"He has a weird affection for Butcher": The Boys showrunner discusses Homelander and Butcher's rivalry

The Boys showrunner, Eric Kripke, has been doing the press circuit for a while as the fifth season, which is also the final one, premiered this Wednesday. One of the things that fans are looking forward to is the finale, which will be released on Prime Video next month. One of the discussed elements since the second season is the rivalry between Karl Urban's Billy Butcher and Antony Starr's Homelander.

Kripke addressed this rivalry in an interview with Nerdist this week after the season 5 premiere. The Nerdist reporter asked the showrunner this question:

"Somebody who I don’t expect to survive this season survived this episode, Butcher. Homelander tells Butcher he will miss having him as the only person who ever challenged him right before Butcher survives yet another encounter. So does Homelander even really want to kill Butcher? Or is a worthy opponent the only thing that makes Homelander happy at this point?"

Revealing that Homelander feels complicated about killing Butcher, The Boys showrunner said:

"Homelander has genuinely mixed feelings about killing Butcher. He’s the only person who’s ever challenged [Homelander]. He has a weird affection for Butcher that I don’t think is reciprocated by the way. One thing I like about the episode, and the fantastic job Paul Grellong did writing it, is this whole time Homelander seems just desperate for people’s devotion. “People aren’t devoted to me. They need to be devoted to me in their hearts. The people who work with me at the studio, they’re not devoted to me.” But Butcher is, in a dark homicidal way. But nevertheless, I don’t think Homelander notices the difference that much. He’s just really into people that are obsessed with him. And so I think he likes Butcher for that. He knows that eventually there needs to be a final reckoning, but he wants that to come, really, on both of their terms."

What do The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke's comments mean?

It should be noted that Homelander does tell Butcher that the latter is the only one who stood up to him. Homelander does appear to be a bit saddened that he has to kill Butcher. Billy Butcher made an impression on Homelander since the very first time they met in season 1. Since then, Butcher has made things more and more challenging for Homelander, much to his annoyance.

But it should also be noted that the leader of the seven has always felt lonely since the very beginning of The Boys. Therefore, the only time Homelander has even felt something is when Butcher and his crew challenged him. This applies especially to Butcher, who is clearly the inverted version of Homelander. Throughout the tenure of The Boys, Homelander has killed either innocent people or his supporters.

But it seems that he likes a challenge or someone pushing him, something Butcher has been doing. Moreover, Butcher taking the Compound V has only made Homelander respect Butcher more. Therefore, Kripke's answer seems to suggest that Homelander and Billy Butcher's rivalry seems to be a twisted version of Batman and Joker's enmity in some DC continuities, where Joker sees Batman as nothing except for a rival he could have fun with.

Kripke also teased more deaths this season:

One of the key scenes in this week's premiere episodes is in the closing minutes of The Boys Season 5's first episode. The scene is that of Homelander snapping A-Train's neck, killing him. But that's not the only death this season, something even the cast and crew have been teasing since The Boys Season 5 teaser trailer premiered in December 2025. Kripke echoed those sentiments in the same Nerdist interview:

"I think we had known early on that A-Train was going to probably be the first on the list because of the story, honestly. Homelander felt so betrayed by A-Train that barring killing Butcher or Annie in the first episode, which while that would’ve been shocking, was probably not the right thing to do for the final season, that A- Train would’ve been the person Homelander most wanted to take down. And it felt like we could really give A-Train the proper sendoff. So many of these things fall into place just as you’re breaking the story. We need him to rescue them, or we need to really get them out of a tight corner. How are we going to do it? Well, we’re going to have A-Train rescue them. Well, that puts him in front of Homelander. So these things start to take on a life of their own."

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