SPOILERS: This post contains details about the first three episodes of Gen V, Season 2
With the beginning of the end near for The Boys, sophomore year has never been more high-stakes than for those in its college-based spinoff.
Ahead of the Season 2 premiere of Gen V, the first three episodes of which are now available to stream on Prime Video, Deadline caught up with co-showrunner Michele Fazekas about how the series honors Chance Perdomo after his “incredibly unimaginable” death at age 27, and the show’s scary relevance in the current sociopolitical climate.
“We talked a lot in the writers’ room about, if you’re in Nazi Germany right when the Nazis take over, and you’re a regular person, you have a choice to make,” said Fazekas. “Do I just sort of do nothing and just let it happen, do I join them, or do I fight them? And so, that’s the choice that a lot of our characters are given.”
Following the violent Season 1 finale, which tied into the Season 4 finale of The Boys, Fazekas also teased how Season 2 sets up Marie (Jaz Sinclair) to potentially take down Antony Starr’s Homelander in the Eric Kripke-created parent show.
“What we liked about sort of tying Marie to Odessa and tying it to the historic origins of these superheroes is, Godolkin University is tied to them,” she explained. “We sort of get into what they were there for to begin with and how that’s actually tied to Marie. So, it all sort of pulls from the history, and now we’re seeing how it plays out.”
Read on about Season 2 of Gen V, new episodes available to stream Wednesdays on Prime Video.
DEADLINE: Can you tell me a little bit about how this season pays tribute to Chance Perdomo and also how Andre’s death motivates his friends?
MICHELE FAZEKAS: I think we had set out at the beginning, because we sort of knew right out of the gate, we’re not just gonna recast him, and literally no one was saying recast. Studio, network and everybody was kind of like, “No, of course not.” So, we knew that we had to treat this like this character, as much as people have lost the real Chance, our people have lost Andre. And what does that look like in a world where it’s superheroes in college and a lot of ridiculous gore and funny? And so we just sort of made it like we wanted the season to certainly honor him, and then at the end, we realized the season is about him, everything, and all of the drive comes from him. So, by the end, I was very sort of proud of that, and I just remember being in the writers’ room and talking about Andre—cause we had broken Andre’s story. We wrote like five episodes of Andre’s story, that after we came back after Chance died, we’re like, “OK, all of that is obviously gone.” And it is a weird thing to grieve a fictitious character, but we did. We definitely did actually talked about it like, I think it’s OK to actually grieve something, cause you grow to love these characters as much as you love the people who are portraying them. And in some ways, we knew Andre better than we knew Chance. Chance was in Toronto. We spent more time with Andre in a way, and it was like, losing Chance is incredibly unimaginable in a way, but we all were like, “Oh, we also lost this Andre guy we really liked.” So, at the end, I was like, “Oh, this was about Andre,” and it was about Chance, the season was. I’m very proud of that.
DEADLINE: So far, what I’ve seen is so beautifully handled. And can you tell me a little bit about how Marie is Odessa, and how she is kind of being set up to take on Homelander and the significance of her role in this universe?
FAZEKAS: What I can tell you is, what we learned with this sort of Odessa thing is that as much as in The Boys universe, these powers that come up are seemingly random, except sometimes they’re not, and you see that with Homelander. … What we liked about sort of tying Marie to Odessa and tying it to the historic origins of these superheroes is, Godolkin University is tied to them. We sort of get into what they were there for to begin with and how that’s actually tied to Marie. So, it all sort of pulls from the history, and now we’re seeing how it plays out.
DEADLINE: That’s another thing I’m so intrigued about is the introduction of Ethan Slater as Thomas Godolkin. Also, I loved seeing Starlight in the season premiere. Tell me a little bit about how her character crosses over with The Boys, and the significance of her being on the run and kind of this symbol of the resistance.
FAZEKAS: Yeah, I think she basically comes to us, comes to Marie at probably Marie’s low point, and is sort of the call-to-arms for Marie and the inspiration, like, “You can definitely sit this one out.” And people do that, like we talked a lot in the writers’ room about, if you’re in Nazi Germany right when the Nazis take over, and you’re a regular person, you have a choice to make. Do I just sort of do nothing and just let it happen, do I join them, or do I fight them? And so, that’s the choice that a lot of our characters are given.
DEADLINE: And that’s another thing I was gonna ask, cause it unfortunately just feels scary relevant.
FAZEKAS: Yeah, that’s what [The Boys series creator Eric] Kripke does so well, and what, The Boys, going all the way back to the graphic novels is at their best, it’s a social commentary.
DEADLINE: And another great addition to the show is Hamish Linklater as Dean Cipher, the new villain. Tell me about working him to bring about that antagonist to these students.
FAZEKAS: What I love so much about Hamish is he’s so unpredictable, and he brings this sort of delicious weirdness because he’ll have a line in the script, and then the way he says it is like, no one else on the planet would say it that way, but it’s amazing. And so, he keeps all of our characters on our toes, and I like that. From the moment you meet him, you can’t really pin him down. It’s like, I know you’re a bad guy, but I don’t really know why you’re a bad guy. And I don’t know what your plan is, and what are you doing and why are you sometimes making sense? I love him. I think he was so perfect.
DEALDINE: I’m curious, can you tell me a little bit about the long-term plan for the series now that The Boys is coming up on the end?
FAZEKAS: That is an excellent question that I don’t know that anybody can answer right now.
The post ‘Gen V’ Showrunner Had 5 Episodes Of Season 2 Written For Chance Perdomo Before His Death: “A Weird Thing To Grieve A Fictitious Character” appeared first on Deadline.
