Jeffrey Dean Morgan: His Mind-Blowing Character in The Boys Explained

“It's not quite Venom,” says showrunner Eric Kripke.

Huge twist in the final scene of episode 6 of season 4 of The Boys. The appearance of Jeffrey Dean Morgan in the series was highly anticipated. And it did not disappoint. Spoiler alert!

In the final moments of “Dirty Business,” we learned that Joe Kessler didn't actually exist. Or rather, he doesn't exist anymore. Kessler was indeed a buddy of Butcher's during his years in the army. But he died on the ground in the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan (apparently abandoned by Butcher). And if he appears to the leader of the Boysthat's because Billy is imagining it. A hallucination caused by the Compound V-enhanced tumor pulsing in Butcher's brain.

“It's not quite like Venom,” “showrunner Eric Kripke explains in EW, referring to Spider-Man's famous adversary.To me, he's not a guy with his own point of view. He can't go eat fries on his own. He represents everything dark and evil that's inside Butcher. Butcher and Homelander, in very different ways, are questioning whether they're human or whether they're monsters. Kessler represents the monster side and Becca (played by Shantel Van Santel) represents the human side of Butcher. Both sides are at war with themselves, but they're both Butcher.”

Of course, the authors had fun leading the audience up the garden path: “We wanted Butcher to really confront his light and dark sides. We needed a way to dramatize that part of the story. The notion of the little angel and the little devil on his shoulders came about very quickly.”

And the director Phil Sgriccia had the idea of ​​filming the scenes with and without Jeffrey Dean Morganto better emphasize the hallucination: “He made a rule for all the different directors: Every time you do a scene with Jeffrey and Karl, you have to do a take where Jeffrey walks away and reads the lines off camera so there's no one in front of him. So we can add him into the edit at the reveal moment…”

Season 4 of The Boys will continue Thursday night on Prime Video.