Season 4 of The Boys has been hard on Butcher, from his hallucination of Becca to growing cancer in his brain. Not to mention, he now has a timeline for his crusade against Homelander, something that he thought he had a lot of time on his hands to execute.
However, it seems things are only going to get worse for Billy Butcher, given that a theory suggests that Becca is more than just another hallucination, the angel on Butcher’s shoulder. As for the devil, that would be his old friend Kessler, who the character always interacts with in his lonesome.
Kessler brings out the worst in Butcher as Becca brings out the best
Billy Butcher’s agenda has been twofold since Season 3. First, he needs to get Ryan out of the clutches of Homelander, and second, he needs to kill the leader of the Seven. While his quest to wrestle Ryan out of Homelander’s control has made him reconsider his roaring rampage of revenge against Homelander, Kessler has nudged the man back toward his ruthless ways.
However, there is a theory floating around the internet that says that Kessler is actually a hallucination as well, goading Butcher into doing what he had given up ever since Ryan came into the picture. He is serving as the devil on Butcher’s shoulder, to balance out the influence Becca has had on him, and fans seem to be in full agreement of this analysis.
While the angel-and-devil routine would be a nice narrative tool to convey Butcher’s mental state and illness, there are certain things that throw a wrench in the plot, given that we have seen Becca as a hallucination, and we know what the rules for the same are in this world, and they don’t necessarily apply to Kessler.
Jeffery Dean Morgan’s Kessler could be a real person, not just Butcher’s imagination
To begin with, we have seen that Butcher cannot physically interact with his hallucinations, as was the case when Becca tried to help him up after he collapsed in his bathroom. There needs to be a real-world stand-in for the hallucination for him to actually interact with it, like the edge of the bathtub acting as a stand-in for the hand that Becca extended to the man.
Butcher is seen interacting with Kessler, played by Jeffery Dean Morgan, multiple times, and the latter even offers to buy him coffee, which we see in the next shot. Kessler has also interacted with Butcher on multiple occasions, handing him information that by rights, should exist in the confines of the CIA. Now, if Kessler was in fact dead, there was no way he would have brand new information about the virus that was being cooked up at Godolkin University.
Further, it must be noted that when Butcher hallucinates about Becca, he still understands that she is very much dead, and there is no indication that Kessler is actually dead in the show.
Further, given that there is a spin-off on the way for the character, which might as well be a prequel, but it could also be about the fallout of The Boys’ actions post-Season 4 or Season 5. After all, who wouldn’t want a show about a federal agent navigating a world full of superpeople in need of a royal spanking?
