Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the Amazon series The Boys have been trying to come together for years. With season 4, it finally worked out and the The Walking Dead star can actually be seen in the superhero satire of his former Supernatural boss Eric Kripke.
In the fourth season of The Boys, we meet Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Joe Kessler, who tries to bring out the evil side of Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and torments the audience with one question in particular: Who is Kessler really? Episode 6 now provides the surprising answer.
Warning, spoilers for The Boys follow:
The Boys Season 4 follows in the footsteps of Fight Club: Butcher and Kessler are one and the same person
The twist explained in a nutshell: Many fans have already speculated and now we have the answer. Billy Butcher’s former CIA contact Joe Kessler is not a real person, but a figment of his imagination and the personification of Butcher’s darkest thoughts.
Amazon
Joe Kessler is the evil side of Billy Butcher
This twist is revealed with an intense and gripping moment in episode 6. The kidnapped scientist Sameer Shah (Omid Abtahi) is to create a new version of the Supes virus for Butcher that is potent enough to kill Homelander. However, such a virus variant would be extremely unstable and could trigger a pandemic that kills all the Supes on Earth.
A heated discussion ensues. Kessler thinks the plan is great, even if it means a de facto genocide of all Supes. Butcher, on the other hand, expresses his legitimate concerns. Finally, the ghost of Becca (Shantel VanSanten), who has been haunting Butcher since the beginning of the season, starts to talk to him. The situation escalates when Kessler suddenly yells at Becca. Wait, what?
Just at this moment, Billy Butcher realizes that not only Becca, but also Joe Kessler was not real from the beginning. The real Kessler has been dead for a long time. The Boys also answers the question of what Butcher’s blackout a few episodes ago was really about. The Kessler persona took over his body and brutally murdered the Supe Ezekiel.
Billy Butcher becomes The Boys’ version of Venom
In the fourth episode of Season 4, we learned that Butcher administered a dose of Compound V months earlier in the hope of curing his tumor caused by Temp-V. Instead, he created something even worse that slithers through his body like a worm – and can communicate with him in the form of a split personality. Parallels to the Marvel symbiote Venom are unmistakable.
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Will Billy Butcher soon become a super villain?
After the big The Boys twist, the question now arises as to what will happen to Billy Butcher in season 4. Since he is aware of his situation, a Fighting for one’s own personalitywhich could have drastic consequences for Supes around the world.
The Boys is paving the way for a slightly modified adaptation of Butcher’s grim fate from Garth Ennis’ comic series. In the original, hatred takes over and turns him into the ultimate villain of the story, who wants to wipe out all Supes without compromise. The Amazon series has now found an interesting way to explain this radical change without transforming the character, who has been complexly built up over several seasons, into a one-dimensional villain.
If Butcher fails to keep his darkest and most renegade thoughts in check, the Kessler personality could take complete possession of him. What will win in the end: empathy and humanity or hate? Or is a kind of coexistence between the “good” Butcher and his “evil” Supe side even possible, taking the Marvel model Venom into account? The conflict that has defined the character Billy Butcher since the beginning of the series is now being taken to a whole new level.
But even after the revelation, The Boys still owes us an answer: So far, we have not seen how Butcher’s superpower actually works – and what he looks like in Supe mode. Maybe like a black, slimy The Boys Venom?
More news about The Boys:
When is episode 7 and the finale of The Boys season 4?
The Boys Season 4 still has two episodes to explore Billy Butcher’s split Supe personality – and give us a few more intense scenes between Karl Urban and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
It continues next week, on July 11, 2024, with episode 7. It will be available for viewing from 9:00 a.m. The final episode of season 4, titled Assassination Run, will be released the following week, on July 18, 2024 on Prime Video.