Gen V Post-Credits Scene Timeline Explained Ahead Of The Boys Season 4
Contains spoilers for the "Gen V" Season 1 finale.
The finale of Amazon's "The Boys" spin-off "Gen V" was a bloody showdown between supes, but the action wasn't over even after America's favorite fascist, Homelander (Antony Starr), showed up on campus to clean up the mess. A post-credits scene shows Billy Butcher (Karl Urban), the leader of the titular Boys, showing up at the scene of the crime. Though he doesn't do much in his brief appearance but look around, Butcher's cameo in the final moments of the episode may have rippling effects that could change the tide in Season 4 of "The Boys."
While the final episode of "Gen V," "Guardians of Godolkin," was focused mostly on the uprising of the captive supes trapped in the Woods labs underneath the school, much of the season focused on the experiments performed on young supes. The most unnerving aspect was the virus that Dean Shetty (Shelley Conn) was working on with Dr. Edison Cardosa (Marco Pigossi) to perfect a bioweapon that would target and kill supes. Now that Butcher has seen the Woods, did he find evidence of the virus, and would he dare to unleash it?
"The Boys" showrunner Eric Kripke answered that in a recent Variety interview, saying, "We knew that we wanted that virus to be a pretty big part of Season 4, and we knew that we wanted Butcher to be aware of it." Butcher went down a dark path in Season 3 of "The Boys," sacrificing his own humanity to gain powers that would put him on a level playing field with Homelander and teaming up with the violent Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles). But would he go so far as to unleash a genocidal bioweapon, and if he did, would it even work?
Will Billy Butcher unleash a barbaric bioweapon in The Boys?
"The Boys" creator and "Gen V" co-creator Eric Kripke clarified to Variety that the post-credits scene with Billy Butcher took place a couple of days after the "Gen V" Season 1 finale. "We try to keep the timeline super simple," he said, adding, "it's like there's Season 3 of 'The Boys,' and then after that 'Gen V' takes place, and then after that 'The Boys' Season 4 takes place."
Let's think about what Butcher found in the underground prison and laboratory known as the Woods, because while he can't yet get his hands on Indira Shetty and Edison Cordosa's virus, Kripke confirmed he's aware of it. Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) showed up for an episode of "Gen V," where she got Cordosa's only sample of the virus before popping his head like a grape with her hidden hemokinetic powers. Neuman is now the only one with a sample of the virus. On the other hand, Butcher probably laid eyes on the corpses of the several students who were killed by the virus. Could it be possible to reverse engineer the sickness using one of them?
Based on the assumption that Butcher understands what he's looking at when he sees those bodies, he's got a trail to follow. And he's not the only one who knows about the virus. The main cast of "Gen V" all figured out what was going on in the Woods, and Shetty told CIA operative Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) about the bioweapon before meeting her own untimely demise. Given the resourcefulness Butcher and his allies have demonstrated, it's likely he'll get his hands on it one way or another if he wants to go down that path.