Not All Heroes Wear Capes
When a spin-off for the Amazon Prime series The Boys was announced back in 2020, there was some initial skepticism from the fanbase. The show made a name for itself by mercilessly deconstructing the superhero genre with plenty of gore, sex and swearing to go around. A college spin-off, focusing on superpowered characters no less, came off as Amazon potentially falling into the same franchise trappings of the very Marvel and DC movies they were satirizing in the first place.
Thankfully, that was not the case. Not only is Gen V an enjoyable show in its own right, but it is a welcome addition to The Boys that takes on a fresh and original angle to the show’s premise. More surprisingly, its premise and approach to storytelling is the spiritual antithesis of the main show, and that is not a critique.
In the world of The Boys, superheroes, or “supes” are celebrities who are more focused on their brand than actually saving lives. They often use their powers recklessly and end up causing massive collateral damage. They are manufactured and sponsored by Vought International, a multi-billion dollar corporation that goes out of their way to cover up their heroes’ misdeeds and maintain their family-friendly personas for public consumption. They promote their heroes with merchandise like movies, comic books, and even their own cereals. Behind closed doors, most Supes are either sexual deviants, murderers, outright Nazis, or generally unpleasant people. The Boys paints a nasty picture of how human nature can be corrupted when given too much power, both literally and figuratively. As series protagonist Billy Butcher so eloquently puts it in Season 3; “With great power comes the absolute certainty that you’ll turn into a right c*nt.”
Gen V takes the complete opposite approach in regards to its supes. Now, this doesn’t mean that superheroes are completely good guys or that they actually fight evil in a more Marvel or DC fashion. Instead, Gen V drives home the point that the Supes are just as much victims of Vought’s corruption as regular civilians whose lives are affected by their very existence.
The show’s setting, Godolkin University, is a Vought-sponsored college where young super-abled adults train to become crime fighters, athletes, and movie stars. Most of the freshmen students that attend, like protagonist Marie Moreau, have genuine aspirations to do good with their powers when they first arrive on campus. However, they soon discover that the reality of Godolkin is much less heroic.
As opposed to working as a team, The students are encouraged to go at each other’s throats to get to the top of Godolkin’s leaderboard. They are quickly indoctrinated into trading their heroic aspirations for becoming corporate mascots for Vought, only concerning themselves with projecting a family-friendly public persona. If a student’s powers are deemed not marketable enough for a wide audience, like Marie’s blood bending or Jordan’s gender-bending, they are pushed to the side while the more brand-appropriate students soak up all the opportunities. They’re not even safe from their fellow students abusing their powers, as one of the supes, Rufus, uses his mind control powers as a date rape drug. That’s not even covering the supes sent to the Woods, a secret research facility which performs inhuman experiments on its subjects to develop a virus to wipe out all super-powered people as a contingency.
The whole show is like a heavily R-rated reboot of Sky High.Instead of narcissistic sociopaths parading as heroes, the Supes of Gen V are relatable, sympathetic characters who still face everyday problems that regular humans deal with on a regular basis and the threat of a powerful corporation simultaneously.
This point is further supported by the powers the Supes have. Most of the main cast’s powers largely resemble real world disabilities that most gen z’ers struggle with. Emma needs to throw up just to shrink like Ant Man, and has to eat food just to grow back to normal size in a fashion very similar to eating disorders. Jordan Li can change their gender at will, each with separate powers, which clashes with the expectations of their more conservative parents. When Jordan eventually develops a relationship with Marie, she’s worried that Marie might only be attracted to either their male/female forms instead of genuinely loving them as a person. Sam, while super strong, suffers from a brain disorder that causes him to hallucinate things that aren’t really there, and become emotionally detached to the pain he causes people when he lashes out uncontrollably. Even with their incredible powers, the students of Godolkin still have very real, very personal and physical problems they can’t deal with on their own.
After season 3, The Boys’ gimmick of revealing superheroes to be secretly evil was starting to lose its luster, further contributing to pop culture’s current superhero fatigue. It was a special surprise then that Gen V took the franchise in a different direction, while still being a new take on superheroes. It manages to offer a fresh new perspective on the main show’s universe, while still delivering the level of biting social and political commentary. What’s even more impressive is that it did all of this without Homelander lasering a crowd in broad daylight.
