Butcher’s Season 3 Ending Completely Changes The Boys’ Future

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for The Boys season 3's finale

Billy Butcher's grim diagnosis completely changes The Boys' future direction - here's how. When Queen Maeve first brought V-24 to Butcher's attention in The Boys season 3's premiere, Karl Urban's supe-kicker must've thought Christmas arrived early. A drug that lets him fight supes on a level playing field without technically becoming a supe himself? Sounds too good to be true...

As Starlight later discovers, it is. V-24's side-effects involve way more than just vomiting and leaky ears. Anywhere between 3-5 doses of the green stuff is enough for malignant tumors to begin rapidly forming inside the body. Hughie Campbell managed a quartet of doses, but appears to have got lucky after Butcher prevented him injecting a fatal fifth. Butcher himself, on the other hand, isn't so lucky. Unwisely taking all five allotted doses (Gunpowder, Russia, Crimson Countess, Herogasm, and Mindstorm), he injects a foolhardy sixth ahead of The Boys season 3's final battle.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, Billy Butcher promptly collapses after the Battle of Vought Tower, and he awakens to a doctor giving him 12-18 months. Those hyper-accelerated malignant tumors mentioned in the Vought research Starlight found have obviously taken hold.

Butcher's Illness Means The Boys' Endgame Is In Sight

Billy Butcher looking sideways in The Boys

The Boys has provided Amazon's Prime Video streaming service with one of its biggest hits. The platform hardly would've allowed a giant close-up of a penis in season 3's premiere if The Boys wasn't drawing viewers, after all. The Boys season 4 has already been green-lit, and multiple spinoffs are also in the works, demonstrating just how highly Amazon values The Boys as a franchise. Because of its popularity, critical acclaim and flexible concept (rogue supes will always need bringing down a peg), The Boys could've feasibly run until season 6, 7 or 8.

Billy Butcher's recent diagnosis makes such longevity highly unlikely, effectively placing a time limit on The Boys' future. Everything between season 3's ending and The Boys' overall series finale must now take place within a maximum time frame of 18 months. While there's nothing to stop Eric Kripke borrowing 24's format and dragging Butcher's death out forever, The Boys' ending is surely in sight after this revelation. At the time of writing, there's no confirmation either way on whether The Boys season 4 will be the Amazon adaptation's final chapter, but with Karl Urban's character officially on borrowed time, that prospect becomes distinctly possible. Even if not, Butcher surely can't survive beyond season 5.

Butcher's condition seemingly rules out any major time skip ahead of The Boys season 4 too. A whole year passed between seasons 2 & 3, shifting the show's landscape considerably, but season 4 won't enjoy that luxury - unless, of course, The Boys skips straight to Butcher's final days. Butcher won't flip from fine to dead overnight either. A period of sickness will come before the end, during which Butcher won't be able to gallivant around beating up superheroes.

Does Butcher's Illness Confirm A Villain Twist In The Boys Season 4?

The Boys Billy Butcher Wee Hugie Dynamite Comics

Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's original The Boys comic books end with Billy Butcher attempting genocide on the entire supe population, shockingly (or not) making him the story's final villain. The Boys season 3 foreshadowed this twist happening in live-action when a drunk Butcher told Queen Maeve, "And it's not just Homelander, you've f**king all gotta go."

If Butcher's ending really does involve wiping out each and every supe, he's rapidly running out of time to achieve that. The Boys' outspoken antihero might've thought he could leisurely take revenge on Homelander before eventually winding his way around the entire supe population, but no such luck. Whatever plans Butcher has for supe-kind need to happen within the next 18 months, or they don't happen at all.

Karl Urban might, therefore, be pulling his villain pants on in The Boys season 4. Knowing his cosmic hourglass is running dangerously low, Butcher may begin making preparations for a mass-murder of Compound-V subjects, as he does in the comics. His friends would obviously oppose such a callous plan, not just on moral grounds but also because Kimiko and Starlight would both become victims. Feeling the reaper breathing down his neck could result in a more desperate, more depraved, more diabolical Billy Butcher for The Boys season 4.

Can Butcher Avoid Dying In The Boys?

The Boys Season 3 Butcher Powers Karl Urban

The Boys season 3's doctor seemed pretty confident about his assessment of Butcher's condition, offering no caveats or saving graces about treatment or lifestyle changes that might help stave off death. This is no ordinary illness either, with V-24 and its side-effects stretching the borders of conventional medical science. That leaves only two ways Billy Butcher can save himself in The Boys season 4.

The most obvious route is taking permanent, blue-colored Compound-V. Although the science is murky here, gaining full-time superpowers would almost certainly fix (or at least cancel out) the sickness caused by V-24. With Starlight no longer enjoying Seven privileges, getting hold of Compound-V would be no easy task, but the Boys' bigger challenge will be getting Butcher to accept the injection. V-24 allowed the famous supe-hater to avoid hypocrisy (in his mind), but everything we know about Billy Butcher indicates he'd rather die than become a supe forever.

Another get-out clause involves finding a supe with healing powers. Butcher doesn't inform the other Boys of his diagnosis in Amazon's The Boys season 3 finale, but when Hughie does eventually uncover the truth, he'll inevitably search for some way Butcher can be saved. His efforts could unearth a supe capable of curing the incurable, and although accepting help from some random Vought test subject might invite another stubborn reaction from Butcher, at least he wouldn't be becoming a supe himself.