It’s kind of crazy how much time has passed between the first and second season of spin-off series, Gen V. In fairness, we did get a new season of The Boys in between, and I’m sure it was difficult to figure out what to do with the death of main cast member, Chance Perdomo not too long after the first season aired.
I mention time, because I have a pretty hard time remembering what all happened in this first season, along with the most recent season of The Boys, which does play into the story arc of this show. Thankfully, as I learned again with this season, the overlap isn’t too much. It mainly just consists of cameos from The Boys‘ roster – but like the main ones! Anyway, a recap before the first episode starts tells me that last season Homelander came to help Cate and Sam stop Marie, Jordan, Emma, and Andre from trying to contain the chaos that the newly released supes from the Woods was inflicting on humans. They end up waking up in a cell with their powers muted. Talk about a cliffhanger!
The new season jumps ahead to Jordan and Emma making their way back to Godolkin to re-enroll. We learn that Andre was killed in an attempt to escape their prison after Marie successfully did so. Although this immediately addresses the fact that Chance’s character, Andre, will no longer be on the show, they don’t just gloss over it after this opening scene. In fact, he is brought up regularly throughout the season and I can’t help but think that a lot of the things said about Andre also very much applied to Chance in real life. I can’t imagine how hard it was to shoot this season with him gone. Jordan and Emma awkwardly get back into things at God U while we see Marie skulking through the shadows and trying to find her sister.
It’s not long before both Jordan and Emma find Marie, but also the powers that be that would like her dead instead. After a run-in with Cate, incapacitating her powers, she makes it her mission for the three to get them to trust her again. Good luck. She’s still at the right hand of the new dead, Cipher. We learn that he has ties to Thoms Godolkin, and he just seems like evil incarnate. Sure, Homelander is REALLY bad, but this guy seems like he’s trying to take that top spot. What’s most interesting about him is that even though he is quite powerful and hellbent on stopping our real group of heroes, he actually has a strange, keen interest in Marie. He claims that she is more powerful than she knows and claims to only want to help her reach her full potential.
There are plenty of neat surprises throughout this season, and I definitely don’t want to spoil them all here. In fact, I’m really proud of myself for not spoiling them for me! What is clear is that these college-aged supes will definitely be playing a part in the final season of The Boys. It seems like it will be a pretty decent part, but that ultimately remains to be seen later this spring. I have no clue if there will be future seasons of Gen V, but it seems unlikely to me unless they go somewhere totally different with it. I say that having never read the comic book series both of these shows are based on. I’m interested to find out!