The Boys' Karl Urban Has One Request For Butcher In Season 4
The season 3 finale of "The Boys" left us with a lot of lingering questions, chief of which was, "What's going to happen to Butcher?" After a season of playing around with the super-dangerous Temp V, Butcher (Karl Urban) discovers in the finale that he's now only got about 12 to 18 months left to live. Whoops! Hughie (Jack Quaid) should probably get himself checked too, because Butcher's one extra dose in the finale surely couldn't have made that big of a difference.
This leaves Butcher in an interesting place going forward: he's still driven in his quest to kill Homelander (Antony Starr) and the other evil Supes, but now he's only got a year or so to do it. With the show usually covering only a few months with each season, this should leave enough time for him to finish his goals before the finale, but that ending will inevitably be bittersweet. Either he'll sacrifice himself to pull that final mission off, or he'll have his victory tainted with the knowledge that his own demise is coming soon.
When asked by Men's Health about how this change will affect his character's motivations going forward, Karl Urban said, "I would be very interested to take the character into a new direction for sure [...] It's important to me that the character has a strong utility, and that whatever story we do tell going forward adds something new not only to the world of 'The Boys,' but to Butcher's character."
What would a new direction look like?
The obvious assumption, based off those first three seasons, is that this might be a request to push Butcher in a slightly kinder direction. Maybe he's a little more upfront about his emotions, maybe he's slightly more hesitant to cold-bloodedly murder people, or maybe he just stops calling people c**ts quite as often. But looking at the season 3 finale in particular, it's possible Butcher will take the opposite lesson. In his last episode, Butcher protected his son Ryan at the cost of letting Homelander live, a decision that will almost certainly have horrifying ramifications going forward. If Homelander is anything like his comic counterpart, there's a good chance he'll end up taking over the world for at least a brief period, and Butcher might be kicking himself at squandering the opportunity to have stopped him earlier.
On the other hand, the reason for Butcher's kind-hearted turn in the season 3 finale had a lot to do with his realization that he's failed his son. The only reason Ryan turns to Homelander's team in the end is because Homelander, for all his faults, is at least willing to pretend to be a loving father. Meanwhile, Butcher is too stunted in his emotions to maintain a loving father-son relationship; from that perspective, maybe the takeaway for Butcher is that he should've learned to be kinder sooner, not later.
Unfortunately, we won't be getting a season 4 release date until the writer's strike is over, so it might be a while before we figure out exactly what the show's long-term plans are with the character. All we know is that Butcher has a soft side buried underneath his gruff exterior; it's up to him whether he ever gets back in touch with it.