'Gen V' Finale: This Spinoff Has Teeth

By Alison Lanier | TV | November 6, 2023 |

By Alison Lanier | TV | November 6, 2023 |

The chips fall in the season one finale of Gen V, The Boys’ spinoff series set at superhero university. Gen V aced the landing with its finale episode, bringing to a head the deeply uneasy themes that The Boys has been exploring more and more explicitly in its last two seasons. Gen V’s final three episodes weren’t shy about drawing in the characters and events of the flagship show, with a disturbing final cameo really putting the icing on the cake. It’s a stunningly successful spinoff, committed to the complex worldbuilding laid out by The Boys and making all the right nods and cameos at the right time.

Gen V dives right into the thorny and gory ethical issues of The Boys, with the brutality and fascism of Homelander represented in what I think is actually a bit more of a nuanced way—instead of following people we know are doing truly terrible things, we follow people—the central cast of college kids—trying desperately to alleviate harm and do the right thing. The whole of the season is an emotional and moral journey among the kids about what the right thing actually is, in this moment, when the blood and brains hit the fan.
And too, in typically bitter Boys fashion, the question of who actually gets to be the good guy in the end lands in a mess of corporate interests: the narrative manufactured in isolation from the reality and struggle on the ground.

Spoilers ahead for the whole of season one:

The fast-paced finale put us right in the middle of the division between the two groups formed in the wake of Dean Shetty’s death. Cate (Maddie Phillips) becomes a vicious rampage machine, a hurt person determined to take an eye for an eye. Or more. In a vicious reversal of Shetty’s plan for a supe-killed super-contagious virus, Cate unleashes holy hell via the abused students locked up in the Woods, sending them out to massacre any non-powered person they find. After a season of watching the monstrousness of the university’s experiments and their horrific outcomes, Sam’s (Asa Germann) explosive defense of why he’s helping her rings true: Pain breeds pain. You hurt someone badly enough, this is what comes back.

Marie (Jaz Sinclair), Jordan (London Thor/Derek Luh), Emma (Lizz), and Andre (Chance Perdomo) stand…not exactly opposing them, but opposing their methods and summary judgement of everyone and everything non-super. Warfare rages. Spectacle is made of executions on livestreams. Many people die, explicitly not because of what they did but for who they are, as every nonpowered person is killed for the actions of a few.

Neither Gen V nor The Boys has been shy about speaking to what literal fascism looks like in a modern American setting. The blonder-than-blonde kid in the distinctively red hat becomes an outspoken proponent of supe-supremacy, leading to a vicious trail of carnage across a college campus. The big bad in both these shows is arguably the easy appeal of that kind of power. In a world crowded with supes, that metaphor becomes literally explosive.

In the final deus ex machina moment of Homelander’s arrival, that power feels brutally insurmountable. It doesn’t matter who saves the day and who has blood on their hands (okay, well to be fair, everybody does). It matters who has the power to say who does and who doesn’t.

The whole season is boxed up into a soundbite from a distorted, propagandizing Fox News parody, post-credits, reporting the convenient lies produced by Vought to displace blame for the violence we just spent thirty minutes watching. The visual of the brief snippet makes it awkwardly clear that the white kids got to be the heroes, and predominantly not-white kids got to be the villains in the public narrative.

The feeling at the end of the season is a mix of wow, they went there and the kind of simmering frustration I get from looking around at the state of the world. The show’s storytelling is super-effective, with a group of central characters who feel convincingly young, hurt, confused, and convinced of their principles.

It rings true in an uncomfortable way. I’ve been consistently impressed with Gen V, and I’m happy to be seeing it come back for a second season. Check out the post-credit finale sequence if you want a hint about The Boys season four…

Season one of Gen V is now streaming in its entirety on Prime.