The Boys has given the superhero genre a swift kick in the pants, both sides in fact, since the first season came along. Now with a third season ready to start up in June, it feels as though the show is about to perform another circus trick by giving the humans that have been after the superheroes their own powers. Right from the start, this feels like something that kind of goes against everything that Billy Butcher and his team stood for since they were the guys that went after the heroes that had been altered by the corporate-owned substance known as Compound V. So why in the world would any of them, especially Billy, give in and take the same high-powered serum that Vought, the company that owns the heroes, has used to make their heroes so unstoppable? The easiest explanation is one that’s already being tossed around, sometimes one has to fight fire with fire. But it does raise a lot of questions as to how far Billy might go if he has powers to back up his hatred of Homelander and Vought. It also raises a big question of whether things will change even further and pit the heroes and Butcher against another danger that could be in development.
Imagining Butcher with powers equal to those of Homelander or the other heroes is kind of scary to be fair since Butcher is close to being as unstable as his nemesis, even if he’s trying to do the world a favor by exposing the mentally and emotionally suspect heroes that are essentially the villains dressed up in nice suits and aided by Vought when it comes to presenting a positive public image. There is an advantage to Butcher having powers, he doesn’t have to employ hit and run tactics and be smarter than Homelander in such a situation, as he can go head to head with his enemy finally.
But on the other side of this, Butcher might disregard collateral damage to a greater degree when trying to bring the heroes down, which means that everyone in the general vicinity loses once he and his enemies decide to go all out and slam into each other with wild abandon. But the reason that Butcher probably shouldn’t have powers, or keep them in any case, is that he’s been doing fine without them. Yeah, that’s an argument in the making since plenty of people might want to state that they can debunk it without any problem. But the truth is that despite his lack of power to use against the heroes, Butcher is still alive and he’s still managed to take the fight to Homelander and the others in his deranged way. The Boys has operated on the premise that the non-powered vigilantes that are out to get the publicly known and loved superheroes are actually doing the right thing since the Vought corporation has made a serious mockery of heroism by incorporating it. It would be worth arguing about if Vought had the capability of containing their heroes, but with Homelander being so volatile and yet just balanced enough to pull off one scheme after another, it’s kind of obvious that Vought is in control when it comes to their PR game, but have little to no control otherwise.
Saying that Butcher shouldn’t have any superpowers is kind of awkward but it also feels a lot more responsible than whooping and hollering and saying that it’s going to be the best thing in the upcoming season. But thinking past his feud with Homelander, it’s fair to think that there could be something else on the horizon that would be worth giving Compound V to Butcher and his friends to combat a different threat that’s worse than the heroes or the vigilantes. Imagining a team-up between these two factions is kind of like trying to force oil to mix with water, as outdated as that sounds. But imagining the type of threat that might facilitate their need to get along for any period is tough since it means imagining a threat that’s worse than Homelander in every possible way. It’s possible, but is it what’s going to happen?
It doesn’t feel as though it would be beyond Vought to pit the vigilantes and the heroes against each other for a PR stunt, plus, knowing that Billy is perhaps one of the best weapons to augment and then throw at Homelander is also something that just about anyone could think would be possible. But whatever surprises season 3 has to offer, it’s bound to happen that it’s going to be just as insane as the first two seasons have been. Just trying to imagine Billy and Homelander going at each other on an even playing field is kind of awesome. It’s okay, you can admit that it’s a cool idea.
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