Gen V’s Season 1 Finale Fantastically Utilizes The Boys Bona Fides to Deliver One Hell of a Cliffhanger

By Trent Moore  |  November 3, 2023 | 11:15am
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Gen V’s Season 1 Finale Fantastically Utilizes The Boys Bona Fides to Deliver One Hell of a Cliffhanger
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It took three seasons for Prime Video to finally drop a live action spinoff series to its hit superhero send-up The Boys, but the potential to expand into other corners of this universe was clear from the opening moment when A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) sped straight through Hughie’s (Jack Quaid) girlfriend, leaving nothing but a disembodied hand and sea of flying goop in his wake.

This is a universe where superheroes are real, and where a lot of them are also assholes—and that’s a world that has plenty of stories to tell outside the confines of Billy Butcher’s (Karl Urban) ragtag quest for vengeance (the wild animated anthology Diabolical was just a warm up for the craziness to come).

Enter Gen V, the first live action spinoff, set within the halls of Godolkin University (aka God U), the supes college where future members of The Seven learn their skills. Fresh off its season finale (and the announcement that a second season is on the way), the series pulled back the curtain on a new piece of this world we hadn’t seen, and did it in the bloodiest and craziest ways possible. Which, yeah, is certainly on brand.

Our entry point to the college-aged world of The Boys is young hero-in-training Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), who is shocked to earn a scholarship to God U, where she hopes to learn how to use her blood-controlling abilities for good. She’s joined by young heroes Andre (Chance Perdomo), Emma (Lizzie Broadway), Cate (Maddie Phillips), and Jordan Li (a gender-shifting supe played by both London Thor and Derek Luh). 

The brain-breaking murder rampage and suicide of Golden Boy Luke (Patrick Schwarzenegger)—Vought’s next Homelander-level mainstream hero-in-training—is the catalyst for all the action, leading to a twisty conspiracy about a secret lab and supe prison hidden at the school, and a brainwashing plot that slowly weaves in players we already know and love from the flagship series The Boys.

But the final batch of episodes and season finale is where it all comes together, and it becomes clear just how important this show is to the Boys-verse at large, and just how much it could alter the landscape of The Boys as it heads into its fourth season. Taken as a whole, the eight-episode first season of Gen V perfectly threads the needle in introducing a new cast of characters and making us care about their story and struggles, all before it comes into focus just how much this might feed into The Boys’ next mission.

At times, Gen V is as good—or better—than The Boys. That’s really all you can ask for from a spinoff. This young cast is incredibly compelling, and makes for a diverse young group of heroes to use as a lens to explore just how messed up the “hero” business is for everyone—even the supes who are seemingly in Vought’s good graces.

The final run of episodes is where the ties become clear, as we learn more about the supe-killing virus they’ve been developing at the secret lab dubbed “The Woods,” and since Butcher has spent the first three seasons of The Boys trying to find a way to take down Homelander (Antony Starr), it’s easy to see how that could prove incredibly useful. Though The Boys obviously focuses on the major heroes in this universe, Gen V does not, which makes it even more of a jaw-dropping moment in the finale when Homelander himself finally lands in the middle of a supe melee at God U to try and restore some order. It only lasts for a moment, and ends with Homelander almost killing Marie with an energy blast, but it’s still one of the best “Oh shit!” moments in the series, executed perfectly toward the episode’s end.

Episode 8 ends with Marie, Andre, Emma, and Jordan seemingly locked in a mystery room with no door. Are they in “The Woods,” or somewhere else? Or are they even in a room at all (we’ve seen plenty of brainwashing and confusion at this point)? We don’t know.

Wherever they are, they’re now public enemies, as we see Homelander smugly watching Vought News as they have twisted the events into propaganda, blaming the murder spree brought on by Cate and the escaped prisoners from The Woods solely on Marie and the rest. Per the official Vought story, Cate and Luke’s brother Sam (Asa Germann) are the new young heroes on the rise—despite actually being the ones doing the massacring.

But the real twist comes a few seconds after the credits roll, as we cut to what appears to be the abandoned “The Woods” facility, being explored by a shadowy figure. Yep, that’s Butcher, the star of The Boys, roaming the halls looking for clues. Again, it’s a crossover at the perfect time. Gen V didn’t need Butcher until this moment, but with the main stars locked in a doorless room with no escape, they’re going to need somebody on Vought’s bad side to lend a hand. That sounds like the perfect job for The Boys.

If anything, Gen V is the rare spinoff that can stand on its own as one hell of a great show that makes sense with no larger context, but hits on so many more levels when you know the lore. It’s also clear by the end that this feels like required viewing for any The Boys fan, almost serving as a Season 3.5 of the flagship series, setting up threads that seem vital for when the main series returns.

Sadly, no word yet on when the fourth season of The Boys will premiere, though filming reportedly wrapped before the start of the actors’ strike. So, late 2023 or early 2024 seemingly remains a possibility. 

But whenever The Boys does return, here’s hoping it brings some of the Guardians of Godolkin along with them.

Trent Moore is a recovering print journalist, and freelance editor and writer with bylines at lots of places. He likes to find the sweet spot where pop culture crosses over with everything else. Follow him at @trentlmoore on Twitter.

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