The Boys Season 5 Reveals Billy Butcher's Most Nefarious Plot Yet
Contains spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 3 – "Every One of You Sons of B***hes"
Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) was never the world's most stable and chill guy, but "The Boys" Season 4 finally took him over the edge. He's dead set on destroying supes in general and Homelander (Antony Starr) in particular, and he has both the means and the muscle to advance his plans. "The Boys" Season 5 has shown just how powerful Butcher has become with his new cancer-themed superpowers — and now, we see that his ruthlessness has grown to scale.
In Episode 3 of the show's final season, Butcher demonstrates his cruelty with what may very well be his nastiest plot yet. As he reconnects with the wary Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), he promptly convinces the young supe, who once considered him a father figure, to participate in an unsurvivable mission: Butcher wants Ryan to get close to Homelander and infect him with the supe virus. The twist, of course, is that the virus would kill Ryan, too.
Butcher is pretty upfront with the fact that the virus will be fatal to the young man, and even promises to be nearby so that he will also suffer the same fate. However, he gets Ryan to agree to the plan by effectively gaslighting the kid into feeling worthless enough to do it, using Ryan's discomfort with his supe status to manipulate him. Not cool, Billy.
Billy Butcher is as manipulative as ever, but far more dangerous
Even more nefarious than Butcher's willingness to use Ryan as a sacrificial pawn is the way he almost casually removes the young man from his plans when they hit a speed bump. When Dr. Shah (Omid Abtahi) and Zoe Neuman (Olivia Morandin) temporarily derail Butcher's mission by destroying the virus stash, Butcher immediately puts Ryan on the back burner, and bluntly informs him that he'd never stand a chance against Homelander without the virus.
This comes back to bite both Ryan and Butcher big time. Soon, Ryan faces off with Homelander in a bid that's clearly at least partly fueled by his willingness to prove himself to Butcher. The attempt ends with the beating of a lifetime, as Homelander grows weary of Ryan's attacks and effortlessly defeats him. Fortunately, Ryan seems to survive the ordeal and thus avoids becoming another tragic "The Boys" Season 5 death – for now, at least.
As Butcher finds the battered and bloody Ryan, he almost looks like he's genuinely sorry for how things turned out. Then again, he could just as easily be simply annoyed by the way Ryan went rogue on him. Based on Billy Butcher's track record in the bold and occasionally brilliant "The Boys" Season 5, we know which angle we're guessing is the right one.
"The Boys" Season 5 is streaming on Prime Video.