“Gen V,” Prime Video’s university spinoff of the acclaimed superhero satire “The Boys,” begins with an epoch-defining set piece involving the protagonist’s very first period. The scene is, true to the franchise, gory. It’s also symbolically startling in ways the original series — after three seasons of graphic, escalating ultraviolence — sometimes fails to be.
Marie Moreau (played by Jaeda LeBlanc as a child and Jaz Sinclair as an adult) discovers, in the worst way imaginable, that her blood, once outside her body, becomes a superweapon she can’t control. Horrifying, traumatic, but conceptually hilarious, the scene showcases what the new series does best: make amusingly literal some aspects of superherodom that usually remain at least somewhat allegorical and abstract.
Moreau, for instance — now grown, ambitious, and seeking redemption at a “Supe” academy called Godolkin University (God U) — can only access her powers by cutting. Her roommate’s superpower is getting very, very small. By vomiting. The more Emma (Lizze Broadway) purges, the smaller she gets. “It takes awhile,” she confesses to a fellow student. “It’s not fun. It’s … gross. Like I kind of hate myself for it.”
Should you begin making the extremely obvious connections to disordered eating, or to the way female superheroes are expected to be impossibly thin and strong, Emma’s confidante — who turns out to be “Gen V’s” mean girl — preempts you in a cynical video trawling for “likes” so she can climb the campus rankings. “Just another example of how the patriarchy makes women chase unattainable beauty standards,” she says, maliciously revealing Emma’s secret about how her powers work as the views roll in.
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In “Gen V,” in other words, superpowers are bait. Specifically, thinkpiece bait.
Declaring herself sick of the “heterosexist male gaze,” Emma’s tormentor spends her next scene cajoling another target on her list into sucking her own murine tail on camera.
“The Boys” has spent three well-regarded seasons on Prime Video gorily satirizing the superhero genre, particularly its hypermasculine aspects, so it’s interesting to watch the team behind it explore commercialized and weaponized feminism. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and the newspaper’s interim CEO, Patty Stonesifer, sits on the company’s board.)
The original franchise re-contextualizes “Supes” as licentious, irresponsible, sometimes sadistic celebrities whose reputations bear little to no relation to what they actually do. The Seven, an elite group of superpowered crime fighters, only notionally save people most of the time, usually in professionally filmed encounters that are planned in advance. In this universe, marketing trumps catching criminals and branding trumps everything.
“Gen V” turns that jaded lens onto the corruption at God U, which was ostensibly built to help promising young Supes live up to their potential. The satire isn’t subtle. Students are ranked by “talent, skill, brand awareness, and social mentions," and a promotional video features the posh but sinister dean, Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn), promising “a community of supportive faculty and peers who will accept you as the unique culturally rich change agent that you are. You’ll begin with challenging but meaningful core curriculum such as hero ethics and understanding branding.”
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End of carouselGod U is run by Vought International, the sinister corporation responsible for artificially creating superheroes (via a drug called Compound V) and also managing and marketing them. It offers two academic tracks: crime-fighting (which almost no one gets into, and Moreau wishes to join) and entertainment. The former is presided over by superhero guru Richard Brinkerhoff (Clancy Brown), the author of a bestseller titled “The Hero Inside All of Us.”
But the latter is where “Gen V” has the most fun, satirizing red carpet appearances, interview shows, influencers, and actors. Whereas “The Boys” sent up absurd superhero franchises (while, yes, establishing one), the target in “Gen V” is uppity comic book fare obsessed with transcending its genre. Marvel’s “WandaVision” comes in for particular scorn when one vapid God U student, bragging that she’s up for a role, describes it “an elevated superhero thing, really a meditation on grief told through 70 years of sitcoms.” Here again, “Gen V” cheekily indulges in the exact tendency it lampoons (one upsetting storyline prominently features off-brand Muppets).
When adolescents discover serious powers they can deploy only in the service of frivolous ends, they predictably go a little crazy. The high achievers on campus are Luke, a.k.a. “Golden Boy” (Patrick Schwarzenegger), his mind-controlling girlfriend Cate (Maddie Phillips), his friend Andre (Chance Perdomo) and gender-fluid Jordan Li (Derek Luh, London Thor), but even they can’t help acting out. Moreau, desperate to succeed at God U, joins them one night against her better judgment. Disaster — and an investigation into an area on campus called “the Woods” — ensues.
There are bushels of pop culture references in the six episodes critics received, along with plenty of violence, a number of penises and more than one twist.
But the show’s real superpower might be the carapace it develops by analyzing itself before you can and mocking you for the impulse. At its most extreme, the show frames analysis itself as not just cynical, but predatory. When an agent pitches Emma a show that would feature her “battling her own sort of internal supervillains, from the body image stuff, the eating disorder” and exposing “society’s cruel notion of female perfection,” the most interesting thing about the scene is the weary, knowing expression on Emma’s face. “Gen V” is an absorbing, engaging watch, notable for how it mostly manages to balance carnage and humor with heart. It’s a worthy addition to a franchise that savages them.
The first three episodes of “Gen V” will air Sept. 29 on Prime Video, with subsequent episodes dropping weekly.
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