The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke Says Ryan Is The Key To Season 4

This article contains spoilers for "The Boys" season 3.

One childish, love-starved sociopath with all-powerful superhuman abilities is bad enough, but what if there were two of them and one was an actual child? That may be the direction "The Boys" season 4 is headed. As if to literalize the show's title, the very last image of "The Boys" season 3 was a boy smiling, and not just any boy, but Ryan Butcher (Cameron Crovetti), who is sort of like Superman's son if the horror-inspired Superman analog from "Brightburn" grew up to be a demagogue. In "The Boys," it's the murderous Homelander (Antony Starr) who serves as the Superman equivalent, but he also has a bit of Donald Trump in him, according to showrunner Eric Kripke, who has indicated that Ryan will be "a really important piece of the story" in season 4.

What makes Ryan's smile at the end of season 3 so unsettling is that it comes right after Homelander has lasered a man's head off in broad daylight with his heat vision. It happens in a red, white, and blue crowd of his supporters, who react with cheers. In a 2022 interview, Kripke revealed that this scene was inspired by Trump's infamous 2016 presidential campaign quote, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" As Kripke told Variety:

"It's just a notion taken to the extreme that the more horrible public leaders act, the more fans they seem to rack up. And there's always that expression that Trump can shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and wouldn't lose any fans. And so we said, 'Let's do that. Let's have Homelander kill a guy on Fifth Avenue and see what the reaction is.' And it's just true."

Even before "The Boys" season 3 aired, Eric Kripke said it was inspired by daily headlines of toxic masculinity, xenophobia, and white supremacy in America. Under this reading, the show's title positions it as a story about what happens when immature, emotionally stunted men hold power. Though he's still a kid, Ryan's now in danger of becoming one of those men, taking charge of a populace that is itself infantilized through superhero culture, and perhaps all too ready to hand over power.

Say what you will about Homelander, but at least he's shown that he's capable of being a better father than Billy Butcher (Karl Urban). It's Butcher abandoning Ryan that left the boy looking for a new father figure, and it certainly helps Homelander's case that he's Ryan's biological dad and is willing to offer him the unconditional love he himself never knew. Now that Ryan's mother, Becca Butcher (Shantel VanSanten), is gone, Kripke suggested that "The Boys" season 4 may devolve into a tale of two fathers, Billy and Homelander, fighting over their superpowered son, like an Avengers version of the Oscar-winning divorce drama "Kramer vs. Kramer:"

"Ryan is a really important piece of the story because he's half Becca, half Homelander. If Butcher can figure out how to get his s*** together and get the kid back, that could be the single best weapon they have against Homelander. But vice versa. If Homelander wins the kid over, that's apocalyptic because then there's two Homelanders. It's like a child drama with apocalyptic stakes. It's like 'Kramer vs. Kramer' meets 'Avengers: Endgame.' So that will be a really rich story moving forward."

"The Boys" season 4 does not have a release date yet, but it's expected to hit Prime Video later this year.