Butcher Should Have Released The Virus

Añadido: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]Billy Butcher was right. In the final episode of The Boys, we get a lots of weird decisions and disappointing resolutions. However, we all knew that Butcher was going to die eventually, whether that be from the cancerous sickness in his body or in his mind. The final confrontation and his death scene was one of the best in the whole episode. After a long journey, Butcher realizes that as long as Vault is around, they did not change anything.

[00:00:21]Soon enough, there will be another Homelander, another Becca, and another Butcher. The cycle continues of an evil corporation praying on the normal everyday people. While Butcher as a character is a cautionary tale of how revenge and rage consumes you, never being satisfied as long as you live, Butcher's ideology and rationale are completely sound. In the final bits of the episode, we see a montage where some good things happen. Ashley gets impeached and goes to jail after colluding with Homelander for so long.

[00:00:45]Huey and Annie have a kid on the way, and Ryan gets invited to the cookout with MM and his family.

[00:00:52]It's all framed as this heartwarming and satisfying thing. However, one moment that I wish was touched on far more is that Stan Edgar returns to Vault as their CEO. The man behind the curtain, the real big bad, who perpetuated and maintained all of these problems, doesn't just get off scot-free, but he wins. He gets to do what he always wanted to do, continue the inhumane and disgusting experiments on humans, breed new superheroes to market and sell, all to hone and synthesize the perfect strain of Compound V. Think back to what Stan Edgar said to Homelander on his way out. You are not a god. You are simply bad product. Now we see how pathetic and ungodlike Homelander is in the finale.

[00:01:29]>> Second, please.

[00:01:31]>> However, think for a moment what Stan Edgar considers to be a good product.

[00:01:35]How terrifying someone or something like that would be. In the end, Butcher was right. If they had released that virus, Compound V would have been made useless, at least for a few years. VA would tumble and fall like we saw in the promo poster. And Huey's words wouldn't have rung so hollow. they would have actually won. So, I want to talk about how Butcher's ideology was correct, how a story arc was mishandled, and how VA's story should have ended. There is this fantastic scene from the early years of the boys where Butcher and Huey go to this support group, a support group for superhero collateral damage survivors.

[00:02:09]It's framed as this place of healing, focusing on Zen, letting go, and moving on. However, when you hear these stories, people getting their spines crushed while being saved poorly, a man gets his penis frozen off during sex, just horrible stuff. you cannot help but be angry. Now, this show likes to present itself as realistic, how superheroes would actually be like under a hyper capitalist system. It honestly abuses that realism sometimes to write some pretty boring conclusions, as we'll see later. However, in this scene, we see Butcher channel that real rage that we all feel as the audience watching this, that rage of being the play things of those who consider themselves superior. When he shouts, "Where is your rage? Your self-respect?" You cannot help but feel that what he's saying is true. What makes this scene significant for me is that while Butcher's last line of soups are for all the same becomes less and less true as the story goes on, the predatory system that causes victims like these is something to be angry at.

[00:03:01]I mean, people have theorized that this support group was paid for by VA given how ridiculous the mediator is sometimes when it comes to the rules of showing no anger or feeling any frustration. For example, Tech Knight is a really sloppy save and breaks this woman's spine, paralyzing her for life, some [ __ ] she will never come back from. and the mediator just moves past it as if it's nobody's fault. But we obviously know it is. Superheroes are reckless. They get their powers from an experimental unregulated drug. The company that produces that drug is responsible. So they create a support group to minimize lawsuits. If this is true, and I'm sure it is, it shows that no matter if Homelander is around or not, VA will always be disgusting. So while yes, we understand that someone just having superpowers doesn't make them a bad person. As long as Compound V runs through their veins, Vance will be the most powerful company of all. While some goodnatured soups out there will die from the virus, think of how many people would be saved. How many Becca's, Robins, Marie's parents? Now, I am sure you're typing a great rebuttal to this utilitarian choice. Something like the ends don't justify the means. But let's talk about what was actually stated in the finale. One thing I hated about Butcher's death is that Hueie has no real retort to Butcher's very astute observation of we did not win, we just gave them a black eye. The boy simply made Va look bad, at least for a while.

[00:04:18]And as long as the company exists, even without Stan Edgar, it will continue to produce the same problems that Homelander brought. Huey has all these emotional lines that feel like it would be more satisfying if we got the villain arc that was teased at the end of season 4. I mean, Butcher was far more reasonable in season 5. So much so that when Sister Sage, the woman who orchestrated and planned the torture and capture of his friends, slaughtered and brainwashed thousands of people in Starlighter camps and was just overall a huge antagonist. When she comes along, they accept her way too fast, like far quicker than the Avatar gang, accepted Zuko. And Zuko is a million times more sympathetic and way less evil than Sister Sage. I mean, Sister Sage is the epitome of what Butcher was complaining about in the support group scene. Did it ever occur to you that they split your spine or broke your dick just for a laugh? Everything that she did in season 4 was just to see if she could. Like it was all a game to her.

[00:05:14]>> This was so much fun.

[00:05:16]>> All the heartbreak and trauma the boys went through, she did all of that just for fun. She is the exact type of superpowered individual that Butcher hates. Yet, she gets her happy ending.

[00:05:27]None of her crimes are interrogated with any real scrutiny. Huie has nothing to say about any of this. He doesn't disagree, but he also doesn't do anything to persuade his ideas. He just focuses on the emotional torture Butcher is putting himself through, how badly it hurts to live as Butcher, and how he needs a war to fight so that he can numb himself. All of that is great character work on the emotional level. However, I wish we saw Huie at least relate to Butcher a bit when it came to their bleak reality. I mean, he was the main character. And even though he got sidelined in his own story, we know the rage a person feels when some random superhero like a train kills their girlfriend. Huey taking a risk and forgiving a train is a beautiful story.

[00:06:04]But I also love the story with Annie. I imagine an alternate scene where Huey talks about them both. How not all superheroes are the same, that these people deserve to live and killing them will be wrong. How he needs Annie in his life the same way Butcher needed Becca.

[00:06:17]And if Butcher takes Annie away from Huey, then Butcher would put Huie through the same cycle that he went through. And he would fail Huey the same way that he failed with Lenny. Now, the end result would stay the same. That great Lenny flashback, Butcher dies, Huey lives, him and Annie live happily ever after or not. When Singer calls Huey to help him with the fallout, do some good in the world. He declines and is framed as this powerful moment where he chooses himself over the mission that Butcher put him on where he is free to do his passion, which is running a tech store. I guess I did not realize how much Hueie loved that, but I guess he does. The thing is, Huey should feel some amount of guilt, some amount of shame and responsibility looking at the TV screen and seeing Stan Edgar still running Vault, hearing stories of superheroes hurting and maming people.

[00:07:00]While Annie is doing her part in combating this problem, do we seriously think that she will be able to counteract all the bad that leaving Vault intact will bring? How many weird bald-headed psycho chicks is Vault going to make in the next 10 years? Man, now I love Starlight, but she has a mandatory 5-minute loading screen before she's able to use her powers. She is not like that. No matter how many dog knots that Starlight is able to beat, how many she lines, she will always be a small dent in the military-industrial complex.

[00:07:28]Vault will keep pumping out shitty soups as it looks for the most profitable golden strain of Compound V. Even though Singer is trying his best, this weak and dismantled government that Homelander left them will get lobbyed and infested with former tech CEOs and corporate bootlickers. Eventually, the system always wins. You cannot fight the system from the inside. Butcher was right. In order to win, you have to destroy the entire thing. Va should have been destroyed. I truly believe the Flight 37 video was the most mishandled plot point in this entire series. It's why the series abuses that realism to write an unsatisfying ending to an interesting problem. Yes, it is realistic that things like that get handwaved as AI nowadays, but it does not make for a good story. That scene should have been the start of Scorched Earth Homelander.

[00:08:11]That should have been the point where he gives up trying to be loved and only cares about being feared. That should have been the first domino to fall as more things are exposed and the company gets ruined. Think about how many horrible evil things VA has done that the boys could have let Singer build a case with. The orphanage, Gdulkan University experiments, so much more. If we had a scene where Revot was being tried by Singer, he was building a case and MM was helping him with it, I would have taken that in stride. Okay, he did a little better in earning this happily ever after ending. However, if you don't take that direction and you want to be realistic, then you need to give us a prologue of some sort. What happens to Devant? How are superheroes handled now?

[00:08:48]Is Compound V outlawed like it should be? Now, these things might be answered in The Boys Mexico, and if so, I rest my case. But while Sister Sage was a unique evil, Stan Edgar is more like a single head of the Hydra that is evil corporations like Bot. However, Va is unique in that it's the only company in the world to have Compound V. Not only that, but think about the state of the world that was left to Stan Edgar. He now has all these psychics that Homelander let out, a Marie Maro who might be the key to making more Adessa projects and a dysfunctional government that he can prey on. So, in the end, Butcher was right. I firmly believe the virus would have solved a bunch of problems even though it could create more. Let me know who you think was right or how you believe the virus should have been handled in the comments. Like, comment, and subscribe.

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