But, leaving the material on the cutting room floor felt like too much of a waste, and thus Kripke and his team came up with a rather elegant solution: release it separately as its own short film so that audiences can still live through the trauma alongside Billy, but without affecting the pacing of the rest of the show.

“We had a whole storyline in episode 2, it’s not really spoiling anything, season 2 begins with Butcher MIA [after discovering Homelander, Homelander Jr., and Becca Butcher] and then shows up. In episode 2, we had shot something that really revealed where he went and what his experiences were. It ultimately didn’t end up fitting that way into the episode. It made Butcher’s story a lot less mysterious and intriguing…It was better to not know in that episode.”

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According to Eric Kripke, the plan is to release the short film “sometime in the middle of the release of the series.”

“But we had these scenes. We strung them into a short film called “Butcher”… it’ll work as a companion piece to the show. There’s actually references in the show that you won’t understand unless you see this thing as it’s really tied into our plot.”

The series primarily focuses on two groups: The Seven, Vought International’s premier superhero team, and the titular Boys, vigilantes looking to keep the corrupted heroes under control. If you have not yet seen The Boys, consider stopping whatever you’re doing and giving it a go as it is a funny, violent, starkly satirical look at the world of superheroes.

The first three minutes of the first season 2 episode was recently released, introducing The Mandalorian’s Giancarlo Esposito as a new character. Though the series has strayed somewhat from the comics, Kripke has previously referred to the second season as “crazier, stranger, more intense, more emotional. In fact, it’s too much, so the Surgeon General has insisted we air the first three episodes on September 4, then air the remaining five episodes weekly after that. We wanted to give you time to freak out, digest, discuss, come down from the high before we give you another dose.”

The Boys series 2 is due for release on September 4. This comes to us from Collider.