Gen V Season 2 Review: The Boys Spin-Off Is Still Having an Identity Crisis in Its Sophomore Year

It feels repetitive to say that a show like The Boys has outstayed its welcome, but showrunner Eric Kripke has been beating a dead horse himself for a few years now. With its fourth season, Prime Video's raunchy, explosive superhero satire had clearly run out of steam, if only because it was so unwilling to evolve beyond its central threat: Homelander (Antony Starr). Thankfully, The Boys seems to be taking its story into its final stage. It's full speed ahead to the show's bloody conclusion, and even its college-set spin-off, Gen V, has a part to play.

Gen V's sophomore year already has a lot to answer for. As with Season 1, it's beholden to the events of The Boys, which ended with the splintering of the titular team (thanks to the exploits of Karl Urban's Billy Butcher), the needless death of Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit, gone way too soon), and the next stage of Homelander's bid for world domination. It also has to answer for a real-life tragedy: the passing of one of its actors, Chance Perdomo. It's the kind of situation you wouldn't wish on any series, yet Gen V manages to make the best of it, turning an impossible loss into a source of emotional momentum. 

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A lot of Gen V's newfound success has to do with the addition of Hamish Linklater, who joins the fray as Cipher, an enigmatic supe and the new dean of students at Godolkin University. Another boon comes with its willingness to finally, blessedly, chart a path of its own — but with the final season of The Boys looming large, there's only so much Gen V can do before it's forced to fall back in line with Kripke's master plan. 

Kripke takes a step back as executive producer on Gen V, leaving showrunner Michele Fazekas to take the reins while reacting to recent events in The Boys. The perpetual struggle between Homelander and other supes, like Annie January (Erin Moriarty), informs the bulk of the unrest unfolding at God U. There's also the little matter of the virus that nearly wiped out every supe on Earth, courtesy of the school's last dean of students (Shelley Conn). Just outside the university, Homelander stans wage open war against the social justice warriors known as "Starlighters," while Cipher — no doubt following Homelander's marching orders — endeavors to "Make God U Super Again" (groan) by relaunching the school with an all-supe faculty and cracking down on human staff members.

This is the foundation on which Gen V builds its next season, and for the most part, it's a strong one. But the series falls prey to its worst habits in other ways, especially where the past season's biggest thread is concerned. Following the mini civil war at the end of Season 1, Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair); her bigender frenemy-turned-lover, Jordan Li (Derek Luh and London Thor); the size-shifting Emma (Lizze Broadway); and the metal-bending Andre (Perdomo) were banished to Elmira, an Arkham-like rehab center for supes. Season 2 was poised to tell its story from within its grimy walls, a choice that might have been an improvement — or, at least, a new frontier — for a franchise so obsessed with repetition. Sure, the school concept of Season 1 was fun, but only when Gen V eschewed the icky sexual humor and over-the-top violence of the Boys-verse and reached for something deeper. The idea of a season set in Elmira, even partially, might have brought the show (hell, the whole franchise, even) to depths previously unknown.

6.0

Gen V Season 2

at Amazon

Like

• More teen angst!
• More emotionally mature than Season 1
• Feels more like the super-school show we deserve

Dislike

• Still can't escape the shadow of The Boys
• Its "timely" satire is more eye-roll inducing than before

Alas, Gen V Season 2 still doesn't have the power to break that repetitive cycle. It has to build toward the endgame teased in The Boys Season 4, and it'll oscillate through any and every storyline at its disposal so long as it serves that ultimate purpose: fueling the resistance.

When we catch up with our heroes, months of "rehabilitation" in Elmira have passed, shaking up the status quo in ways that could have informed a season in itself. Somewhere between seasons, Marie escaped imprisonment, and Andre died trying to do the same. The rest of the gang are eventually sprung by Cate (Maddie Phillips), the telepathic star student who betrayed her friends to pledge her allegiance to Homelander. Her fiery reunion with Emma and Jordan brings us up to speed with overwrought exposition, their own off-screen relationship with Perdomo carrying the weight of Andre's unseen demise.

The loss of Andre becomes Gen V's emotional crux, another choice that, however necessary, works better in theory. Of course, there are positives: Andre's father, Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas), becomes the de facto new member of the crew when he joins God U's faculty in search of answers. The other "Guardians of Godolkin" also get their individual chances to mourn, to honor Andre's memory by fighting the powers that be, which gives Gen V the chance to explore abject sincerity in ways its previous season didn't. The show's attempts to elevate Andre into a supe-martyr, the face of the new revolution, don't always feel earned, but this is overall a season about growing pains, and it's all the better for it. 

The relationships between the characters who remain — like Marie and Jordan, navigating the complexities and power imbalances in their relationship, or Emma and her unstable ex, Sam (Asa Germann) — give the season much more intimate stakes. We care about these characters because of what they mean to each other; watching them navigate new love and their own self worth elevates them beyond the angsty archetypes we met in Season 1. Gen V does still struggle elsewhere, especially in trying to develop these crazy kids into the supes they dream of becoming, but that's where Linklater's Cipher swoops in to save the day. The appropriately enigmatic new dean is always 12 steps ahead of his students, Marie especially. She returns to God U only to investigate a conspiracy known as Project Odessa, which connects somehow to the university's founder, Thomas Godolkin (Wicked's Ethan Slater in flashbacks). With her relationship with Jordan on the rocks and her estranged sister, Annabeth (Maria Nash), still MIA, Marie really has nothing to lose. It gives her character an edge she was sorely lacking in Season 1, and when she's opposite Cipher — one of the few people who acknowledge and appreciate her blood-bending powers — Gen V finally feels like the show it was meant to be.

Cipher takes a very special interest in Marie, insisting on training her one on one to further hone her skills. Their rapport brings Gen V in line with its biggest inspirations, from X-Men to "chosen one" narratives like Harry Potter. Cipher feels like Professor X and Professor Snape dueling in one body, while Marie admittedly makes a more fitting, if twisted, messiah-type as she unlocks new applications for her powers. As Victoria Neuman told her last season, she could easily grow to become the most formidable supe on Earth, stronger than even Homelander. That's part of the reason Cipher is so keen to train her, and to strengthen all of Godolkin's most powerful supes. His plans for the students with superfluous powers — like, say, a girl who can control the length of her pubic hair, or a guy who can turn his toes into opposable thumbs — are slightly less altruistic, taking Gen V into blessedly undiscovered territory. 

With Cipher, Gen V comes closest to escaping from under the shadow of The Boys. He's a formidable, unpredictable, and vastly more entertaining antagonist than anyone the franchise has given us in years; in a perfect world, he'd be enough to sustain Gen V for seasons to come. The problem is, the series is never allowed to think big enough. It's constantly deferring to its parent series, from this season's revolving door of cameos — everyone from the Deep (Chace Crawford) to Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) and Firecracker (Valerie Curry) has a part to play — to The Boys' Season 4 cliffhanger. As a result, nothing really seems to matter. That was a problem even in Gen V's first season, and here, it makes for an even more scattershot story. 

For all its promise, Gen V is still battling a major crisis of identity. Between the battle between the Hometeamers and Starlighters, God U's dark, Nazi-esque history, or the coming of age of its main cast, the show has no idea what it wants to focus on. Its attempts to juggle these threads result once again in a glib rendering of our own fractured nation. It's hard not to roll your eyes as Emma gets a lecture on social media from a supe called "Modesty Monarch," a clear parody on "tradwife" influencers like Nara Smith — or when Black characters are used as cannon fodder in slapdash parallels to police brutality, only to be swept under the rug to make way for utterly gratuitous sexual humor. (The addition of a new character who can stuff objects — even people — up his butt becomes way too instrumental to the larger plot.) There's admittedly a whole lot more to like in this season, but with the trappings of the Boys-verse looming large over this spin-off, those pleasures are fleeting, even expendable. 

Premieres: Wednesday, Sept. 17 on Prime Video
Who's in it: Jaz Sinclair, Lizze Broadway, Maddie Phillips, London Thor, Derek Luh, Asa Germann, Hamish Linklater, Sean Patrick Thomas, Ethan Slater
Who's behind it: Michele Fazekas, Evan Goldberg, Eric Kripke, Craig Rosenberg
For fans of: X-Men, Harry Potter, Gen V Season 1
How many episodes we watched: 8 of 8