill a legion of Vought agents to keep its host alive, the idea that Butcher’s tumor has a mind of its own isn’t so far-fetched. Like the aforementioned Venom, we’ve seen the symbiote rely on Eddie Brock, and as we know The Boys likes to pay homage to Marvel, it’s a solid theory.
Others took it one step further and guessed that if the supe virus that was teased in the Gen V finale ends up being released, it might just kill Butcher’s superpowered tumor and leave him alive. Unfortunately, as Amazon’s version of The Boys is so different to Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comic book of the same name, the source material doesn’t offer many clues. Every member of the team takes Compound V in the comics, giving Butcher extreme strength and enhanced durability. His arc goes down a very different route and doesn’t include the cancer storyline, but either way, a supe version of Butcher who thinks he has nothing left to live for could be just as unhinged as Homelander.
The first four episodes of The Boys season 4 are available to stream on Prime Video now. New episodes premiere, culminating with the finale on July 18.
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