In Season 1 ofThe Boys, Billy Butcher the anti-heroic leader of the titular superhero hunter vigilante gang, makes a passionate speech linking his crew to famous 1990s pop sensations The Spice Girls. His point is that apart, they don’t have much to offer, but together they have tremendous strength. At the start of the series, M.M. served as a voice of reason, Frechie knew a little about a lot of criminal things, Kimiko was the one supe on the team with raw strength and even rawer pain, and Hughie was the point of view character for the audience, the every man that gets over his head. However, Billy, theendlessly quotable de facto leaderof the group, became iconic instantly with his cheeky humor, violent temper, and a tragic backstory involving his wife and the world’smost powerful and morally bankrupt superhero, Homelander.
However, in Season 2, when Billy first tries to get Becca to run away with him, she denies him, in large part because the darkness of what Billy has been carrying didn’t start with what happened to her. It began long before they got together, back when he was still a boy growing up with his abusive father, Sam, and his sensitive brother, Lenny. So what happened to Lenny that shaped Billy into theruthless supe killerviewers know and love?
Billy and Lenny’s Tragic Childhood
Throughout Season 3, Billy is haunted by past visions of Lenny telling him how he messed up and how he’s repeating the same old mistakes. However, it’s not until Billy’s nightmare flashbacks in Season 3, Episode “Here Comes a Candle to Light You to Bed” that the full truth is revealed. In that episode, audiences can see a teenage Billy first attempt to protect his little brother from their father. He hides Lenny in a closet and even takes a beating from him. When a headmaster at his school confronts young Billy about selling marijuana at school and expresses concern that he doesn’t end up like his father, he starts to beat the man until Lenny stops him. Now, Lenny is protecting Billy, not from violence, but rather theviolence within himself.
Lenny was the barrier keeping Billy from fully becoming like his dad. In the final flashback, Billy is leaving to enlist in the Corps of the British Royal Marines. He tells Lenny he needs to do this because he’s afraid if he stays he will kill their father, but Lenny begs him not to go. Despite the older Billy’s reservations, the past repeats itself and the younger Billy leaves his brother behind to face their father’s abuse alone. However, in Billy’s nightmare, he sees Lenny commit suicide with their father’s gun. The Lenny in Billy’s nightmares speaks for his guilt, blaming him forabandoning his brother to his death.
Hughie Grounds Billy Because He Reminds Him Of Lenny
The first time Lenny is introduced in the series is when Hughie and M.M. confront Billy out of concern regarding his disappearance. When Aunt Judy sees Hughie, she comments that he’s the spitting image of Lenny. Hughie has never heard of Lenny and when he inquires further, Judy reveals that he had passed on and that he was a “skinny, nervous, little bugger”. However, she also comments that he was able to balance Billy’s volatile temperament. Billy’s father, Sam, however, saw Lenny’s gentleness as a weakness. Although he claims to have loved Lenny, years later, as he’s dying from cancer, it’s clear that Billy is still his favorite, because he’s even stronger than his father. Rather than put off by his son’s rage, he’s delighted by it, much to Billy’s horror. Billy tried to run away from becoming like his dad, but his rage over the tragedies in his life, including Lenny and Becca, pushed him further and further onto the path of blind vengeance.
Although Billy initially viewed Hughie as more of a means to an end, eventually the two of them start to form a brotherly bond. Although Billy comes to deeply care about Hughie, old habits still arise. For instance, when he flashbacks to hitting Lenny as a teenager it is juxtaposed to him hitting Hughie. As things have gotten progressively darker going into Season 5,particularly with Hughie, perhaps a fitting end for Butcher would be to finally betaken down by Hughie. Cain getting killed by a broken Abel. After all, that would be inthe spirit of the original comic.
Although Lenny may have not made a lot of appearances inThe Boys, his backstory provides insight into the core of one of its main characters. Sam may have instilled anger and violence into Billy, but his brother’s death gave him something much more dangerous, unresolved grief. As the series comes to a close, one of the most gripping storylines will be to see how that grief manifests after so many years.
