Gen V was a spin-off that knew what worked about its big brother, The Boys, while simultaneously exploiting a new milieu—college!—to uniquely explore its fictional universe.
Unfortunately, Craig Rosenberg, Evan Goldberg, and Eric Kripke’s series suffers a not-inconsiderable sophomore slump with its return engagement, premiering Sept. 17 on Prime Video, concocting a story that, aside from a solid sinister turn by Hamish Linklater, fails to build upon the elements that worked the first time around. Try as it might to elevate its tale’s importance to the level of The Boys, it comes across as a repetitive and charisma-challenged teen-supes saga that’s yet to fully mature.
Of all the obstacles faced by Gen V, none is bigger than the real-world death of actor Chance Perdomo ahead of Season 2’s production—a tragedy that forces it to rework its narrative to address the demise of his Andre Anderson. To do this, it reveals that Andre died during captivity in Elmira, the prison where the series’ heroes are presently confined, although throughout these eight episodes, there’s a running, nagging disconnect between the profound impact his passing has on his friends, and the lack of dramatic effect this unseen incident has on viewers.
Promoted to gallant martyr status, Andre looms large over these proceedings, albeit clunkily, and if that’s an inevitable outgrowth of unfortunate non-fiction circumstances, it results in a wobbliness that the show never quite rectifies.
Nonetheless, it soldiers onward, with size-altering Emma (Lizze Broadway) and gender-shifter Jordan (London Thor and Derek Luh) released from Elmira and returned to God U, where they’re unhappily reunited with their traitorous former pal Cate (Maddie Phillips), a telepath, and Sam (Asa Germann), an unhinged supe with puppet-centric hallucinations.
In familiar Harry Potter fashion, God U has a new dean, Cipher (Linklater), whose cheery confidence reeks of malevolence, and who forces Jordan and Emma to put a propagandistic spin on their prior troublemaking. Moreover, he preaches that anti-Vought rebels who’ve aligned themselves with Starlight (Erin Moriarty) are “race traitors” and that supes should embrace their destiny as Earth’s chosen people.
Basically, he’s a Nazi in academic garb, and Linklater brings an entertainingly composed haughtiness to the scoundrel, whose origins are as mysterious as his abilities.
As for blood-wielding protagonist Marie (Jaz Sinclair), she’s broken out of Elmira (which happens off-screen, strangely) and is now attempting to evade capture while searching for her sister Annabeth (Maria Nash), who rejected her years ago following Marie’s accidental murder of their parents.
On the run, she tussles with a group of right-wing “Hometeamers” (i.e., disciples of Homelander) and is visited by Starlight, who warns her that God U was founded to facilitate a top-secret project that was run by university founder Thomas Godolkin (Ethan Slater) and which Marie must now stop. This means she has to return to school, which is what Cipher wants, pressuring Cate to hunt her down—a confrontation that ends with one individual suffering a debilitating injury.
Gen V’s plot revolves around the nature of Godolkin’s clandestine project and its relationship to Marie, but its revelations are thoroughly pedestrian, just as the journey which precedes them is sluggish.
The series’ original, clever hook was its portrait of kids wrestling with superpowers that are connected to/manifestations of familiar adolescent hang-ups (cutting, bulimia, depression, identity confusion, etc.). Rather than amplifying those ideas, however, Rosenberg, Goldberg, and Kripke merely rehash what they already did, such that Emma is still figuring out how to shrink herself without puking and Marie is struggling to weaponize her blood without slicing herself open.
Thematically speaking, it all feels static, and the conspiracy that unfolds provides no opportunities for these teens to understand themselves in interesting or surprising ways.
The Boys franchise has always prided itself on outrageousness, and yet in that regard as well, Gen V takes a lackluster approach to R-rated comedy; aside from a frat guy who can stuff a lot of physical and liquid matter up his rear end, and Emma allowing herself to be the ball in a game of beer pong, the material is tame.
Worse is that its characters barely evolve, and at least a couple of them—most notably Thor and Luh’s Jordan—are far more grating than endearing. The show’s young-adult do-gooders are clearly imagined as the progressive-rebel flipside to the reactionary Homelander and his ilk, but Rosenberg, Goldberg, and Kripke come up with nothing much to say about 21st-century socio-political dynamics, instead choosing to focus on typical comic-book stuff like “chosen one” ideologies, mad-scientist experiments, and revolutionary us-vs-them conflicts.
Linklater’s Cipher is a baddie whose arrogance is so titanic that he can afford to be bemused by his adversaries’ (and pawns’) futile machinations, and he helps give Gen V a much-needed shot in the arm. The rest of the cast, alas, lacks magnetism, undermining engagement with this saga and, specifically, the notion that Marie is as vital to this universe as Antony Starr’s Homelander or Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher.
Instead of operating on its own addendum terms, the series strives to make itself the equal of The Boys. In doing so, it highlights the contrast between that hit’s wealth of fascinating cartoon caricatures and this offering’s pedestrian heroes and villains.
Gen V features appearances from a few The Boys players, who pop up to provide some key detail or assistance before promptly vanishing, thereby calling attention to the fact that these shenanigans exist in a world of bigger-picture events. Whereas the show’s maiden season expanded the franchise, this follow-up contracts its, regardless of its talk about how Cipher’s machinations may forever alter Earth’s balance of power.
Marie is too dull and functional to shoulder the burden asked of her, and her compatriots never develop relationships or rapports that lead to wild humor or poignant melodrama. That so much of the action takes place outside the classroom—and, when it does stay on campus, it’s mostly confined to a single athletic space—only exacerbates the impression that it’s lost sight of its reason for existing.
In the end, Rosenberg, Goldberg, and Kripke manage to pave the way for Marie and company to partake in The Boys’ upcoming fifth (and final) season. Considering the lethargy of their latest outing, one hopes it’s a minor role at best.
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