Jeff Bezos has made no secret of wanting his own Game Of Thrones among Amazon Originals. Between Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power and Wheel Of Time, he’s captured a good chunk of the fantasy-loving audience, but if we’re talking about comparative juggernauts, The Boys is the slam-dunk of the streaming service. The 2019 arrival of the superhero-skewering franchise felt as timely as it did when Garth Ennis penned the source material in the aughts. Since then, the MCU and DCU have fatigued their own audiences, but The Boys feels even stronger for lighting those worlds on fire from the show’s inception.
In fact, The Boys has been such a subscription driver for Amazon that they swiftly greenlit spinoffs for the superhero-skewering franchise. The first of those, Diabolical, was an animated placeholder (including backstories) between seasons. The first live-action spinoff, however, is much more than a placeholder. The college-set series fits neatly into the current timeline of this franchise. That is, Gen V‘s events happen in between The Boys third season and the upcoming fourth round of Homelander’s homicidal escapades.
Also, let’s get this out of the way upfront: No franchise has successfully pulled off (or even attempted) as many penis-focused stunts as The Boys. Never forget what Mother’s Milk lived through in the “Herogasm” episode.
Thankfully, there are at least two significant dong-focused moments — which will cause a mixture of “oh my god,” “ew,” and “thank god this show exists” — within the first handful of Gen V episodes. These are stunts that somehow don’t come off like stunts, and this show manages to pull off what The Boys does, which is simultaneously going too far into depraved territory without it feeling like too much. That careful tightrope walking is down to the continued guidance of franchise creators Evan Goldberg, Eric Kripke, and Craig Rosenberg, along with Seth Rogen as a producer and Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters as executive producers and showrunners.
Let’s talk about the setup and what this season actually does. Because the bodily fluid quotient remains the same, but Gen V brings something new to the table. And it resembles what I have observed by being in close proximity to a few key Gen Z-ers. These younger Supes are somewhat jaded after watching older-generation Supes. Most importantly, they are aware of the f*cked-up world that grownups are handing them while being participants within the machine, too. These young adults landed at Supe-friendly Godolkin U shortly after Homelander received a resounding ovation for killing a civilian in broad daylight — inspired by the bragging from a certain real-life public figure — and it doesn’t take a stretch to imagine that it has affected some perceptions.
Additionally, the events of the Season 3 finale left some vacancies in The Seven. Those include Queen Maeve, who is hopefully enjoying her secret retirement on an upstate farm somewhere, and Starlight, who fully went rogue and is officially considered a dissident. So, there’s competition for spots among the younger characters, who also attend parties that go off the rails when someone’s showing off their powers, and it doesn’t go well. That’s entertaining, but this show is a crucial puzzle piece in the grander scheme of The Boys. What we see transpire at Godolkin makes it very easy to imagine the process of how Maeve became as world-weary as she did.
Gen V also never forgets that this franchise is satiric, so the spinoff maintains those undercurrents. One of those, obviously, is that Compound V has always been a substance that ultimately makes a ton of money due to the marketing of Supes. We have also seen, particularly from Starlight’s history, how some parents were all too willing to inject their kids with that garbage in exchange for cash and fame. And it’s no wonder. The super-speedy A-Train rakes in endorsement deals, and as such, Jessie T. Usher makes a handy cameo for this spinoff. The show hasn’t shied away from revealing who else makes appearances, so expect to see varying quantities of Jensen Ackles’ Soldier Boy, Colby Minifie’s Ashley Barrett, and Chace Crawford’s The Deep.
Speaking of The Deep, it’s fair to say that his “powers” (which include f*cking an octopus), so to speak, are the most standout (and draggable) among of The Seven. At the very least, his abilities are more individualized, whereas a lot of The Seven rely upon more “classic” super-abilities like laser eyes, super strength, and so on. Well, Gen V gives the core characters highly individualized powers. And that’s part of what keeps this series — even without the franchise’s most depraved anchor on the scene — intriguing.
In many cases, these younger characters’ “powers” are also the source of inner turmoil. That paradox is something that has already been captured in The Boys as far as the vigilantes, not the Supes, go. What gives Hughie and Butcher and Mother’s Milk their drive is the traumas that they’ve experienced at the hands of the Supes. Similarly, the Gen V Supes have experienced their own (relative) traumas in the past, and some of them have come to recognize their powers as a source of self-loathing and pain. The struggle with these abilities also being worthy of renown adds more layers. In other words, come for the impressive variety of penis jokes, and stay for the characters who might climb inside of your own soul.
Then there’s Golden Boy. He would probably be the closest thing to a Homelander in terms of PR potential, and it’s no coincidence that Patrick Schwarzenegger was on the shortlist for the role that made Antony Starr a gleefully horrifying household name. Also, Patrick has gone on record to reveal that his dad (who’s no stranger to gore and once pretended to kill an entire army without reloading) freaked out over seeing set photos and wondering what the hell his son was filming. It’s fun to imagine Arnold’s face while watching some of the more disgusting scenes go down.
For sure, the show wastes no time in diving into raunch and gore as the character feel their way around the U. We meet Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) whose powers involve blood-bending as both a weapon and a healing mechanism. Her roommate, Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway), is known as Little Cricket for her ability to dramatically shrink (the better to climb into orifices). A gender-bending Supe, Jordan Li, is portrayed by both London Thor and Derek Luh. Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo) is a party tricks kind of guy, but he eventually shows depth, too. Also, we get to not see a Translucent-like Supe, an extreme empath, and more explorations of the variants that are often part of The Boys background pieces.
Ultimately, Gen V will please The Boys fans as much as any spinoff possibly could without the physical presence of Homelander. And I understand why they’ve kept him away. His revolting charisma would distract the audience from getting to know a whole new roster of screwed-up Supes. Like the original, this spinoff is subversive and giddy and full of characters worth caring about as they cope with a deluge of bodily fluids that confirms that, yes, this is very much The Boys territory.
Amazon’s ‘Gen V’ premieres on September 29.
