Oh for sure. A modern story like this is The Boys where Butcher pursues his vision of justice to no end. To a man who seeks to right a deep wrong this seems prudent within the context of a fantasmal story about the plight of super heroes into super villains. I've debated with a number of people whether Butcher is an anti-hero and I've found most people don't think so. The jurisprudence of his actions largely boiled down to, "He was trying to do the right thing, right? Sometimes you must disregard the system to attain real justice. That doesn't bother me as much as it bothers you." My takeaway was that we no longer fear the King Henry archetype, whereby an individual dawns the mask of judge, jury, and executioner. As long as justice is perceivably served then the means may not be laudable but they are passable. I don't know if this translates into how people view the real world and interpret real life events, but if it does then it's quite curious.
"The Boys" is entertaining, but problematic in a number of respects. Somehow CIA are portrayed as opposed to capricious unaccountable extralegal domination of society by powerful cronyist authoritarians? Come again? In scores of nations, including USA, they have taken the opposite side. "The Boys" is more explicit than e.g. "Black Panther" in its CIA whitewashing, although that movie was probably more insulting to the memories of numerous dead Africans.
One salient difference between the characters of Butcher and "King Henry" (this is not specific) is that Henry is a king and Butcher is a somewhat violent homeless dude. One deeply suspects suggestions to see them as somehow the same.
I was talking less about the institution and more about the intersections of convictions and methods. Now take that and examine how that intersection influences whether we view Butcher as a hero or anti-hero.
That's a pretty fine line. Butcher isn't the protagonist anyway, which is good because he's the weakest aspect of the story. He hurtles from one situation to another, bringing no resources of his own other than a generalized ill humor. Some CIA bureaucrat bails him out today, a long-lost aunt cheerfully abides the total destruction of her neighborhood tomorrow, a rando schlub turns into the James Bond/MacGuyver hybrid he needs next week. Plot armor is not meant for deuteragonists; Butcher should definitely have been killed off sometime in second season.
Hughie is the protagonist. The viewer and nearly every other character relate to him and his actions. Butcher OTOH is a violent inconsiderate weirdo who is hated by everyone, including his parents. (He is barely tolerated by those he has dragooned onto his "team".) Butcher was convenient for getting the action started but after he transitioned from "mysterious stranger" to "surrogate father" to "everyone hates this asshole", his role would have been better filled by others on the team.
It would be a considerably more "experimental" program if a character like Butcher were the actual protagonist.
