“Is He a Man Or a Monster?“: Eric Kripke Digs Into Butcher’s Complex Morality in ‘The Boys’ Season 5

When we first met Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher in the first episode of Prime Video’s The Boys, he was a man on a mission. And what was his mission, exactly? A vengeance-filled quest that also put him on a collision course with numerous difficult-to-accept truths. Caught in his laser focus (pun intended) was the leader of the superhero group known as The Seven, Antony Starr’s Homelander. The bloodthirsty and morally deplorable supe is objectively the title’s primary villain, but, as we’ve watched Butcher toe the fine line of morality over the last four seasons, will he fully step over to the dark side for the upcoming fifth and final season?

The answer to that question is one that series creator, Eric Kripke, recently teased while chatting with TV Insider. Putting it in the hands of the audience to speculate until the fifth and final season arrives somewhere down the line, Kripke said,

“Is he a man or a monster? And does he have to turn himself into a monster in order to defeat Homelander? And is there any part of him left that’s still human? I think what you’re asking is the big question of the series, and so I don’t want to give that away. It’s a big concern.”

Butcher’s Fall From Grace

By the end of Season 4, Butcher revealed himself to be just as unhinged as the bad guys he’d spent so much of his life fighting. The character’s last moments of screen time saw him using Compound V to harness his own set of powers, which he in turn used to rip Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) limb from limb. The show has always held a mirror to the goings-on of the real world and Kripke says that Butcher’s last-minute decision — and whatever chaos happens next — is no different.

“In many ways, it’s a show about humanity and how power, vengeance, and violence take it away. And so, how are you able to hold onto it? And we’ll just have to see. At the end of Season 4, there’s no question that the monster wins, but we’ll have to see where that goes in Season 5.”

Unfortunately, we’ll need to remain patient for the final season of The Boys, which, at this time, hasn’t set a release date. In the meantime, you can head over to Prime Video to get caught up on the first four seasons of the satirical superhero series.

Source: TV Insider