The Boys Season 5 Finally Reveals How Powerful Ryan Butcher Is

Contains spoilers for "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 3 – "Every One of You Sons of B******"

Ryan Butcher (Cameron Crovetti) is the son of Homelander (Antony Starr) and has the same powers, positioning him as someone who might have a shot at beating Homelander for quite some time now. It hasn't exactly hurt the young man's reputation that he has already performed feats against powerful supes — most notably, the way he easily eye-lasered Stormfront (Aya Cash) into oblivion in the ending of "The Boys" Season 2. In other words, there's a reason Ryan landed high on Looper's ranking of strongest "The Boys" characters. 

However, "The Boys" Season 5, Episode 3 — titled "Every One of You Sons of B******" — shows what Ryan's powers can actually do when he finally decides to take the fight to Homelander. Let's just say that it's not a close one: After allowing Ryan to attack him numerous times while trying to humor him, Homelander finally reaches his breaking point and promptly beats the youngster unconscious without even raising a sweat. 

This is all the more noteworthy because of the monstrous treatment the episode gives Ryan early on. He gets off to a strong start, utterly dismantling a Russian special ops team with barely any effort. Later, he flies from Russia to the U.S. in mere moments. Yet, none of this is enough to even an inconvenience to Homelander, who doesn't even bother to use his signature eye lasers. 

It may not be surprising that Homelander would come out on top in any fight, but seeing how easily he dismantles Ryan's offense is a shock. Before his final punches, all Homelander bothers to do is grab Ryan and slam him down a couple of times in an almost cartoonish fashion. It barely looks like Homelander is trying. Yet, Ryan, who on paper seems like a potential equal, folds like a lawn chair.

Since powerhouses like Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) and Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) also seem wary of facing Homelander head-on, it really seems that there's only one character who can potentially challenge the leader of the Seven (and the "free" world, really): Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), the "Gen V" protagonist whose home series has hyped her bloodbending abilities to high heaven and whose looming "The Boys" appearance has already been teased. Marie's versatile and destructive powers seem like they might potentially be enough to give Homelander a run for his money. Then again, that's how Ryan seemed before this episode of "The Boys." 

Marie Moreau stealthily appeared in one of the darkest "The Boys" Season 3 storylines, but she's yet to make an impact in Season 5. Will she be the one who has what it takes to defeat Homelander? Possibly not, but it'll be interesting to see the fight.