Summary
Gen V Season 2 gets off to a surprisingly sensitive but characteristically nasty start in a three-part premiere that establishes a new God U status quo.
Prime Video’s spin-off from The Boys returns for Season 2 with several pretty important mandates. In terms of its relationship to its parent show, Gen V has to feel like an outgrowth of the fourth season and a setup for the fifth and final one. Internally, it has to explain away the absence of Andre Anderson following the tragic demise of actor Chance Perdomo, finding a fitting tribute that also makes sense in context and informs some of the plotting and character decision-making. It also, let’s be frank, has to improve a wavering first season that people were a little mixed on. Episodes 1, 2, and 3, all of which debuted together in a bumper premiere to set the stakes, do a surprisingly good job of all these things.
And yet it feels very much like the same show, a fusion of an inverted superhero series and a YA college drama that revels in cartoonishly excessive sex and violence. The first season introduced the basics of Godolkin University, being at one time a secret research facility and presently a radicalisation campus for young Supes, introduced the core cast, almost all of whom return, and laid the foundations for a more conspiratorial second season with wider-reaching implications. And that’s where we pick things up.
Gen V Season 2, Episode 1: “For Chance”
I tell a lie, actually – “For Chance” actually begins in 1967, albeit only staying there briefly. It’s a flashback to Dr. Godolkin trying to prevent a nascent Vought research team from imbibing a prototype version of Compound V that backfires considerably. The whole thing’s a mission statement for how much this season is going to indulge in brutal gore and violence, but it’s also plot-relevant, since Godolkin’s experimentation and a secret project dubbed Odessa form a key overarching thread in these first three episodes.
Beyond that, it’s mostly about getting the students back to school. God U has a new dean in the form of Cipher, a Supe with thus-far unclear powers and a role at the Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center, where Emma and Jordan have been held since the events of the Season 1 finale. During that time, Andre died a heroic death, which Cate intuits through her powers when she manages to get Emma and Jordan back to campus. Marie is missing and on the run, though, following a breakout.
The new status quo at God U is aggressively maintained by Cipher and Stacey Ferrera, the new Head of Student Life, who has a stinger that’ll kill her and her victim if she uses it and vomits honey, which I guess means she’s pretty much just a bee. Either wa,y the general idea is that it’s safer for the students to just play along with the prepared statements and pretend everything is normal, but Andre’s death weighs heavily on everyone, especially Emma. She goes to see Polarity to tell him what happened and continues to grieve while life around her returns to something resembling normal. Her powers are also on the frits, with extreme stress causing her to change size now with no need for any purging.
Marie, meanwhile, immediately draws attention to herself by using her powers to slap around a bunch of humans, which attracts the attention of Dogknott, a clear riff on Dog the Bounty Hunter, and Starlight, who saves her from Dogknott and directs her back to God U to investigate something called the Odessa Project. Emma and Jordan, after seeing a video of Marie’s fight with the humans, eventually catch up with her, but so does Cate. The ensuing argument turns physical, leaving Cate with her skull cleaved open, and the others leave her for what they assume to be dead. No such luck.
Gen V Season 2, Episode 2: “Justice Never Forgets”
Asa Germann and Maddie Phillips in Gen V Season 2 | Image via Prime Video
The second episode wastes no time in revealing that Cate is still alive, albeit in a pretty bad way. Her assault has been weaponised to stoke fear about anti-Supe violence, pushing Cipher’s anti-human agenda, and the truth about what really happened to her is quickly buried, much to her own annoyance. Cipher is clearly playing a long game, but the precise nature of it is unclear for now. It definitely involves Elmira, though.
Marie, meanwhile, returns to campus in a flurry of social media propaganda, mostly to investigate the Odessa Project under Starlight’s instructions. But she’s most occupied by staving off attempts on her life by Cipher’s pet Supes, whom he sics on her and several other students as part of a process to unlock the next levels of their powers. He also explicitly refers to the students as soldiers, and God U as a training ground for those soldiers.
Elsewhere, Emma teams up with Polarity to investigate the archives for information about Dr. Godolkin, and in so doing stumbles upon a secret room of white supremacist totems, files on deceased children, and one on the Odessa Project. Emma also manages to turn big on her own steam, presumably out of excitement over the discovery (and/or drugs. We shouldn’t discount that.)
Of note as the second episode comes to a conclusion is Cate waking up and seeing dead medical staffers on the floor after murdering them with her powers while comatose, Sam beginning to break free of Cate’s calming influence and going postal as a result, Dogknott killing the Starlighter that Marie saved in the previous episode, who is subsequently blamed for the attack on Cate, and the fairly major discovery that the Odessa Project is Marie herself.
Gen V Season 2, Episode 3: “H is for Human”
Armed with this new information about Odessa, Marie digs into her own personal history in the hopes of making sense of it. Through Pam, she learns that she was conceived at Godolkin’s clinic, and that Compound V is what allowed her parents to have her. There’s also a photo of her being held by Cipher as a baby, proving he was involved in the Odessa Project, which also goes some way towards explaining his specific interest in Marie.
We see this in the continuing focus on Marie in the power development classes. Cipher is clearly targeting Marie intentionally and trying to groom her into a more powerful figure, which obviously ties back into her conception and birth.
“H is for Human” also finds Cate being discharged from the hospital and released back onto the campus, and Sam’s mental decline becoming worse and worse without her influence, two subplots that are very much intertwined since her powers no longer work. Cipher is keeping a lid on what really happened to Cate on the grounds that if the truth were to come out and the absence of her powers was revealed, Homelander would consider her of no more utility than a human. And we know how he feels about those.
There’s a subplot in this episode about Emma tracking down a mimic who is tormenting a barista by framing her for planting revolutionary flyers – is there a bit of romantic chemistry here, or am I going mad? – and a bit of bonding between Sam and Jordan after the former continues to flip out and imagine himself in a felt-covered children’s-show puppet land. But the big moment comes at the end, with Jordan, chosen as the number one student on campus and given the opportunity to make a pre-written speech full of semi-insulting buzzwords relating to their “trans” identity, admitting to the assembled crowd that Andre is dead and they were the one who hurt Cate, not the Starlighters. That should ruffle a few feathers.
RELATED:
