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The Boys season 4 episode 4, premiered on Prime Video on June 20, 2024. The fourth episode, Wisdom of the Ages, shows the viewers how compound V is no longer working on Butcher. The highlights of the latest episode hint at Butcher being a Supe but it doesn’t confirm anything.
Early in the show, Billy Butcher killed many supes before he was a Supe. The only way for the creators to make him escape death is by diverting from the source material, i.e., the comics so that fans and viewers can watch Butcher even in The Boys' fifth and final season.
Is Billy Butcher a Supe? Here is everything we know from The Boys season 4 episode 4
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As revealed in season 3 of The Boys, Billy Butcher has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and is dying. The Boys season 4 episode 4 shows how Compound V is not working on Butcher anymore as he took some of it a few months back thinking that it would cure his brain tumor. However, he became sick and did not get his powers back after taking it. He explains this to Hughie when Hughie gets some V from A-train to cure his dad.
Butcher is also seen blacking out while getting choked by Ezekiel and thinks he is dying, but wakes up to see Ezekiel that has burst into pieces, and he doesn’t remember how and what happened.
Although Butcher took Compound V after his cancer diagnosis, it's not shown whether he is a Supe yet. It feels like according to the series and the depictions, he has a parasite in his body that saved him from Ezekiel.
In The Boys season 4 episode 4, during the confrontation, we witness that Butcher is about to collapse as Ezekiel tries to suffocate him to death. We also see the parasite Butcher might have due to Compound V, fight back without letting Butcher know what has happened. We see Butcher blacking out and coming back to see Ezekiel's exploded body remains everywhere.
Read more: The Boys season 4 first clip depicts Butcher's encounter with Homelander and Ryan
This reminds us of Moon Knight and how the makers in the last episode of the show did the same thing to finally reveal the third personality of Marc Specter known as Jake Lockely. But here the makers take that same format to reveal that the parasite inside Butcher's head saved him because both Butcher and the parasite were about to die due to oxygen deprivation.
Billy Butcher must have got the parasite because of the Permanent Compound V he took in season 3 thinking that it would cure him. Making Butcher a Supe is the only way for the showrunners to avoid his early death in the series and carry him to season 5 of the show.
Read more: 5 times Billy Butcher did the right thing in The Boys
How can Butcher being a Supe change things for him?
In The Boys comics, Butcher doesn’t take compound V . Butcher doesn’t get his superpowers in the comics merely to survive, but in the show, he might. Showrunner Eric Kripke has diverged from the comics significantly and the character of Butcher in the show is quite different from the character in the books.
In the show, if Butcher is a Supe, that would mean his illness would be cured in the upcoming episodes and if he is not, then he won't make it to The Boys season 5.
Do you think Billy Butcher is a Supe in The Boys? Let us know in the comments below. All episodes of The Boys are now streaming on Prime Video.
