The Boys Season 4's Biggest Comic Change Revealed Who Kills Homelander In Season 5: Theory Explained

Homelander's fate is one of the biggest plot points The Boys season 5 must address, but a big comic change from season 4 might have revealed the character who kills him. Confirmed as the final chapter in the main show's narrative, The Boys season 5 has a lot of ground to cover before the end. As the main villain since season 1, however, Homelander's defeat or victory sits at the very top of the final season's agenda.

Given the deplorable string of crimes Homelander has committed in The Boys' timeline, it seems inevitable that Antony Starr's uber-patriot will die one way or another. The bigger question is how to kill a man who famously cannot be killed. A few gray hairs aside, Homelander found himself in a stronger position than ever during The Boys season 4's ending, meaning the good guys have a mountain to claim if they hope to depose Homelander and bring down Vought forever. Looking back at season 4, Homelander's death may have been mapped out already.

Billy Butcher's Supe Powers Were A Big Deviation From The Comics

Only One Version Of Billy Butcher Got CGI Tentacles

Prime Video's The Boys has always adapted the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comic books rather loosely, but Billy Butcher becoming a monstrous, tentacle-waving supe represented one of its more significant deviations. In the comic books, Butcher and his crew dosed themselves with a diluted version of Compound V in order to compete physically with their super-powered enemies. Despite increasing their strength and durability, Butcher's team never gained actual superpowers via this method.

The Boys season 3's addition of Temp-V broadly adapted this story, with Butcher and Hughie both injecting the drug before major battles. The biggest difference between Temp-V and the comic drug was that the former granted proper superpowers for a limited period of time, with Butcher gaining Homelander-esque laser eye beams. A much bigger comic change followed in The Boys season 4's finale, which revealed Butcher's abuse of Temp-V had turned him into a supe with tentacle powers - a route the source material didn't even come close to taking.

Beyond the obvious squid-like makeover, Billy Butcher's supe transformation made Karl Urban's version of the character simultaneously more hypocritical and tragic compared to his comic counterpart. Live-action Butcher's crusade against supes turned him into the very thing he hated, consuming him in a very physical way that Becca, the person his violence is supposed to avenge, would almost certainly despise.

Butcher's Powers Mean He Can Kill Homelander In The Boys Season 5

Butcher's Powers Level The Playing Field

Examining why Prime Video's The Boys opted to turn Billy Butcher into something that looks like it crawled straight from the Deep's most sordid dreams, one potential answer springs to mind. This is how Butcher will kill Homelander in The Boys season 5.

The Boys' comic story was somewhat different. The villain responsible for assaulting Becca was revealed to be Black Noir - a secret Homelander clone hiding in plain sight. Together with the U.S. military, Butcher was able to subdue Noir and finish the villain off with a crowbar to the head, but only because the real Homelander had severely weakened his clone beforehand. In Prime Video's The Boys, there is no Homelander clone. The TV series has also spent four whole seasons demonstrating Homelander's invulnerability, even against supes, which means the Seven leader cannot die as easily as Noir did in the comics.

There will be no clone to soften Homelander up in advance, the army will be no match for Antony Starr's iteration of Homelander, and no amount of Temp-V is going to let Butcher crack a crowbar straight through his nemesis' golden-topped head. Butcher needs something to even the odds, and the fact that The Boys season 4 bestowed him with powers could be a sign that Britain's most notorious abuser of the English language will be the one who ultimately kills Homelander.

If Butcher's tentacles were potent enough to rip Victoria Neuman - another high-level supe - apart with minimal effort, they could likely stand up to Homelander's impenetrable body. Butcher can use his octo-arms to weaken Homelander enough so that a final blow, whether that be with a tentacle or a crowbar, would actually prove fatal. Without powers, it is very difficult to envision a realistic scenario where Butcher kills Homelander in The Boys season 5.

Butcher Killing Homelander Using His Own Supe Powers Makes Perfect Sense

Can The Boys Really End Any Other Way?

Billy Butcher killing Homelander thanks to his tentacle powers would tick every thematic box necessary for The Boys season 5's ending to work. For starters, it has to be Butcher that does the deed. Cases could probably be made for Starlight, Queen Maeve, and Ryan, but Butcher vs. Homelander has been The Boys' defining battle since the beginning, and that needs paying off one way or another. The Boys' story started after Becca's ordeal, and while Butcher's pursuit of revenge has regularly crossed a number of moral boundaries, Homelander must still answer for that original crime.

As much as Butcher might have transformed into a true villain ahead of The Boys season 5, it's still hard not to feel sympathy over why he started chasing down supes in the first place. His mission to commit supe genocide is beyond the pale, but that core desire to kill Homelander remains mostly understandable - in the context of a fictional superhero story, at least. For Butcher to go through five seasons of The Boys and then not kill Homelander would be something of an anticlimax.

At the same time, it also makes perfect sense that Butcher can only attain his goal by becoming a monster. Honoring the old adage that revenge-seekers should dig two graves, Butcher's campaign against Homelander should come at a great cost. Not just his own life - Butcher would give that willingly - but every shred of soul and moral integrity he had left. If The Boys had ended with Butcher killing Homelander but adhering to his and Becca's values while doing so, that wouldn't fit the brutally cynical tone The Boys is famous for.

If Butcher wants to bring Homelander down, it feels appropriate that he must sell his soul, abandon any principles, become a literal monster, and lose everything he ever loved along the way. The Boys season 4 set the board for such an outcome by not only giving Billy Butcher powers, but giving him powers that outwardly depict his twisted innermost demons. The most plausible reason to do such a thing is to prepare for the long-awaited moment in which Billy Butcher finally defeats Homelander for good.