Last week fans of the Amazon Prime Hit-Show The Boys witnessed their favorite Show expand with the release of “Gen V.”
The spin-off tells the story of Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) as she navigates through her first days at Godolkin University, a college for young adults with superpowers. There she meets her quirky and charismatic roommate Emma (Lizze Broadway), also known as Little Cricket due to her power to shrink herself and the university’s elite: gender-bending Jordan (London Thor/Derek Luh), Andre (Chance Perdomo) who has magnetic powers, Cate (Maddie Phillips) who can control people’s minds and the school’s Golden Boy, fire-bending Luke (Patrick Schwarzenegger).
With “The Boys” being a highly-acclaimed show, Gen V had a lot of expectations to exceed. While the spin-off doesn’t bring back fan favorites, like Billy Butcher or Homelander – Gen V manages to create its own sphere.
–CONTAINS SPOILERS–
Much like The Boys, Gen Vs pilot episode starts off with an incredibly strong cold open – an introduction of the main character that catches the viewer’s attention right off the bat. Fans of the mothership already know how dark this universe can get: it’s bloody, it’s gory and not something for people with faint hearts. Pushing boundaries within not even the first three minutes, Marie accidentally kills her parents with her own blood, discovering her powers for the first time in her life.
The traumatic event turns out to be the catalyst shaping her story and builds into her strong character, determined not to repeat the same mistakes. After a time jump, we see her work on self control by training her powers.
The first episode is solely focussed on introducing Marie. While we meet different characters throughout the episode, it feels like we are new at Godolkin University ourselves. We get vague ideas on who they are, solely seeing the other characters through Maries eyes.
The show offers an incredibly talented cast and much like The Boys, Gen V provides characters that mark for great representation (and backs away from stereotypical tropes). We have an incredibly strong woman of color at the front and center, non-token queer characters like Emma or Jordan, who is genderfluid, an identity we rarely get to see on mainstream TV.
Action-driven, we are thrown into the story with remarkable pacing and build-up of what’s to come. Although we don’t really know where exactly the story is going, it keeps us engaged with scenes that hint at a dark secret that the characters have yet to unravel.
Something that also stood out to us is the modern and catchy soundtrack, the chosen tracks perfectly underline the vibe of the show – this perfectly stands in contrast to the Boys, which offers classic rock tunes like The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil”, whereas Gen V’s track-list includes recent bangers, including Megan Thee Stallion “Anxiety”. The music naturally fits not only the show’s younger characters, but also its target audience.
The superhero genre would be close to nowhere without appealing VFX and this show proves how important it is not only for great storytelling, but also for the entire visual experience.
Whilst the show opens many storylines the audience eagerly awaits to explore, it already made us ask a lot of questions. Who is the boy we see trying to escape Godolkin University? What secrets is GU truly hiding? What is Vought’s Role in all of this? And where is it all going to tie into the storyline we left off in The Boys (as this was supposed to build into its fourth Season)?
We are excited to see where the story is going to take us while we also hope for cameos of some of the beloved characters we already know, because so far we only know of the Deep and Soldier Boy.
– Rue & Mel