Recapping last week’s episode of Gen V, I posited that The Boys spinoff seemed all too content to be a college-set complement to that bloody violent superhero satire. Which is fine, of course. But it handicaps a lot of what it can do as a standalone series, and while this season-finale episode finally zeroed in on what would make this youthful supes show unique (it really does have a solid cast of characters, no matter how formulaic and schematic they may seem in the aggregate), its final moments folded it into The Boys with such deus-ex-machina machinations (you-know-who all but comes down from the heavens to restore order!) that I was left, yet again, wanting more from this promising premise.
But before we get to that (and the many, many spoilers ahead), let us rewind back to the beginning. Godolkin University, as Dean Shetty so helpfully explained it last time, was never a school for supes to learn. It was a school where Vought would learn about its supes. Considering every superpowered being is a walking weapon (and a legal liability, as Homelander and his ilk constantly remind Vought and the American public), it makes sense some guardrails were set in place to learn more about what Compound V does to folks and to find, to use the euphemism the show keeps using, how best to compassionately control them.
That’s all out the window now, though. Or it seems that way once Cate (in her “I am hero” era) killed Shetty and announced herself as Gen V’s signature Magneto, believing that the only way forward is to kneecap the school’s human population and release the many students locked away in the Woods. Good thing you can do both at the same time: She and Sam (rightfully righteous about what he’s gone through) team up to break into the Woods, let everyone out, and compel them to kill any non-supe around to show the superiority they should all be embracing. It’s all a recipe for disaster, obviously but a little chaos is what a good season finale can always use. It’s also a chance for the show to flex its action sequences (last week we had an ambulance, this week we get a helicopter—and we even get a rather clunky fight between Marie and Maverick, a.k.a. Transluent’s son) even as it again ends up relying on two of the franchise’s most tired out tropes: folks punching people in the face and skull crushing them (Sam’s specialty) and people getting their heads blown up. (How many heads do you think The Boys/Gen V have exploded over time?)
In a way the show has driven its characters to their limits as they set out to live by the heroic rubrics they most value: Cate thinks she’s a hero because she’s finally unshackled from Shetty’s thumb and giving voice to those she’d help keep in bondage, while Marie wishes to be a hero simply by doing not only what’s good but what’s right (a distinction the blonde empath has no interest in discerning). Crueler still is finding the show needing to pit Sam versus Emma. (How convenient he arrives at the theater when she’s there, no?)
Asa Germann and Lizze Broadway, arguably two of the strongest cast members in the show’s ensemble, capably handle such needless flip flopping between the two young lovers. But that doesn’t make their arguing any less clunky (plot-wise), even if it does lead to one of the most astute lines in the episode: “You would do everything for everyone to like you,” Sam tells Emma. “You’re not a hero.” It’s enough to put her in her place and perhaps irrevocably break something between them. That Sam sees himself as a hero (one who so cavalierly kills any and everything in his path) perhaps explains why he’ll soon find himself aligned with that most sociopathic member of the Seven—especially since he clamored for Cate to help him feel nothing despite his subconscious (shaped as Luke) warning him against that.
Ah, yes. For while the school is in chaos and while Marie, Jordan, and Andre try their best to neutralize the many Woods threats all over campus—all while Ashley tries to do crisis control from within a barricaded conference room (quick, elevate someone to the Seven, whoever can kill as many rogue supes as possible!)—what’s at stake is really what heroes will emerge from all of this. Will it be the powerful empath who has the school’s social-media editor blow his brains out in a live-feed to send a message to the outside world, or the blood bender who’s growing stronger by the minute, able to calibrate her powers to do increasingly fun things (like sensing where invisible Maverick is by his pulse or turning spilled blood into sharp weapons she can throw at whoever)? Just as Andre fighting Sam suggests two different ways of handling family trauma (both grieving as they are those they are closest to), the schematic way in which Gen V pits Marie and Cate against one another is perhaps too neat. But from the beginning Frink has given us the key to how these characters will come into their own (with issues of glory, sacrifice, and justice surely driving their decisions). For Marie, it’s all very simple, even when tempted to go against her better judgment; ditto Andre, who’s constantly being offered an easy out by his father. But Cate cannot fathom letting herself be boxed in anymore. She and all other supes are superior. They should act accordingly. Textbook supervillain behavior and rhetoric.
Which is why the show has us rooting for Marie, our affable heroine—even when she clearly goes perhaps a tad too far and goes full Neuman, outright exploding Cate’s arm. And that’s when Gen V decides it can’t really let its cast of characters resolve this between themselves.
And so we arrive at the moment when “Guardians Of Godolkin” pulls one over us with the arrival of none other than Homelander, who, of course, sees Marie as the real villain of the piece: “What kind of animal are you?” he asks her. “Do you like attacking your own?” (Side note: you’re clearly on the right side of history if you have Homelander gunning for you, no?) The politics—and even the muddled lines that distinguish who’s battling who at any given time—get even murkier here. (Are Cate and Homelander really on the same page? Are they and Vought? Where does that leave Neuman in all of this? What about Mallory and the Boys?)
But just like that, Homelander attacks Marie and…cut to: a news broadcast where we learn she and her friends are now being framed as dangers to everyone and blamed for the deaths at Godolkin, and (as Homelander looks on quite smugly) Cate and Sam have been anointed as the new Guardians of Godolkin.
Marie then wakes and finds herself in a rather sterile hospital room alongside Jordan, Emma, and Andre (all in hospital gowns). It’s a room, she soon sees, that has no walls, which leads her to ask what’s on all of our minds and what will surely fuel the next season of Gen V, which was green-lit a few weeks back: “Where are we?”
Stray observations
- The one aspect of The Boys that first pulled me in was its understanding of modern-day superheroes as corporate spokespeople, with those giant marketing and PR departments at their disposal. Seeing that machinery again here deployed in a moment of crisis as they decide who might join the Seven was great, especially as it gave me the biggest LOL-worthy moment of the episode, when we learn one of Andre’s additional skills is a British accent. It’s a detail made all the funnier if you know actor Chase Perdomo was raised in the U.K.
- Speaking of great moments: “Josh Hartnett has more stage presence than that guy right there” is a funny line. As is “No WiFi! No LTE! Who’s gonna know if we die?!”
- Am I the only one who really never enjoyed those Greg/Bob lackeys jokes?
- Emma shrank without purging! She shrank when…she felt small and/or maybe ashamed? Interesting way for her powers to evolve, no?
- “Fucking Christ! I’m putting that in my next movie!” I kind of wish Prime Video would actually produce small snippets from the movies Vought presumably produces. They all sound and look so insane.
- Oh, I didn’t even get to talk about Polarity and Andre learning that their power may well be giving them a brain tumors, a storyline that felt, perhaps, a tad too rushed? Though maybe it’ll pay off next season?
- Speaking of, as we arrive at a rebooted Godolkin U, will Gen V introduce new characters? Will its storyline get ever more entangled with The Boys? And, perhaps more importantly, will we see more of Jackie Tohn (easily the most underused guest star of season one)?
Stream Gen V now on Prime Video