"Gen V," Season 1: review

Top row, L to R: Lizzie Broadway (Emma), Asa Germann (Sam), Jaz Sinclair (Marie)

Bottom row, L to R: Derek Luh (Jordan, male), London Thor (Jordan, female), Chance Perdomo (Andre), Patrick Schwarzenegger (Luke), Maddie Phillips (Cate)

"Gen V" is a 2023 spinoff of the superhero satire "The Boys." The title of "Gen V" comes from the central concept of Compound V, the mutagenic serum that, when injected into children, gives them unique powers determined by their genetic tendencies. For the longest time, these "supes" (superpeople) were duped into believing they'd been born this way, like mutants in the X-Men world. The reality is that Compound V had been developed by the Vought Corporation (hence the "V"), this universe's version of Omni Consumer Products from the Robocop franchise, and given to various children whose parents were paid for the "privilege" of having their children "enhanced." While "The Boys" has been following an intrepid group of (mostly) humans doing what they can to take down all supes, "Gen V" centers on the young-adult supes themselves as they go to college at "God U," i.e., Godolkin University, a campus supposedly created to nurture and educate supes. 

The main point-of-view character is Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), who accidentally killed her parents on the day she had her first period and discovered she had the ability to telekinetically manipulate blood. When I saw this ability, the term hemokinesis popped into my head, and I see that that's what Wikipedia's entry on "Gen V" is also calling the ability. More informally, the ability is called bloodbending, per the designations used in the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise: airbending, firebending, earthbending, waterbending, i.e., the ability to telekinetically manipulate these elemental forces. Unable to control her power at first, Marie accidentally kills her parents and is placed in foster care for supe children, where she learns to master her abilities. To access her own blood, Marie keeps a knife handy and slits her palms open. (Why she needs to cut herself is never explained: it becomes obvious that Marie can manipulate blood even while it's still inside a body, and with Marie's ability to heal quickly, she could just force the blood through her skin in a souped-up version of transdermal exsanguination.) She can then form her blood into a variety of temporarily solid shapes—ropes, daggers, mini flechettes, etc.—as a way to fight. Her mastery of the human circulatory system also means she can help people in distress by, for example, slowing someone's heart rate, stopping other people's bleeding, and so on.

Marie starts off as a high schooler in foster care, and she gets the invitation to attend God U. There, in the über-hormonal campus environment, she encounters her worldly roommate Emma "Little Cricket" Meyer (Lizzie Broadway), a supe with the ability to shrink via anorexic purging and enlarge via anorexic bingeing. Marie learns that the big man on campus is Luke Riordan (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who is gifted with pyrokineticism (firebending), flight, and super strength. Luke is being groomed to be the next Homelander (Anthony Starr). His best buddy is Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo), gifted with Magneto-like telekinesis; and his best girl is Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips, weirdly cute), a telepath with the ability to manipulate people if she touches them, meaning she wears gloves most of the time. Giving Marie the side-eye is TA Jordan (London Thor, Derek Luh), who can change sexes at will and has different powers depending on sex: as a male, he's strong and invulnerable, but as a female, she can deliver qi-like energy bursts. Jordan is the TA for Professor Richard "Brink" Brinkerhoff (Clancy Brown, who's also had roles in Marvel and Invincible efforts—the man is everywhere these days), an expert on supes who is personally overseeing the cultivation of Luke, known by the superhero moniker of Golden Boy. The dean of God U. is Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn... I guess the surname is a bastardization of Khan, like the Korean surname Q instead of Gyu), a behavioral psychologist with her own agenda, which isn't fully made known until the end of the season.

It's no spoiler to reveal that Luke, the superest of supes on campus and a genuinely nice guy, proves to be battling some raging demons that cause him to kill his mentor Brink and then commit suicide by flying into the air and exploding himself. Luke had been seeing visions of his brother Sam (Asa Germann), who had supposedly committed suicide, but it turns out that Sam is alive, schizophrenic, and being held underground, beneath the campus in a facility called The Woods, where scientists supposedly in coordination with Vought are developing a virus that kills supes. So as the college kids get to know one another, they realize they have to solve the mystery of Luke's suicide and Sam's existence. They also have to contend with the fact that someone keeps erasing chunks of their memories; one likely suspect is Rufus (Alexander Calvert), a creepy, telepathic asshole. Along with the questions about Sam and the memory-wiper is the mystery of Dean Shetty's real agenda, and there's the usual angsty, young-adult nonsense as the kids deal with their feelings for each other.

"Gen V" turned out to be a lot more entertaining than I'd expected it to be. I'd ignored it as a mere unnecessary spinoff for the longest time, but now that I've watched it, I see that it directly sets up the main event, i.e., "The Boys," Season 4, which will deal at least in part with the supe-killing virus, something that may turn out to be a weapon used by Vought to control the less pliable supes. "Gen V" has it easy insofar as the main series, "The Boys," has laid out most of the world-building, but "Gen V" expands and deepens some aspects of this world by showing, up close and personal, how supes—who are essentially corporate products—can become obsessed with their own social-media rankings and other markers of popularity. It's never enough just to be gifted and heroic: you have to be making money and staying both popular and relevant. The obsession with the superficiality of modern, plugged-in life is one thing the main series and this spinoff both explore very well.

There's also all the usual leftist crap about gender, race, and other demographics; I rolled my eyes at most of it. However, these issues were both treated with cynicism and smoothly woven into what turned out to be a compelling, and sometimes even surprising, story arc that gives us a few twists before the season ends. So hats off to Eric Kripke, one of the show's main developers, and points awarded for good writing and characterization.

I forgot to mention how funny "Gen V" could be. While at least one sex scene was fairly tender, romantic, and even cute, the show has two stupendously hilarious dick jokes in it, one involving a guy with a fetish who wants Emma to have sex with him while she's in a shrunken state, and another involving Marie's hemokinetic powers when she's assaulted by the ever-horny Rufus and employs her universe's version of an Engorgio spell gone very, very wrong. The humor in "Gen V" is mostly sexual in nature, but Emma occasionally steals scenes with her dry one-liners, often tossed out at awkward moments. The jokes in "Gen V" are generally raunchy, the special effects remain splattery, and there's often a sense that things have been taken too far, which is par for the course with anything Eric Kripke does.

Meanwhile, the actors all do a great job of making us care for their characters, and if I have any complaint, it's that the script overuses the word "fuck," almost to the point of making the utterance meaningless. Aside from that, "Gen V" is a welcome addition to the world of "The Boys," and the season ends on a note that leaves me wanting to see more. Streaming TV seems to have hit on the eight-episode formula as a sure thing; I wish the seasons came out more often, but special-effects-heavy shows take a long time to make, so we have little choice but to wait a long time between seasons. If you have a high tolerance for sex, gore, raunch, and blisteringly bad language, "Gen V" could be for you.