The Boys: Butcher's New Season 3 Powers Will End In Disaster

The Boys season 3's trailer shows Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) with new superpowers that involve intense heat vision and superhuman strength, but his new powers look to be unstable and could result in disaster. The trailer strongly suggests Butcher has taken the power-inducing chemical Compound V to develop these new powers. While the abilities will help even the odds when going against the celebrity superhero team The Seven, it seems there are a few drawbacks to gaining superhuman powers by artificial means.

Compound V is a bit of a parallel to performance-enhancing drugs in In The Boys. Humans who inject themselves with the substance often develop superpowers, and superhumans who consume the substance have their powers amplified temporarily. The Seven’s resident speedster A-Train (Jessie Usher) injects himself with Compound V regularly to maintain his status as the fastest man alive, but he develops an addiction to it and suffers heart attacks as a side effect. Though the side effects in supes who use the drug can be debilitating, a possible side effect for humans is death via explosion. However, in The Boys season 1 it is discovered that babies handle Compound V with much more stability than adults, so the drug is injected into infants to develop them into superhumans practically from birth. As the trailer for The Boys season 3 portrays Butcher with superpowers, the question remains what effect Compound V will have on him.

Butcher is seen vomiting on his young teammate in The Boys, Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) during the trailer, which is likely a vile aftereffect of Butcher taking Compound V. It’s possible this happens only once. But if Butcher’s body continues to react strangely to the new chemical, it could be a recurring problem. As it can be terribly unstable within human adults, Butcher could suffer even worse side effects for as long as Compound V is in his system.

At one point in The Boys trailer, Butcher uses his heat vision, and it appears to be so intense and uncontrolled that it looks like his face is burning from the heat of the laser eyes. Since Compound V is an artificial enhancement, the powers any human develops might not necessarily be compatible with the rest of their physiology. It’s possible Butcher’s heat vision superpower in The Boys isn’t accompanied by a heat-resistant skin upgrade as well. He looks as though he’s in pain after emitting his blasts, so, at the very least, he's not able to control his powers. If put up against serious threats, Butcher may be forced to use his dangerous powers the to point of doing himself irreparable harm.

Throughout the first two seasons of The Boys, Butcher has never shown himself to be a cool-headed individual even without powers. But it looks like in The Boys season 3 that he’ll be pushed to further extremes than ever before. His brutal methods and volatile disposition resemble those of Homelander (Antony Starr). While audiences are used to seeing the leader of The Seven act reprehensibly, Butcher has yet to cross the line to the point of no return. Perhaps his new powers being unfamiliar and unstable could lead him to a more volatile state.

With new characters coming to The Boys season 3, new tensions and rivalries are sure to be seen. Along with old characters receiving new powers, conflicts both in and out of The Seven will find the stakes raised and threats heightened. No doubt the anti-supes team will find themselves in terrible predicaments that test the limits of their survival skills. But it's possible one of the biggest perils they will face in The Boys season 3 is their own powers.