'Gen V' Is F*cking Absurd
The world of The Boys is so evil that it's a miracle anyone in its unholy universe can get up in the morning. The Boys is, after all, a satire of our modern-day society. Take that as you will, but The Boys doesn't hide from that—it only embraces it. MAGA guys non-ironically loving the main villain, Homelander (Antony Starr)? It was simply just the icing on the cake. But in Gen V, the first spinoff series of the popular superhero spoof, the fact that society functions in a world of super-powered freaks (at all!) may be the franchise's largest goof yet.
In the opening scene of the absurdist new series, which debuted its first three episodes on
Prime Video today, we're introduced to superhero hopeful Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair). In the opening scene, she accidentally kills her parents with blood magic—yet she still aspires to "do good" with her life. From what I've seen of The Boys so far, the definition of do-gooding in this world involves embracing fascism, committing lots of murder, and starring in your own pro-military Avengers films. It's silly that any teenager would need a rude awakening to learn that her world is not what it seems. You're telling me that the superhero school that breeds these monstrous characters is bad? Well, the school is actually even worse than bad.
Still, Gen V will manage to surprise even longtime fans of The Boys when it can. Of course, every character you meet is either up to some heinous activity or committing bodily harm. So, trust in anyone is naturally broken the second they're introduced. Shock value is where the series hits its stride—and Gen V shoots for the fences there. It's pure chaos. There's a girl who can shrink every time she vomits—and she pleasures a guy by hanging onto his penis like an orangutan on a tree. The school's number-one student, "Golden Boy" (Patrick Schwarzenegger), kills the headmaster, then he flies into the sky and implodes—raining blood and guts over the whole student body. The viewer has to watch the main character, Moreau, cut herself every time she wants to use her blood powers. The Boys has never been an easy watch, but Gen V is testing us even further.
Still, given the sideways logic of The Boys's world, Gen V introducing us to disillusioned youths makes sense. Even after Moreau's life flips itself on its head for the umpteenth time, her goal is still to just put her head down and work her ass off at school. She becomes the first-ever freshman to be ranked as one of the school's top ten students, completely oblivious to the fact that cutting yourself for blood powers is probably not what this PR-based superhero world would put on the face of a magazine. It's why Hughie Campbell's (Jack Quaid) story of revenge against the supes—after A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) accidentally murders his girlfriend in the debut episode of The Boys—gave us someone we could actually root for.
In Gen V, the goal is to find out just how fucked-up the writers can make this world. The hope, it seems, is that one of these young students may change the system from the inside. We mostly saw how that played out already through Annie's (Erin Moriarty) plot in The Boys. Then, it played out in real life. Maybe these kids have a better shot—you know, when they're not tearing another guy in half during a puppet-induced, hallucinatory rage.
As it stands after the first three episodes, the obscene imagery may be hurting the show more than it is furthering the narrative. Certainly, grotesque kills are shticks that The Boys have claimed as their own—and Gen V certainly carries the baton. But among a myriad of plots involving bare-faced critiques of celebrity, politics, and the police state, Gen V may just have their plates full (of blood and guts).
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