The Boys Boss Talks Big Kessler Twist, Which Stars Knew the Truth and the Challenges of Keeping It a Surprise
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 6. Proceed at your own risk!
The Boys’ Butcher now has an imaginary angel and an imaginary devil on his shoulder.
This week’s episode of the Prime Video series revealed that Butcher’s CIA officer pal Joe Kessler (played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is actually the hallucinatory figment of a brain tumor caused by all the V Butcher took.
When Butcher’s dead wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten) pleaded with her husband to hold on to his humanity and not use the virus to wipe out all the supes, Kessler suddenly directed his anger at her, leading Butcher to realize that Kessler can also see Becca. Kessler explained that Butcher actually left the real Joe Kessler to die.
“I killed Ezekiel for you. I am inside you,” Kessler said. “I am you, which is why when I tell you that you want to do this, I am literally telling you that you f–king what to do this. So don’t you worry, Billy my boy, daddy’s home.”
The reveal came as a surprise to Butcher, but his portrayer Karl Urban and Morgan both knew about the twist from the start of the season.
“From the jump, it was always designed to be the devil on his shoulder first,” Kripke tells TVLine. “That was really how the character was conceived. Only then did we start talking about, ‘OK, so how can we create a character that Butcher thinks is real?’ and then we came up with the CIA agent and giving him a name of one of the characters from the books. So [Morgan] always knew, and I think that was the part he was most excited about, of really being able to become this devil and just really twist the knife on Butcher.”
Kripke also sat down with Urban ahead of Season 4 to talk about his arc and how Kessler played into it.
“It was just such a big twist and really crystallized Butcher’s struggle this year of half of him is human and half of him is monster, and he has to wrestle with that and decide which one is going to win out,” Kripke says. “I think Homelander is going through a very similar arc. I think Ryan is going through a very similar arc. They’re all wrestling with what part of them is human and what part of them is inhuman. So that was always core to it. And from the beginning, he was playing it, knowing we were heading towards this twist.”
To try to keep the element of surprise around Kessler, the creative team set up some practical rules for production.
“We wanted to be really disciplined in how we were pulling it off, so he couldn’t hand Butcher anything that was real. That was our biggest thing,” Kripke shares. “He could, like, give Butcher a hug, he could have a cup of coffee in his hand because it’s imaginary coffee, but he couldn’t hand something real to Butcher that he could pick up. That was one of the main ones. We tried to design it so that other characters like Sameer, if you look back at it, you realize that Sameer is reacting to that Butcher’s talking to nobody, but hopefully, the first time you watch it, you think he’s looking at Kessler.”
However, Kripke is aware that some viewers had already picked up on the clues and figured out the truth about Kessler ahead of this week’s episode.
“I know a lot of fans online have guessed it, and I think it’s impossible to totally shock the audience. They’re just so literate at figuring out puzzles. But hopefully, most people are surprised,” Kripke says.
And since Kessler is essentially a part of Butcher, perhaps now it makes even more sense why Kripke previously told TVLine that he was in need of an actor who could go “toe-to-toe with Karl in terms of menace and charisma and charm and strength.”
“Immediately, I was like, ‘Oh, thank God, we have Jeffrey Dean and that he’s available,’ because he can do that, and I think their scenes together are just so electric,” he said. “They’re just these two heavyweights, and they’re both so strong, and just the way they play off each other. And immediately, they took to each other in real life, and they’re good friends now because they have such a similar energy. It was exciting to watch.”
The Boys fans, were you surprised by the Kessler twist? Hit the comments with your thoughts on the big reveal!
I don’t know if it was a surprise to anyone, but it confirmed that angel/devil on the shoulder theory going around. Kessler is Butch’s devil and Becca is the angel; two halves of the persona that is Butcher.
Unfortunately, the entire season was made available to several reviewers and podcasters, and more than one of them revealed this as a “theory”. So the twist was spoiled for many fans, which is unfortunate. I’m not sure I would have guessed it, but I would liked to have had the chance.
Why the entire season was revealed to reviewers so early is completely unknown to me. I could see maybe releasing each episode a week early so they could write their reviews, but releasing all episodes several weeks early is really kind of dumb.
It was blatantly obvious. I think the better twist would have been Kessler actually being alive. That would have caught everybody off guard.
I didn’t expect this twist at all and there wasn’t even any clues to pick up on
So they pulled an Izzie Stevens, huh? And with the same actor, too.
(I know, it’s not an identical situation, but it’s close enough for me.)
It’s actually a VERY similar situation. Kessler and Denny were both characters who had died and Butcher and Izzy were each hallucinating due to problems in their brain (a tumor in Izzie’s case and whatever that thing in Butcher is). That’s a good catch.
Yes I cannot BELIEVE this guy is playing yet another hallucination brought on by a brain tumor! That’s a really specific actor niche to be in lol.
He’s known for playing dead lovers and dead dads. Now he’s added dead best friend to his resume.
Which twist? This was so obvious from the moment Kessler appeared, I never considered the possibility of him being alive. The flashbacks showing Butcher was talking to himself all this time were laughable.
This twist shocked me to be honest, had no idea that Kessler was imaginary and there wasn’t even any clues to pick up on either usually stuff like this has clues in earlier episodes but this didn’t.
I think it was pretty obvious, especially since we knew 100% that Becca was manifested by Butcher, but we got bonus screen time with JDM and SVS so who cares if the twist was obvious?!?! I would watch JDM read my Target shopping list!
Well I stupidly totally missed it (too busy having heart eyes watching Urban and Morgan together?), but I’m kinda glad I did, because that moment where he reacts to Becca felt so dang good if you didn’t already know.
I was surprised and said, “Oh my god; they pulled a Fight Club!”
Was a surprise? I thought it was made pretty clear by the way neither his ex or Joe talked to anyone else or interacted with the environment. I thought it was mentioned before he left Joe behind but I might be thinking of the comics.