Prime Video’s series The Boys is a great show about the commodification of superheroes, the entertainment industry, and fascism in America. Its spinoff, Gen V, meanwhile, is a great show about the most relatable of topics—hating yourself in college.
The show, whose fourth episode drops this Friday, is—much like The Boys—very irreverent and very gross. Its pilot opens with a gory flashback in which the protagonist of the story discovers she has the power to weaponize her own blood—after she gets her first period and accidentally kills both her parents. That episode also features another character making herself tiny and bouncing on a guy’s balls in a hookup gone very wrong. And yet—also like The Boys—Gen V is way deeper than first meets the eye.
Gen V is set at Godolkin University, a campus run by Vought, the corporation in the Boys universe that makes and brands superheroes. God U is basically a pre-professional program, where superpowered attendees are funneled into crime fighting or performing arts—the two natural paths for a “supe.” Crime fighting is the more prestigious path, and those students are publicly ranked in a system that foretells whether you’re likely to make The Seven, this world’s really fucked-up version of the Avengers.
Into this competitive atmosphere comes Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), the girl whose first menstruation ended in both patricide and matricide. Marie has been living in a grim facility for orphaned heroes when she gets her acceptance, which she hopes will be her ticket to a better life and reconciliation with her sister, who has rejected her.
Marie’s first impression of Godolkin isn’t promising, even though her roommate Emma (Lizze Broadway) is sweet—she can turn herself really small and makes YouTube videos fighting her guinea pig under the name “Little Cricket.” She’s initially rejected from the crime fighting path, and when she finds herself invited to party with a group of cool seniors—including God U’s great blond hope Luke “Golden Boy” Riordan, played by Patrick Schwarzenegger—their night goes awry in multiple ways. First, a clubbing civilian’s throat gets slit. Then, in the light of day, Luke has a massive breakdown, killing a beloved professor (Clancy Brown) before immolating himself.
All this is weirdly good for Marie, who winds up somewhat inaccurately pegged as the hero who stopped Luke’s rampage. As she’s thrust in the spotlight—which allows Gen V to continue The Boys’ tradition of media satire—just why Luke splattered himself all over the quad becomes the driving question of the series.
A gruesome, over-the-top romp about suicide has the potential to go very wrong, but Gen V has the good sense to make mental health central to the story. Luke’s act turns out to be more than an isolated incident. Almost all the young supes are depressed or struggling in some way. They have unaccepting parents, like Luke’s friend Jordan Li, who can shift between female (London Thor) and male (Derek Luh) identities. Or they’re stoners like Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo), trying to dull the pressure put on them.
For some of them, their self-harm is actually interconnected with their superpower. To activate her powers and get tiny, Emma purg es in what she swears is not an eating disorder. When Marie wants to fling her blood around like a lasso or a sword, she cuts her palm. And it turns out Luke’s own troubles have something to do with a place called “The Woods,” a facility where students with mental health problems are essentially imprisoned. It all reads like a very real reflection of actual campus issues.
But lest this seem too mauldin, Gen V manages to thread a needle between serious consideration of its heroes’ pain, propulsive storytelling, and the outlandish dick jokes on which this franchise built its reputation. Just as The Boys managed to deal with white supremacy in past seasons without losing its capacity for fun—as crazy as that might sound—Gen V is able to tackle college mental health crises without losing its spunk. It’s a bit like college itself: One minute you might be wallowing, and the next you’re out all night partying again.