The Boys season 5 is officially happening, which effectively cancels out a major character death first teased in season 3 of the Amazon show. After debuting in 2019, the superhero series became one of the most streamed TV shows around the world, and now The Boys season 4 is just weeks away from being released. However, even before a single episode of season 4 has aired, The Boys was greenlit for season 5. While this has come as good news to many, it means a certain character death can’t happen yet.
Based on the adult comic book series of the same name created by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys takes place in a world where superheroes are not only real but where most of them are either corrupt or use their powers for nefarious purposes. It falls to the titular team of vigilantes to bring the Supes down. The fifth season of The Boys will no doubt feature more satire, violence, and utterly bonkers superhero shenanigans. Yet, the announcement of season 5 may have accidentally spoiled a major season 4 aspect surrounding a popular character.
An ex-SAS operative with a tragic past and a hunger for revenge, Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher is the de facto leader of The Boys. Butcher wants to see superheroes wiped out for good. In season 3, Butcher’s desire to get the upper hand on Homelander and the rest of the Supes consumed him so much that he began injecting himself with V24, a variant of Compound V that temporarily gives superpowers to those who take it. However, the use of the chemical is shown to have severe side effects, and in The Boys season 3 ending, Butcher became terminally ill.
Many might have assumed, therefore, that season 4 would pick up on this storyline and focus on Urban’s character using his remaining days to have one last attempt at ending Billy Butcher’s feud with Homelander and bringing down Vought as a whole. With no confirmation about the future beyond The Boys season 4, the idea of the upcoming season being the show’s last would have been a perfectly logical conclusion to come to. However, the announcement of The Boys season 5 means that it’s highly unlikely that Butcher will die in season 4.
After all, despite his motivations and tactics being morally questionable, Butcher is essentially the show’s protagonist. His hatred towards Homelander and superheroes in general, as well as his quest for vengeance, is what propels the series and gives The Boys its emotional depth. Furthermore, Butcher is essentially the face of the show. As a result, the idea of Butcher being killed off in season 4 and, therefore, absent from season 5 seems highly unlikely. This means, though, that a lot of the stakes and tension going into season 4 have been somewhat neutered by the season 5 announcement.
While the TV adaptation of The Boys only loosely follows the structure of the graphic novels it’s based on, there’s certainly a feeling that the show is heading in the same direction as its source material. Like in the Amazon series, the Billy Butcher of the comics is an antihero whose morals and ethics are far from black and white. As such, his ending is far from a happy one. In the final volume, entitled “The Bloody Doors Off”, Butcher meets his maker and gets one of The Boys’ most disturbing fates.
Butcher’s death in the comics plays an integral part in the story’s ending. “The Bloody Doors Off” sees Butcher formulating a plan to kill every single superhero and super-adjacement person on the planet. When the other members of the team protest, Butcher kills them. After discovering Butcher’s plan and that he was responsible for the deaths of the others, Hughie mortally wounds Butcher with a metal spike. Unsurprisingly, Butcher greets death with a wry smile.
While it may be a grim and depressing ending for both the character and the story of The Boys, it is, nevertheless, a fitting one. In both the comics and the TV show, a constant aspect of Butcher’s character is his all-consuming desire for revenge. Many times throughout the series, it has been hinted that Butcher will stop at nothing to get what he wants, which includes killing his so-called friends. Eventually, Butcher will need to be stopped before his thirst for revenge leads him to plot genocide, like in the comics.
Just because Billy Butcher won’t be dying any time soon doesn’t mean that season 4 won’t feature another major character death. Frenchie, the chemicals and weapons expert of the group, is notably absent from much of the new season’s marketing. While he’s not entirely absent – he can be seen in some brief shots in The Boys season 4 trailer – he certainly hasn’t had the same amount of focus as many of the other main characters. Given his relationship with Kimiko, Frenchie’s death would not only have a lot of emotional weight, but it would also increase the stakes.
Of course, the death of a beloved character is always bitter-sweet, but in the case of The Boys, there’s a feeling that a major player needs to be killed off sooner rather than later. Despite being a very violent show, all the main protagonists have managed to survive three whole seasons and counting, almost unbelievably so. The Boys features many silly and outrageous moments, and viewers are certainly required to suspend their disbelief to an extent. However, the show also wants audiences to buy into its emotional stakes, and in order to do that, more characters need to start dying.