Movies News Talk
The Boys season 4 went all in on a twist involving Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Kessler, but the plot point was pretty predictable for long-time TV viewers.
Despite the show's best efforts at throwing viewers off its scent, The Boys season 4's Kessler twist was obvious thanks to the casting of actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan. For better or worse, Morgan's other TV show roles primed viewers to guess that Joe Kessler was a mere manifestation of Billy Butcher's (Karl Urban) Temp V-riddled mind. A former soldier and CIA case officer, Kessler worked with Butcher prior to the events chronicled in The Boys. It's revealed that Butcher left Kessler for dead during a mission, leaving Butcher to hallucinate the long-dead Kessler in The Boys Season 4.
In the superhero satire's fourth season, Butcher grapples with the side effects of overusing Temp V. In addition to hallucinating his dead wife, Becca (Shantel VanSanten), and Kessler, Butcher deals with bouts of pain. At one point, he even blacks out mid-fight, only to realize his opponent somehow burst into pieces while he was incapacitated. Clearly, Butcher isn't well. This comes to a head (literally) in The Boys Season 4, episode 6: Becca urges Butcher to choose his morals, while Kessler presses him to resort to cruelty and violence — but the plot point is nothing new for Morgan.
The reveal that Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Kessler in season 4 of The Boys is a manifestation of Butcher's mind totally echoes an iconic Grey's Anatomy storyline. Long before Morgan played Neegan on The Walking Dead, he was perhaps most well known for his time on the long-running Shonda Rhimes-created medical drama. Introduced in season 2, Morgan's Denny Duquette is diagnosed with viral cardiomyopathy, which is when he meets Dr. Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl). Ultimately, Denny is hospitalized long-term and put on an LVAD while waiting for a new donor, leading to an iconic Grey's Anatomy moment.
Izzie is later diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic melanoma [with metastases to the brain]... thus causing the hallucinations of Denny. Engaged to Denny, Izzie cuts his LVAD wire, making him appear like the most in-need patient awaiting a heart. In addition to being one of the many times Grey's Anatomy's Izzie Stevens should've been fired, Denny dies anyway. From then on, the character haunts Izzie. At first, the Denny ghost seems to be a manifestation of her guilt and grief. However, Izzie is later diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic melanoma, which metastasizes to her temporal lobe, thus causing the hallucinations of Denny. In a similar twist, Butcher's hallucinations of Becca and Kessler are manifestations of his sentient brain tumor.
Kessler represents the darker parts of Butcher in The Boys season 4, while Becca symbolizes his humanity — but why does he see Kessler specifically?
Although Jeffrey Dean Morgan's pattern of playing dead characters who visit the still-living began with Grey's Anatomy, that and The Boys are not the only prominent instances of this casting choice. In Supernatural, Morgan plays John Winchester, the father of demon-hunting brothers Dean (Jensen Ackles) and Sam (Jared Padalecki), who seeks revenge on the demon Azazel (Fredric Lehne) for killing his wife. Ultimately, John offers up his soul to Azazel in exchange for Dean's life. When Dean finally kills Azazel, Morgan plays John's spirit. From Grey's Anatomy to The Boys to Supernatural, Jeffrey Dean Morgan's unique typecasting continues.
New episodes of The Boys season 4 premiere Thursdays on Amazon Prime Video through July 18, 2024.
The Boys is a superhero/dark comedy satire series created by Eric Kripke based on the comic series of the same name. Set in a "what-if" world that reveres superheroes as celebrities and gods who experience minimal repercussions for their actions. However, one group of vigilantes headed by a vengeance-obsessed man named Billy Butcher will fight back against these super-charged "heroes" to expose them for what they are.