The villain telling the hero 'we’re not so different, you and I' is one of the most overused tropes in movies, especially when it comes to the superhero genre. Look no further than the Joker, Norman Osborne, Magneto, and Thanos — they've all said it.
The cliche stretches to Prime Video's subversive superhero series The Boys. Throughout the show's first four seasons, Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) and Homelander (Antony Starr) have been at each other's throats, and season 5 will undoubtedly bring their war to a violent, gruesome conclusion.
The two characters are intrinsically different in terms of their outlooks. Homelander is an oppressive 'evil Superman' with ties to the government and plans for world domination. On the other hand, hardened British vigilante Billy Butcher has been out to stop him — and all 'Supes' — from the start, along with his ragtag group, the Boys.
On the surface, Butcher and Homelander are very different people, but dig a little deeper and you'll notice some similarities. They're both driven by trauma. For Butcher it's losing his wife; for Homelander, it's being raised as a lab experiment. In addition, they both see themselves as a father figure to Ryan, Homelander's son (Cameron Crovetti).
In a recent interview with TV Insider, showrunner Eric Kripke revealed that he sees the duo as "two sides of the same coin" and explained that they each see themselves as "the epic hero and the villain of the show."
"[Homelander's] story in [season 4] was one of mortality and legacy. He’s getting older, so he wants to go back and face his childhood and try to put all that behind him," Kripke said. "He wants to try to be this good father and create this legacy moving forward, and all that’s very intentional, and it’s also exactly what Butcher’s going through."
""And by design, we always love it when we can put Butcher and Homelander around the same emotional journeys and see how they react to them because they [have this] two sides of the same coin thing where they’re the epic hero and villain of the show. So anytime that we get an opportunity to mirror what they’re going through, we take it.""
Looking ahead to the fifth and final season, everything is set up for an epic showdown. Most of the Boys have been taken into custody, but Butcher is still out there, no doubt heading straight for Homelander. Who do you think will come out on top? We'll have to wait until sometime next year to find out. While we wait, the second season of The Boys spinoff Gen V will air on Prime Video later this year.
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