The Big Picture
- Gen V is subverting expectations by replicating the gore, violence, and weird sex of The Boys while introducing new twists and mysteries.
- The series understands that it is a coming-of-age story and explores the complicated transitions of teenagers and young adults discovering their superpowers.
- While being its own thing, Gen V still maintains the overall tone and explores similar subjects as The Boys, making it a successful spin-off in the same universe.
We’re only three episodes in, but it’s already clear that Gen V is here to cause just as big of an impact as its mother series, The Boys. We’ve had two main characters die, many shocking twists, subverted expectations, and other mysteries introduced so far, and just as much gore, violence, and weird sex as one would expect, keeping the overall tone of the franchise and promising a great spin-off season. If it stays like this, it’s safe to say that Gen V is on its way to becoming the blueprint of how to do a proper spin-off series in the streaming era.
One of the great challenges of Gen V was exactly replicating all of this in the context of a university, with young Supes learning the ropes of the superhero lifestyle while still figuring out who they are in this eccentric world. Given the younger age of the main characters, some expected the spin-off series to be a watered-down version of The Boys — it’s clear by now that it’s anything but, as it takes everything that works about the main series and combines it with the best things about the coming-of-age setting. So how is Gen V doing it?
Prime Video Knows What We Expect From ‘Gen V’ and Subverts These Expectations
Being the avid television viewers we are, one of the best things that can happen is watching a series that is just as aware of us as we are of them. That’s the case with Gen V, a show that knows exactly what people have come to expect from The Boys and uses it to its favor by subverting some of the tropes of the main series while keeping it loyal to the source material by replicating what we like to see there. Gore and violence? It’s present. Perverted sex acts that no one in their right mind would think of but Supes? They have it, too.
But what about egocentric and narcissistic heroes like Homelander (Antony Starr)? It appears to have them, too, right? Then we see Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger), who we thought was the embodiment of these ideas in a more juvenile version, perishing in a self-inflicted explosion right at the end of the series premiere due to reasons that would make Homelander disinherit him. This is the moment in which it becomes clear what Gen V is about and that, although they do share some of the same premises and subjects, it’s not The Boys — but more on that later.
It does lead us to think that they are the same, though. The introduction video to Godolkin University, for example, is supposed to make us buy into the whole Golden Boy and GodU hype as if the university was a version of Vought Tower, with the same kind of mischief going on. We know the franchise, so everyone can imagine what it will be about, but the very visual language of Gen V is more sensible in the way it tells its story than The Boys. It has to, because we’re not dealing with fully-fledged superheroes yet, but with younger people who are on their way to becoming them…
‘Gen V’ Understands It’s a Coming-of-Age Story Just As Much as a Parody on the Superhero Genre
The Boys is the huge success everyone loves because it came out at the right time making fun of the superhero genre that was already insanely popular thanks to Marvel, and it remains relevant by taking some of the issues in our own worlds and applying them to the superhero context. What we see on Marvel is a romanticized version, while the truth is that having special abilities would probably make a person feel superior to the rest. That’s what The Boys is about, and the twist that Gen V brings to this idea is looking at it through the eyes of teenagers and young adults, who go through changes that are every bit as complicated as discovering superpowers.
The series starts with a perfect metaphor for this, by the way, as young Marie (Jaeda LeBlanc) gets her first period together with the discovery of her powers. This idea isn’t anything new, the X-Men comics already explored it as a metaphor for coming of age and for people understanding their own selves. What’s interesting about it is the fact that it explores how difficult the transition into adulthood is for everybody. Teenagers feel everything differently and more intensely, they still look at the world in a childlike manner and get confused — and often sad — with how it works because they still have a more idealized view.
So the coming-of-age element is the fundamental difference between Gen V and The Boys, and it’s this teenage idealism that allows for the spin-off to have such compelling characters like Marie herself, Jordan (London Thor/Derek Luh) and Emma (Lizze Broadway). The latter, actually, is the best character in the series so far as she feels the pressure of the world around her on her shoulders in a special way because her powers depend on purging and its consequential bulimia, learned and encouraged from her abusive mother. This is the formula for creating a monster, but the scope of the series allows us to see it happening firsthand, as well as understand how damaging it truly is.
‘Gen V’ Uses ‘The Boys’ Cameos to World-Build, Not for Shock Value
The great thing about Gen V is that it manages to be its own thing, yes, but there are certain standards that have to be maintained for a series set in the same universe as The Boys. This is the formula for a spin-off: it should have a similar overall tone and explore similar subjects as the main series, while still adding something unique and outside the scope of the main series. Not every spin-off that understands this, unfortunately, but Gen V is on track to becoming the gold standard for this formula.
The first thing of note is how few cameos by the cast of the main series there are. We briefly see A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) in a video, the Deep (Chace Crawford) makes a short appearance, Ashley (Colby Minifie) yells on the telephone while talking to Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn), and even former Vought executive Madelyn Stillwell (Elisabeth Shue) makes an appearance, but all these last only seconds. These serve to establish that there are some interchangeable stakes between the two series, but that they are not the same. It’s more a grounding mechanism than anything else. What really serves to set the same tone is the tropes and subjects the franchise likes to explore. There are many creative deaths and weird sex acts, and it would feel strange if there weren’t — both feature Emma, which further consolidates her as the best character in the series.
Speaking of Emma, she’s the person who introduces us to another typical element of The Boys that Gen V heavily explores — social media. From the very beginning, the series makes it clear that social media has a bigger impact here than it does in The Boys, because, again, the characters feel it more deeply due to their lack of experience. The very name of the show, Gen V, is a play on “Gen Z,” the first generation to come of age in a mostly digital world, and the one to beat itself up the most for previous generations mistakes, too. All the teen characters of the series are victims of this, being injected with Compound V as infants because their parents hopes to capitalize on them, and it leaves marks on inexperienced minds — like Emma, again.
Although all these tropes and elements are already featured and debated in The Boys, but it’s thanks to Gen Z‘s coming-of-age element that we can look at them through different lenses without becoming tired of the parody and satirical tone of the franchise.
