Gen V season 1 finale: Say hello to the new “Guardians Of Godolkin”
As the spinoff closes its first chapter, its politics—and even the lines that distinguish who’s battling who—get even murkier
TV Reviews Gen V
Recapping last week’s episode of Gen V, I posited that The Boys spinoff seemed all too content to be a college-set complement to that bloody violent superhero satire. Which is fine, of course. But it handicaps a lot of what it can do as a standalone series, and while this season-finale episode finally zeroed in on what would make this youthful supes show unique (it really does have a solid cast of characters, no matter how formulaic and schematic they may seem in the aggregate), its final moments folded it into The Boys with such deus-ex-machina machinations (you-know-who all but comes down from the heavens to restore order!) that I was left, yet again, wanting more from this promising premise.
But before we get to that (and the many, many spoilers ahead), let us rewind back to the beginning. Godolkin University, as Dean Shetty so helpfully explained it last time, was never a school for supes to learn. It was a school where Vought would learn about its supes. Considering every superpowered being is a walking weapon (and a legal liability, as Homelander and his ilk constantly remind Vought and the American public), it makes sense some guardrails were set in place to learn more about what Compound V does to folks and to find, to use the euphemism the show keeps using, how best to compassionately control them.
That’s all out the window now, though. Or it seems that way once Cate (in her “I am hero” era) killed Shetty and announced herself as Gen V’s signature Magneto, believing that the only way forward is to kneecap the school’s human population and release the many students locked away in the Woods. Good thing you can do both at the same time: She and Sam (rightfully righteous about what he’s gone through) team up to break into the Woods, let everyone out, and compel them to kill any non-supe around to show the superiority they should all be embracing. It’s all a recipe for disaster, obviously but a little chaos is what a good season finale can always use. It’s also a chance for the show to flex its action sequences (last week we had an ambulance, this week we get a helicopter—and we even get a rather clunky fight between Marie and Maverick, a.k.a. Transluent’s son) even as it again ends up relying on two of the franchise’s most tired out tropes: folks punching people in the face and skull crushing them (Sam’s specialty) and people getting their heads blown up. (How many heads do you think The Boys/Gen V have exploded over time?)
In a way the show has driven its characters to their limits as they set out to live by the heroic rubrics they most value: Cate thinks she’s a hero because she’s finally unshackled from Shetty’s thumb and giving voice to those she’d help keep in bondage, while Marie wishes to be a hero simply by doing not only what’s good but what’s right (a distinction the blonde empath has no interest in discerning). Crueler still is finding the show needing to pit Sam versus Emma. (How convenient he arrives at the theater when she’s there, no?)
Asa Germann and Lizze Broadway, arguably two of the strongest cast members in the show’s ensemble, capably handle such needless flip flopping between the two young lovers. But that doesn’t make their arguing any less clunky (plot-wise), even if it does lead to one of the most astute lines in the episode: “You would do everything for everyone to like you,” Sam tells Emma. “You’re not a hero.” It’s enough to put her in her place and perhaps irrevocably break something between them. That Sam sees himself as a hero (one who so cavalierly kills any and everything in his path) perhaps explains why he’ll soon find himself aligned with that most sociopathic member of the Seven—especially since he clamored for Cate to help him feel nothing despite his subconscious (shaped as Luke) warning him against that.
Ah, yes. For while the school is in chaos and while Marie, Jordan, and Andre try their best to neutralize the many Woods threats all over campus—all while Ashley tries to do crisis control from within a barricaded conference room (quick, elevate someone to the Seven, whoever can kill as many rogue supes as possible!)—what’s at stake is really what heroes will emerge from all of this. Will it be the powerful empath who has the school’s social-media editor blow his brains out in a live-feed to send a message to the outside world, or the blood bender who’s growing stronger by the minute, able to calibrate her powers to do increasingly fun things (like sensing where invisible Maverick is by his pulse or turning spilled blood into sharp weapons she can throw at whoever)? Just as Andre fighting Sam suggests two different ways of handling family trauma (both grieving as they are those they are closest to), the schematic way in which Gen V pits Marie and Cate against one another is perhaps too neat. But from the beginning Frink has given us the key to how these characters will come into their own (with issues of glory, sacrifice, and justice surely driving their decisions). For Marie, it’s all very simple, even when tempted to go against her better judgment; ditto Andre, who’s constantly being offered an easy out by his father. But Cate cannot fathom letting herself be boxed in anymore. She and all other supes are superior. They should act accordingly. Textbook supervillain behavior and rhetoric.
Which is why the show has us rooting for Marie, our affable heroine—even when she clearly goes perhaps a tad too far and goes full Neuman, outright exploding Cate’s arm. And that’s when Gen V decides it can’t really let its cast of characters resolve this between themselves.
And so we arrive at the moment when “Guardians Of Godolkin” pulls one over us with the arrival of none other than Homelander, who, of course, sees Marie as the real villain of the piece: “What kind of animal are you?” he asks her. “Do you like attacking your own?” (Side note: you’re clearly on the right side of history if you have Homelander gunning for you, no?) The politics—and even the muddled lines that distinguish who’s battling who at any given time—get even murkier here. (Are Cate and Homelander really on the same page? Are they and Vought? Where does that leave Neuman in all of this? What about Mallory and the Boys?)
But just like that, Homelander attacks Marie and…cut to: a news broadcast where we learn she and her friends are now being framed as dangers to everyone and blamed for the deaths at Godolkin, and (as Homelander looks on quite smugly) Cate and Sam have been anointed as the new Guardians of Godolkin.
Marie then wakes and finds herself in a rather sterile hospital room alongside Jordan, Emma, and Andre (all in hospital gowns). It’s a room, she soon sees, that has no walls, which leads her to ask what’s on all of our minds and what will surely fuel the next season of Gen V, which was green-lit a few weeks back: “Where are we?”
Stray observations
- The one aspect of The Boys that first pulled me in was its understanding of modern-day superheroes as corporate spokespeople, with those giant marketing and PR departments at their disposal. Seeing that machinery again here deployed in a moment of crisis as they decide who might join the Seven was great, especially as it gave me the biggest LOL-worthy moment of the episode, when we learn one of Andre’s additional skills is a British accent. It’s a detail made all the funnier if you know actor Chase Perdomo was raised in the U.K.
- Speaking of great moments: “Josh Hartnett has more stage presence than that guy right there” is a funny line. As is “No WiFi! No LTE! Who’s gonna know if we die?!”
- Am I the only one who really never enjoyed those Greg/Bob lackeys jokes?
- Emma shrank without purging! She shrank when…she felt small and/or maybe ashamed? Interesting way for her powers to evolve, no?
- “Fucking Christ! I’m putting that in my next movie!” I kind of wish Prime Video would actually produce small snippets from the movies Vought presumably produces. They all sound and look so insane.
- Oh, I didn’t even get to talk about Polarity and Andre learning that their power may well be giving them a brain tumors, a storyline that felt, perhaps, a tad too rushed? Though maybe it’ll pay off next season?
- Speaking of, as we arrive at a rebooted Godolkin U, will Gen V introduce new characters? Will its storyline get ever more entangled with The Boys? And, perhaps more importantly, will we see more of Jackie Tohn (easily the most underused guest star of season one)?
Stream Gen V now on Prime Video
37 Comments
So…no mention of Butcher finding the incarcerated kids in the basement? Guess you didn’t watch the post credits.
‘”So…no mention of Butcher finding the incarcerated kids in the basement? Guess you didn’t watch the post credits.”’Stingers apparently aren’t covered. I suspect that everything we saw this season of Gen V will be highlighted and “discovered” by Butcher and the rest of the Boys? So if you completely missed it it won’t matter
Maybe, but that’s a pretty big effin cameo to just ignore.
‘”Maybe, but that’s a pretty big effin cameo to just ignore.”’
Sorry, I didn’t make it clear. All of this will most likely be important enough that it will feed into the overall backstory of next season of The Boys.
well, he found the dead from the virus kids…
well i figured he found The Woods, so yeah the dead kids, but I thought they were being imprisoned in The Woods as well.
Cait and Sam let all the kids in the Woods OUT. That’s who was doing the massacre on campus.
are you sure he found the kids? there was no door remember
Which the review here explains as “It’s a room, she soon sees, that has no walls” which would be less of a problem.
nope! Not sure at all!
It’s a room, she soon sees, that has no walls…No doors in the walls, you mean.
The whole season was just meh. And it seems the only reason to bring The Boys different stars over in crossover appearances was to have them swear a lot. None of them really moved the plot forward (what there was of it) and none of them were ever in any apparent danger, apparently.
I remain mystified at these legions of people you assume would be stampeding to watch this show after refusing to get into The Boys.
Wasn’t feeling this finale. i dunno. the series was most intersting being about college supes, and it feels like a total mistake to have taken shetty off the table in the penultimate episode. she was an interesting character. but nah cate just goes full on evil. I understand Sam’s dysfunction and anger but his entire speech at Emma rang completely fucking false. maybe it’s cos he is dumb and doesn’t know what he’s talking about but i hated how easily sam turned to KILL ALL HUMANS. it was unsatisfying. it’s fine to end on a cliffhanger, but they didn’t really bother to actually resolve or conclude much. The show got less interesting the more the full “Boys cinematic universe” intruded. I just rolled my eyes when Homelander arrived. OH SHOCKING HE ATTACKED MARIE. I mean, okay, HL sucks, Vought sucks, but we know that.Obvious setup for S2? Obviously. But it didn’t end S1 in any satisfying fashion at all.
Sam was tortured for years in a prison run by psychopathic humans, he gets out, sees a world where supers live in peace, and sees that the government wants to control the supes.He has no idea that supes basically run the world and treat humans as disposable toys. He probably didn’t even get the news that supes were created as a science experiment by yet another group of psychopathic humans. He only sees the part of the story where he’s the victim.Also, his little chat with his ghost brother makes it clear he’s trying to rationalize his brutal acts of preemptive self-defense with his moral humanity, which is why he asks to have his emotions turned off so he can kill humans without feeling bad about it.
Yeah that’s true. I guess his convo with Emma really pissed me off/irritated me. And y’know, feeling underwhelmed by the entire episode and its execution.
Cate initially gaslighting Luke was right after Sam found out about Compound V and lost his shit
“Hey baby! Wanna kill all humans?”
“Bender! There’s no such thing as 2.”
I agree, I wanted a Harry Potter kind of story but with young supes (and even trans supes killing terfs)
Trans supes killing “terfs”So, the ultimate nightmare for women; angry misogynists killing women for wanting to fight for their rights… Just say that you hate women, groomer.
Agreed. Cate and Sam are just irredeemable now, which I am not a fan of, and I don’t think their turns really made much sense. Cate I can see in theory but they needed to do more work there. Sam just feels like a strange turn and he just comes off really dumb and nuts. I also don’t like how the two characters that essentially have mental illnesses are villains.
The room has walls, in fact that’s about all it has. It doesn’t have any doors, though.This episode was a bit of a fumble, for me. It felt extremely rushed, and I feel like they’ve already gone to the “where are we? what happened?” mind-wipe well too many times, especially for an 8 episode season. It was nice to see some more action, certainly. There are plenty of questions for next season to answer, but ending the season in the way that it did felt a bit cheap.
‘”Emma shrank without purging! She shrank when…she felt small and/or maybe ashamed? Interesting way for her powers to evolve, no?”’Makes me wonder if she realizes that she doesn’t need to purge in order to shrink. But also how the heck did she get big again? Was it through the realization of her self-worth or did she pig out as usual.Also how the heck can they ultimately be in a room with no windows?
Oh, I didn’t even get to talk about Polarity and Andre learning that
their power may well be giving them a brain tumors, a storyline that
felt, perhaps, a tad too rushed? Though maybe it’ll pay off next season? Speaking of, as we arrive at a rebooted Godolkin U, will Gen V introduce new characters? Will its storyline get ever more entangled with The Boys?
great way to write andre off or recast his character. the next boys season will leave off where gen v s1 ended and then gen v s2 will leave off from where the next boys season ended. it’s already pretty connected and sounds like it might get more? i don’t know.
so in the end of the episode, are they trapped in cate’s mind?
I quite like Andre so would be bummed if they write him out of the show. Nepo baby who’s a completely apathetic loser until he’s presented with a single crisis and suddenly realizes he has a moral backbone, he’d just never been in a position to use it before.
i guess you haven’t heard about chance perdomo then…i don’t care much for his character but i’d be fine with a recast which i doubt will happen. his character isn’t that popular though.
Sorry to post a reply to an older comment ,but this confused the hell out of me , as I thought you were referring to him sadly dying in a motorbike accident in March 2024, which would be odd since you posted in April 2023.
Eh. I got caught up on this show in the last few days. Didn’t really see anything to justify its existence. Kind of just a big commercial for the main show written by the very cynical corporate characters it was parodying.
It all seemed quite rushed. Sam turning on Emma seemed really quick. And the people in The Woods just deciding to start killing everyone surprised me. Did I miss Cate telling them all to go on a killing spree?
I’m just glad they didn’t go for the ‘Marie and Jordan have to fight to the death’ angle. I groaned when they started the false setup for it.
The room has no walls, hey? That makes sense. A couple of typos in there, too, bud.
How I read the ending is simply Homelander arriving to the scene; having been asked to stop the murders; simply “assessing” the situation and deciding that Marie was the murderer. Then PR did the rest to frame the 4 as villains the 2 rogues as the “good” guys. The CEO lady must have been swearing quite a lot about the situation. it’s not more complicated than this and Homelander doesn’t know Cate and doesn’t care one way or another.
It’s a room, she soon sees, that has no walls
Big difference between a room with no walls and a room with no doors.
Disastrous finale that did not make any sense, characters suddenly behaving the opposite of who they were, bad writing, bad action scenes, it was really ridiculous. The series started strong but went nowhere very quickly.
Man, I’d love to see the Homermobile of a show blog commenters would make.
Genre fans: Oh man I love (genre)!
Me: Oh yeah? What about (show)?
GF: Oh no that’s terrible
M: What about (show) or (show) or (character) or (movie)?
GF: Trash all of it.
They don’t really seem to like anything connected with the thing they say they are fans of. Star Wars fans seem the most this way to me, but anything superhero related is right there too.
The in-story logic behind the new status quo is convoluted. The set-up for season two will be the heroes escaping from the lab,
which sounds fairly generic. The school is a more unique setting, but I
fear they’ll never use it to its full potential. Whether it lands depends on how successful they are at sidestepping sinister sophomore slump.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2024/06/08/is-gen-v-all-its-cracked-up-to-be