There isn’t any scarcity of useless supes in The Boys, however not all supes are condemned to loss of life by the titular group of supe-spanking brokers for a similar motive. Typically, supes do one thing unlawful or immoral, and the Boys use the proof of such acts to blackmail them, maintaining them in-line by threatening their public picture. Different instances, a supe will do one thing atrocious, and the Boys determine loss of life is the one appropriate punishment. And in two very distinctive circumstances, a few supes met a horrific finish after making the identical fateful mistake.
The Boys are a CIA-backed group who function off the books, as they must do issues that aren’t, strictly talking, authorized. Nevertheless, they’re vital in maintaining supes – particularly essentially the most well-known ones just like the Seven – in-line, since there’s no method these supes may ever be arrested or punished by the authorized system in any conventional method. That’s why the Boys are capable of take issues into their very own palms when supes commit crimes, whether or not that be via blackmail or homicide. Nevertheless, not each supe is comfy with that established order, and so they mistakenly assume that by killing or in any other case deterring the Boys, all their issues stirred up by the Boys will go away. The truth is, two supes – Jack from Jupiter and Lamplighter – determined to just do that with the chief of the Boys, Billy Butcher, and so they paid for these errors with their lives.
In The Boys #19 by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, readers see the reanimated corpse of Lamplighter, adopted by the story of how he died within the first place. Lamplighter killed the grandchildren of Greg Mallory, who’s somebody very near Butcher and who arguably based the Boys. In response, Mallory and Butcher had Lamplighter crushed by Frenchie and the Feminine, earlier than Mallory executed him personally. Then, in The Boys #59, Butcher kills Jack from Jupiter by stabbing him repeatedly for the crime of going after Butcher’s canine Terror. Jack’s loss of life is probably extra surprising just because he was current for Lamplighter’s destiny, so he ought to have identified what would occur to even a member of the Seven in the event that they messed with Butcher. Although in each circumstances, these supes went after these whom Butcher liked, and in each circumstances, they suffered dearly for it.
These two circumstances are direct reactions from The Boys’ chief after these supes did one thing that impacted them personally. They tried to dismantle the Boys by displaying them that they weren’t untouchable, and the supes had been brutally killed in consequence. What’s attention-grabbing is that these circumstances truly mirror the one which pushed Butcher to tackle his place within the Boys, and launch his murderous marketing campaign in opposition to all supes: the loss of life of Butcher’s spouse, Becky. Becky was sexually assaulted and impregnated by a supe Butcher believed to be Homelander, however who truly turned out to be Black Noir pretending to be Homelander. Giving delivery to a super-powered toddler killed Becky, and the supe who bought her pregnant was accountable. This made Butcher dedicate his life to maintaining supes in-check, and ultimately, he lastly killed Black Noir for what he did to his spouse, bringing Butcher’s story full-circle.
Whereas Butcher did kill Black Noir for what he did to Becky, that wasn’t a reprisal assault like the opposite two circumstances. When it got here to Lamplighter and Jack from Jupiter, nevertheless, their fates had been sealed the second they moved in opposition to Butcher in such private methods, and so they paid for these crimes virtually instantly afterward. Of their vanity, these two members of the Seven challenged the chief of The Boys, and that one mistake they shared resulted of their horrific deaths.