Gen V Recap: The Boys Spinoff Launches With A Twisty Premiere — Grade It!
Penises and boatloads of blood — yep, Gen V is definitely set in the world of The Boys.
The spinoff's first episode introduces viewers to Marie (played by Chilling Adventures of Sabrina's Jaz Sinclair) when she gets her first period at the age of 12. It also happens to be the day she discovers that she has a superpower — the ability to control and weaponize her own blood — but it's one that she hasn't yet mastered. So when her parents enter the bathroom, she accidentally kills them with her new talent as her horrified younger sister looks on.
Cut to the present day: 18-year-old Marie now lives at Red River Institute and cuts herself, wielding her blood as a weapon. She dreams of getting out of the facility before she's forcefully taken to an even worse place, a rehabilitation center, and her big chance comes when she's accepted into Godolkin University for supes. Marie has set her sights on one day being ranked No. 1 at the school, then becoming the first Black woman in The Seven. So naturally, she plans on majoring in Crimefighting, but Professor Brink's TA Jordan (Shameless' London Thor and Shining Vale's Derek Luh) — who has the ability to switch between genders — has rejected Marie from the program. Instead, she's encouraged to join the Crimson Countess School for the Performing Arts, where her quick-witted and kinda thirsty roommate Emma (Here and Now's Lizzie Broadway) is a student. (Emma, who's known online as Little Cricket, has the ability to get small, but after a guy asks her to do it while on his penis, we discover that the unfortunate way Emma gets small is by purging.)
After Marie and another student, Andre (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina's Chance Perdomo), help security capture a runaway (Asa Germann), Marie scores an invite from Andre to hang out with his friends: Luke (The Staircase's Patrick Schwarzenegger), aka the fiery Golden Boy/the No. 1 supe on campus; his girlfriend Cate (Teenage Bounty Hunters' Maddie Phillips), who can make people do whatever she wants with a simple touch; and of course, Marie's new frenemy Jordan.
In a nice change of pace from the norm, the popular kids aren't automatically mean to Marie. Cate is nice to her, and she and Luke even bond a little when Marie confesses to him that she's lying about her parents being so proud of her; they're actually dead. Luke, in turn, reveals that his brother also passed away. Marie almost admits that she's at Godolkin to prove to her sister that she's not a monster.
"Being a hero is not what you think," Luke cryptically says, adding that if she's going to do this, she should do it for herself.
Thanks to Cate's power, the group then sneaks into a club, where Andre shows of his metal manipulating powers to a woman, transforming a floating quarter into a hummingbird shape. As he flies it, a man bumps into him, sending the bird zipping into an innocent clubgoer's throat. She immediately starts bleeding out as a shocked Andre watches, before the teens run off. But Marie stays behind and uses her power to save the woman's life, an action that's caught on cell cameras.
The next day, Professor Brink (Sleepy Hollow's Clancy Brown) informs Marie that she's being expelled. She has to take the hit for the others for letting that woman almost bleed to death because they were high. The truth can't get out when Golden Boy is on the verge of being recruited into The Seven. (There's already a suit in the works and everything, and Brink even thought Golden Boy would be bigger than Homelander.) But if Marie gets kicked out of school, that means she goes back to the bad place. She sits outside, crying and cutting her palms, before declaring, "I'm not a monster."
Meanwhile, Luke is being haunted by visions of a young boy asking for help and nightmares of trees, tying back into what the runaway teen was yelling when Marie and Andre helped security take him down: "I'm not going back to the f—king Woods." Then he was taken a cell, wallpaper trees visible through his door's eyehole.
Luke confronts Professor Brink... just as Marie walks in on him turning the prof to dust with his powers. Luke tries to justify himself, saying that she doesn't know what the professor did. When Marie runs off, Jordan steps in, and Luke accuses them of being in on it, too. The two of them fight it out in the school hallway, until Luke catches up with Marie and Andre outside. The sight of his friend seems to calm Luke.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," Luke says tearfully, hugging Andre and exchanging "I love you's" with him. Then Luke flies off into the sky and kills himself in a fiery explosion.
Rounding out the cast is Shelley Conn (Bridgerton) as Dean Indira Shetty, who's no doubt just as shady and manipulative as the Vought execs.
Now, let's briefly recap what we learned/heard/saw about The Boys characters in the premiere:
* In the fallout of the Season 3 finale, Queen Maeve is believed to be dead, with her merch selling for $$$. Vought News telecast says there's new evidence that Russian plotted the 7 Tower attack, while Homelander's lawyer states, "He stood his ground."
* Golden Boy was being set up to replace Maeve or Starlight in The Seven.
* Brink's former pupils include A-Train, The Deep and Queen Maeve.
* We got a brief appearance from Elisabeth Shue's Madelyn Stillwell, declaring that it's "a post-racism world" during a flashback to when A-Train was recruited into The Seven eight years ago.
* Because we can't resist mentioning it: In Episode 2 (minor spoiler alert), a newscast asks if Homelander will be on trial for killing an innocent protestor. And Dawn of the Seven director Adam Bourke has been relegated to teaching an acting class at Godolkin after he "showed his dick to Minka Kelly."
What did you think of Gen V? Grade the spinoff below, then hit the comments!