While initially presented as the series’ protagonist, The Boys’ Butcher eventually proved to be quite the opposite. Butcher was always the brutal leader of the Boys who wasn’t afraid to give supes a slap when they needed it (sometimes with a pickaxe through the brain), but his violent nature was seemingly used to curb a greater evil, and thus it was all forgiven. Including Butcher’s very first supe kill, which – retrospectively – was a twisted clue to The Boys’ ending, and Butcher’s descent into a full-blown supervillain.

In The Boys: Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker #4 by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, readers witness the first horrifying act of murderous violence Butcher ever committed against a supe – and that supe was an infant. After Butcher’s wife, Becky, was assaulted by Black Noir (pretending to be Homelander), she became pregnant with his child, and when that child was ready to be born, he killed Becky and nearly did the same to Butcher.

However, Butcher survived the encounter by beating the infant supe to death with a lamp in a truly horrific display of hyper violence, especially when considering that Butcher was literally killing a baby. Sure, it was a supe baby that would have killed him after killing his wife, but it was a baby nonetheless. That alone is an atrocity that leaves a permanent stain on the soul of whoever commits it, and this instance isn’t the only time an infant is killed in The Boys

Butcher Murdered an Infant in The Boys, Just Like Another Main Villain: Black Noir

The Boys #40 by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson

In The Boys #40, it’s revealed that ‘Homelander’ went crazy and killed a room full of people in the most vile and detestable ways imaginable, and one of them was an infant. While the circumstances were certainly different, the fact remains that there are only two characters in The Boys that have deliberately killed babies: Butcher and Black Noir (as Homelander), and by the end of the series, they both pay for their unspeakably heinous crimes.

Black Noir’s story comes to a grisly end after revealing himself as Homelander’s clone, then getting his body torn to shreds by Homelander before finally killing the faux-Superman, only to have his skull opened and brain crushed by Butcher. Similarly, Butcher’s story ended when Hughie succeeded in preventing Butcher from launching a ‘supe bomb’ that would have killed every superhuman in the world, which left Butcher paralyzed from the neck down for many agonizing minutes before he finally died a bloody death.

Garth Ennis has a Habit of Punishing Characters who Kill Kids (Not Just in The Boys)

Crossed #3-4 by Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows

When the world crumbles beneath a decidedly unique strain of ‘zombie infection’ in the comic book series Crossed, a group of survivors come across some kids who had survived in the post-apocalyptic wasteland this long by killing unsuspecting travelers that stumbled upon their path – which the survivors themselves nearly fell victim to. In the end, it was decided that the kids needed to die, and the survivors simply move along. While logically sound, the cold truth of the matter was that they killed kids, and no amount of logic freed these survivors from that heavy burden.

Whenever someone kills a child in a Garth Ennis book, no matter the reason, they pay the price one way or another. For the Crossed survivors, it was a guilty conscience and the grisly fate of living in such a hellish world. For Black Noir, it was getting his body torn apart and his brain squished. And for Butcher, it was getting paralyzed before dying a gruesome death. Therefore, retrospectively, it’s as if Butcher’s fate was already sealed the moment he murdered the supe infant, which is a truly twisted clue to The Boys‘ ending.