REVIEW #323 Gen V (Season 1)

A school for hormonal, competitive superheroes hides a horrifying secret that tests the loyalty of its top 10 students.

Gen V does a brilliant job at maintaining the same adulterous shock factor of The Boys, yet producing its own unique and captivating storyline. We have an enticing group of characters that the audience can really root for, each with fascinating new powers. Meanwhile we’re presented with plenty of easter eggs to the main show, that will have fans reenacting the DiCaprio meme in their living room! The storyline is a nice blend of high school drama and a much larger overarching storyline that really ups the stakes. My favourite character would have to be either Emma, who is hilarious but she also provides an opportunity to explore the societal sub plots around social acceptance. Or similarly, Jordan could also be my favourite, their powers are actually pretty cool, where she can compete with the most powerful supes in combat but on the other hand, this is probably the most approachable way I’ve ever seen a tv show handle gender fluid / non binary characters. It was subtle and welcoming and the subject never felt forced. I don’t recognise any of the cast from other projects but they’re all performed really well and executed the emotional elements of the show excellently. 

Now the storyline itself was quite the journey, where, for once, Vaught wasn’t actually the main culprit! It was more of a rogue figure with the Dean of the school. What I enjoyed about that was it’s essentially another version of Butch, yet I can’t imagine any fans will have taken a liking to her. That similarity in motive but huge contrast in likability was super interesting to see play out and it ultimately come down to the inhumane nature of Dead Shetty’s criminal acts. The character Cate went on a huge journey and that twist came quite sudden and unexpected, you could have only really guessed it about 15 minutes before the reveal, which is pretty good going! My main criticism would be that a lot of them seemed overpowered, not even in the sense of their abilities but more so their indestructibility. They could all take such large amounts of damage, I mean Marie taking a full Homelander blast and coming out scott free is wild. I’m intrigued to see the next step for these characters, after that finale appearance of Homelander really threw everything up in the air! So I’m super excited for season 2, which really shows you just how strong of a debut season it was, even if it did have The Boys IP to help boost interest!

Overall (8.5/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan