Warning: Spoilers for Gen V’s season finale are below.
In Gen V, like in the bigger Boys universe, heroes are often villains, villains are usually monsters, and nothing is ever really as it seems. So, if fans were expecting the show to wrap up its first season with a climactic battle on the campus grounds of Godolkin University that ended with Marie and her supe crew scoring a hard-fought win for the good guys well then, what f*cking show have you been watching?
Cate and Sam are on a warpath, unleashing the troubled kids of The Woods to wreak havoc on the human faculty and staff at God U, and they’re not afraid to rack up student casualties in the process. Stopping them means getting down and bloody, and facing off against the most powerful member of The Seven who, unsurprisingly, is getting a hard-on from all this murderous mayhem.
Here’s our ranking of the most WTF moments in Gen V’s season finale, “The Guardians of Godolkin.”
The End of Hot Jeff Summer
Vought’s undercover social media guru almost escaped the carnage that Cate and her band of crazies unleashed on the human population at God U. He was one more dial of his radio-wave frequency box away from living his best, Hot Jeff Summer life. Unfortunately for him, Cate has a flair for the dramatic and what’s more shocking than watching a live stream of a guy who’s been mind-controlled into thinking it’s the fourth of July and his head is a firecracker?
Cate Gets Handsy
In yet another example that Dean Shetty was right to be drugging her protege all these years because the girl is too powerful and damaged for her own good, Cate pushes one of the guards of The Woods to literally eat his own hands once all of the prisoners have been freed. The munching of flesh and crunching of tiny finger bones will be haunting our dreams for a while now.
Sam’s Turn To The Dark Side
Sam, like Cate, has been abused enough that the line between right and wrong hasn’t just blurred — it’s completely disappeared. Faced with the opportunity to punish the people who hurt him (and ensure humans think twice before trying that again) he makes the devastating decision to turn on Emma and embrace the unfeeling void promised by the tips of Cate’s fingertips. He doesn’t get the chance to kill that many people considering Andre is there to stop him, but his choice to betray a person who’s only ever tried to help him in order to sate his own need for vengeance feels like the final nail in the coffin of the Sam/Emma ship. We hate to see it.
Emma’s Shrinkage
Speaking of bad break-ups, after Emma fails to convince Sam to be the good guy in this impossibly f*cked-up situation, he throws some of her biggest insecurities back in her face — which, rude. Somehow, without purging herself, Emma’s shrinking ability kicks in, which begs the question: Could this girl get small just by being sad? That’s all it took? Hormonal teenage girls are sad on the daily, she could’ve been Honey I Shrunk The Kids-ing herself without gagging herself in a public restroom this whole time?
Marie’s Glow Blow Up
Marie also discovers some interesting new uses for her blood-wielding abilities during the university uprising. She manages to turn Maverick visible and stop a girl’s heart. She even finds a way to collect the blood of the many dead bodies around her and transform them into throwing knives — which is as disgusting and cool as it sounds. But her best trick? Accidentally blowing up Cate’s hand when mindflayer Barbie tried to use her powers on her genderfluid hook-up buddy Jordan. That’s romance, people!
Homelander’s Visit
If there’s a supe-caused sh*tshow happening, you can bet Homelander is going to be there at some point. Superman’s evil alter-ego shows up just as Marie seems to have quelled Cate’s rebellion, but instead of congratulating her, he accuses her of turning on her own kind and lasers her unconscious. We forgot how much of a hypocritical a**hole this guy was.
The Real Guardians of Godolkin
If beaming down Marie didn’t already hint that Gen V’s finale wouldn’t get the happy ending it was heading for, then watching as she woke up in a sterile hospital room with no windows or doors and only Emma, Andre, and Jordan for company should’ve clued us in. Not only is Homelander spinning the disaster to make it look like the four of them were solely responsible for the destruction on God U’s campus, but he’s also painting Sam and Cate as the heroes who stopped the massacre. So, we guess that answers the question of which Gen V characters we’ll be seeing in season four of The Boys, right?
