Who Butcher Sees In His Dream During The Boys Season 3, Episode 2

Caution: spoilers ahead for The Boys season 3

Who might that young teenager in Billy Butcher's The Boys dream sequence be? Karl Urban's Billy Butcher is more desperate than ever in The Boys season 3. With secret assistance from the Seven's own Queen Maeve, Butcher plots to finally kill Homelander using the same weapon that allegedly ended Soldier Boy's superhero career. To do that, he must track down Payback, and those washed-up has-beens won't give up their ex-leader's secrets without a fight.

Evening the odds, Maeve provides Butcher with stolen samples of V-24 from Vought's labs, but not only is this concoction highly volatile (we don't actually see whether his bollocks do swell up like footballs), it goes against everything Butcher stands for. Contemplating his next move after hiding the V-24 in a bulldog tin (a neat Terror Easter egg, there), Butcher dreams about injecting the green substance, only to be dissuaded by a series of ghosts like a foul-mouthed Ebenezer Scrooge. First he sees the mocking face of Homelander, then an unidentified teenage boy appears, warning, "Please, for Becca. This would break her heart." The character is portrayed by Jack Fulton and, somewhat unhelpfully, gets credited as "Teen."

Most likely, this is Lenny Butcher, Billy's kid brother. During a visit to Butcher's Aunt Judy, The Boys season 2 revealed how Billy idolized Lenny when they were children, but the younger sibling took his own life - implicitly because of their father's abusive behavior. Not only does the boy in Butcher's dream have a British accent, but he's around the same age Lenny probably was when he died. If Butcher thought so highly of his brother, it also makes perfect sense for Lenny to appear begging him not to inject the V-24. The Boys drops another clue too. After Butcher's vision of Homelander shuts up, he hears the mystery boy say, "Butcher, you have to stop" before turning around and seeing the youngster on TV. This first line sounds like it's spoken by Jack Quaid's Hughie, and in The Boys season 2, Aunt Judy pointed out how much Hugh Campbell reminded Butcher of his late brother. It makes sense that his dreams blend Hughie's voice into Lenny's face.

Given the British accent, the only other character young Jack Fulton might possibly be playing is young Billy Butcher himself. The teen certainly looks like he could get away with being The Boys' pubescent Karl Urban, and that would explain why the ghost pleads, "For Becca..." Maybe this specter is Butcher's inner innocence - the part Becca loved - desperately trying to make itself heard above the bloodlust.

The Boys season 3, episode 2 dropping a random youngster credited under a vague name like "Teen" surely indicates the boy's identity will be revealed properly in a later episode. Maybe The Boys gives a flashback to Billy Butcher's early years, and Jack Fulton's character appears again - this time outside of a TV screen. The Boys then has an opportunity to dig deeper into the relationship between Billy and Lenny Butcher, explain why Hughie is so important to Butcher in the present, and ask whether his soul is still redeemable after injecting V-24 and becoming the very thing he swore to fight.