Butcher 'Pays A High Price' For His Superpowers In The Boys Season 3

In the world of "The Boys," superpowers bring suffering and nothing good can last. The show's warning message is obvious from its very first episode, which starts with an innocent civilian getting obliterated by superhero A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) and written off as "collateral damage." Now, three seasons in, "The Boys" is shaking things up by giving anti-superpower crusader Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) powers too. Needless to say, it doesn't sound like it'll go well.

In an interview with Variety, Urban spoke about the double-edged sword of Butcher's newly acquired powers. Three episodes of the show's new season are already up on Prime Video, and they show the vigilante take a dose of Temp V — a new and not-quite-perfected Vought serum, which makes him both superpowered and sick. 

"We wanted to do something that would differentiate his from others that we had seen," Urban explains. "What we really stumbled upon was the fact that it would cause Butcher an immense amount of pain." This makes sense, because of course the show in which an Ant-Man-like hero explodes his lover from inside his penis is a fan of having its characters in pain. The series is one of the most creatively violent on TV, in a way that's either cleverly satirical or tremendously off-putting depending on who you ask. So far, the grossest side effect we've seen to Butcher's dabbling in Temp V has been in the form of projectile vomiting, but it sounds like it could get even worse.

"To actually have lasers shooting out of your eyeballs, it was a double edged sword," Urban explains. "It came at a high cost to use these super powers for Butcher. He pays a high price for it." It's an ironic turn of fate for a character who's normally caught up in making the supes pay a high price of their own. Urban says it plays into the ethos that showrunner Eric Kripke has already established for the show, though, adding, "I think that is very in line with Kripke's motto of 'You make the right choice, you get rewarded. You make the wrong choice and you get punished.'"

Even if the episodes we've seen mark the end of Butcher's run with Temp V, the new season of "The Boys" still has plenty more messed-up stuff in store. "Supernatural" star Jensen Ackles has already made his debut as World War II-era supe Soldier Boy. Meanwhile, Kripke has teased that the new season will include an adaptation of one of the comic books' most extreme plotlines, titled "Herogasm."

The first three episodes of "The Boys" season 3 are available on Prime Video, with new episodes each Friday.