“Gen V” series premiere recap: Welcome to God U

Episode 1: "God U"

I'm always dubious when a network announces a spinoff of a successful show because more often than not, the spinoff misses the magic of its predecessor. But thankfully, The Boys spinoff Gen V would kick ass even if The Boys didn't exist.

The pilot opens with a flashback to a scene from eight years ago. Teenager Marie Moreau is messing around with her sister while her parents watch a news report about superhero A-Train (one of the main characters from The Boys) getting drafted from his superhero college, Godolkin University, into The Seven… a clever bit of world building that simultaneously explains the existence of "superhero colleges" and links this story to the world of The Boys.

It's also a scene that depicts a perfect family in all its bucolic bliss… a tight-knit marriage, lovely kids… it's a nauseatingly picturesque vision of an American family, and if you watched The Boys, like me, your alarm bells were probably going off too at this happy family. Pretty quickly, Marie rushes off to the bathroom, realizing she's getting her first period. This moment is already scary for Marie, but it quickly becomes horrifying when her blood starts floating into the air.

Marie panics, her mother bursts inside to see what's going on… and Marie's blood suddenly coagulates into a sharp point and soars through the air, slitting her mother's throat. As Marie falls to the floor, hyperventilating, her father rushes in, trying to staunch his wife's bleeding wound. And as Marie screams out in pain, the blood from her mother's neck blasts out in all directions, impaling her father and killing him as well. Welcome to the world of Gen V.

It seems Marie's got the power to manipulate blood and turn it into weapons… but right now she's got no idea how to control these abilities. And as Marie's sister appears in the doorway, taking in this bloody, nightmare-inducing tableau…

Brooke Palmer/Prime Video Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau on 'Gen V.'

We jump forward to present day, where we find an 18-year-old Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) in a group home, just another cog in the foster care machine. Her goal, we quickly learn, is to land a spot at the prestigious Godolkin University so she can capitalize on her superhero abilities and make a life for herself. And at the end of a quick "day-in-the-life" montage, we see Marie log in to her "God U" account to see she's been accepted.

We follow Marie into her dorm as we get a bit of the flavor of this unique university… For the most part, it's what you'd expect from a college dorm, but each predictable element has a unique superhero twist. We see kids smoking weed… and passing the bong by levitating it. There's the ever-present RA… who's invisible, save a floating pair of glasses and a hat. That sorta thing.

Marie enters her room and meets her roommate Emma (Lizze Broadway) aka "Little Cricket," a popular YouTube blogger thanks to her shrinking powers. Basically, she's Ant-Man, though as we'll soon learn… her story and her powers are quite a bit darker than Scott Lang's. Anyway, Emma's nice and bubbly and gives Marie the obligatory "down-low" on Godolkin.

The first thing Marie (and the audience) needs to know is that this is a super competitive school. Everyone's constantly hustling to stand out in order to land a spot in the "Top Ten," a list of the best and most promising superhero students as voted on by Godolkin's Board of Trustees. Currently, the No. 1 ranked student is Luke Riordan (Patrick Schwarzenegger), a.k.a Golden Boy, a super-hot and super-cocky young guy with what seems like both the powers of super strength, invincibility, and pyrokinesis… so sort of like Chris Evans. And by that, I mean Johnny Storm meets Captain America (both played by Chris Evans).

Every week, the whole school flocks to the God U stadium to watch the Top Ten's "workouts," which consist mainly of races, weight lifting contests… and fights to the death. Emma takes Marie to one of these workouts and we get to see Golden Boy's talents on display as he faces off against a student nearly twice his size. But Golden Boy doesn't break a sweat… pummeling his opponent to the dirt and ripping the arms off his body. No worries, though… he sticks the guy's arms back on and they fuse right back to his shoulders. Such is life at God U.

Everyone's enamored by Golden Boy. But Marie's less enamored than she is jealous, 'cause she's determined to take his place at No. 1. Emma laughs this off — most students don't even get accepted into the Crime Fighting major, let alone stand a chance of making it into the Top Ten. But Marie's insistent. She will land a spot in the Crime Fighting school, and make it to No. 1.

Unfortunately, that dream is quickly dashed when Marie finds out she's been assigned to the Performance school instead of the Crime Fighting school. Furious, she goes to the office of the head of the department, the lauded Professor Brink (Clancy Brown), but she's denied entry by Brink's TA/gatekeeper Jordan (London Thor/Derek Luh). Why the two credits? Oh, that's because Jordan is bi-gendered, with the ability to switch their appearance from male to female in a blink.

In addition to the ability to conjure a dick, Jordan also kind of is a dick, telling Marie that they personally rejected her application because Marie's credentials (and social media presence) doesn't come close to stacking up to the rest of the Crime Fighting students. Marie protests and even gets a brief audience with Brink… but he stands by Jordan's decision. Marie should just accept her spot in Performance and be grateful she's even at this school in the first place.

Fuming from her rejection, Marie storms off through the quad, where she runs into a group of campus police officers chasing a meth'd-out kid named Sam (Asa Germann). Marie, seeing a chance to stand out by doing something heroic, chases after Sam and, with the aid of another student named Andre (Chance Perdomo), they help the cops arrest Sam.

Unfortunately, no one saw or filmed Marie's bad-assery, so it doesn't help her cause. However, it turns out Andre is the BFF of Luke/Golden Boy, he's currently ranked No. 2 at God U, and he's impressed with Marie… so he invites her out partying with him and the popular kids.

Marie's hesitant at first… she really doesn't want to break curfew and blow her shot at succeeding at Godolkin… but Emma convinces her that this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, both in terms of having a f—ing blast, and so she can get close with an influential crew that can help propel her up the student rankings. Emma's got a point, so Marie relents.

Brooke Palmer/Prime Video Chance Perdomo, Jaz Sinclair, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Maddie Phillips, and Derek Luh of 'Gen V'

She goes clubbing with Andre, Luke, his mind-control powered girlfriend Cate (Maddie Phillips), and Jordan. As kids these days are wont to do — they down shots, blow lines, and take Molly. After a beat of resistance, Marie is peer pressured into taking Molly, and as the good times roll…

We follow Andre through the club as he tries to use his charm and his metallurgy powers (he's basically Magneto) to impress a girl by turning a coin into a metallic bird figurine and levitating it across the bar, trying to land it in a guy's drink. But as a patron bumps into Andre, breaking his concentration, the bird suddenly darts off-course… and accidentally stabs a woman in the neck.

As she falls to the ground, bleeding out… Luke, Jordan, Cate and Andre bolt out of there as quickly as possible, but Marie decides to stay behind, using her powers to put the bleeding woman's blood back into her body. She saves her life… and becomes famous in the process, thanks to the other club-goers' iPhone footage that quickly goes viral.

Brooke Palmer/Prime Video Chance Perdomo

As soon as Marie gets back to school, she's called into Professor Brink's office. Marie assumes, excitedly, that this means her heroics have landed her a spot in the Crime Fighting major… but she's sorely mistaken. Instead of being rewarded for saving the woman's life, she's being expelled.

Brink tells Marie that someone's gotta take the fall for slitting the woman's throat in the first place, and the only one caught on video was Marie. She insists she didn't do it, but Brink shrugs this off. Even if he did believe her, he's not gonna risk ruining the reputation of one of his rising stars just to save Marie's ass. Effective immediately, Marie is being expelled from Godolkin University.

Meanwhile, we find Luke in the midst of a nightmare of his own. But, like… an actual nightmare. Luke's been having a recurring dream where he finds himself in a mysterious forest with his long-dead brother. Luke's got no idea what this dream is about, but his brother gives him a hint, insisting that he's not dead, and he needs Luke's help.

Thrown by this, Luke visits Brink in his office… and murders Professor Brink by burning him alive. Even worse for Luke, Marie walks in just as Luke does the deed (she was hoping to change Brink's mind, but now sees that that's… no longer possible) and sees it all go down.

What follows is a big, epic superhero battle between Luke and Marie, who's aided by Jordan, and eventually Andre… though really Jordan does most of the work keeping Luke at bay. The battle spills out onto the quad, students start filming, and overwhelmed by his fiery emotions — regret, confusion, anger, shame — Luke flies off into the sky and blows himself up.

Stray Observations:

• Gen V is clearly on a mission to out-gross (like "ew" not like "$") The Boys with scenes that are so ridiculous it makes me question whether I should be concerned for the writers' mental health or simply jealous of their creativity and fearlessness. The standout scene so far involves Emma using her shrinking powers to, uh… indulge a male student in a bizarre sexual fantasy. When the fantasy was described, it sounded so absurd I assumed it'd happen off-screen. Nope. The scene in question is so outlandish it makes Eyes Wide Shut look like a Disney Channel original.

• Speaking of Little Cricket, Emma's storyline is perhaps the most emotionally affecting of the pilot, with the reveal that in order to get small, Emma has to purge. It's a brutally effective metaphor (albeit pretty much just literal and not really a metaphor at all) for an eating disorder that I'm really interested to see play out.

• I've always loved the faux commercials, trailers, and corporate videos in The Boys, so I got a real kick out of the "Welcome to Godolkin" video in the pilot, which highlighted the prestige of the university by, among other things, boasting "alumni from Godolkin have gone on to star in Riverdale" and silly things like that. Goddamn, this show is a joy.

Episode 2: "First Day"

Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie), the CEO of Vought Industries, is pissed. Not only did her best supe recruiter get himself killed, but the murderer was Golden Boy, the supe everyone had pegged as the next leader of The Seven. And if that wasn't bad enough, it seems like Golden Boy killed Brink because he caught wind of what was happening in "The Woods." Ashley makes clear to Dean Shetty (Shelley Conn) that if The Woods are exposed, they're all screwed.

Marie is understandably traumatized by what happened the night before. Emma tries to console her by offering a buffet of drugs she has on hand, but Marie just wants to sleep it off.  So sleep she does, and when she wakes up and heads out of her dorm room, she's surprised to discover… she's a celebrity. Not only did everyone on campus learn about her fighting Golden Boy, but so did the Board… who vaulted Marie to a shocking No. 8 ranking.

So… Ho. Lee. S—. Not only is Marie now not being expelled ('cause the nightclub incident was blamed on the late Golden Boy), she's become the first freshman to ever reach the goddamn Top Ten. Her dreams are within reach… and everything starts happening very fast:

She's invited to audit a Junior year-level crime-fighting class. Everyone on campus wants a selfie with her. She's invited to a fancy fundraiser. And she's offered a nationally broadcasted interview with Vaught anchorwoman Haley Miller.

But not everyone benefited as they should have from Golden Boy's death. In reality, Marie did very little to fight him off, and neither did Andre (who took Luke's spot at No. 1). The only one to really give him a run for his money was Jordan… but the Board doesn't feel that highlighting Jordan is a good PR move due to their gender fluidity. Jordan's not "four quadrant," they say.

Jordan's understandably angry about that. Here they were, risking their life to help Marie, and they actually moved down in the rankings as a result. So Jordan presses Marie to help make it right — they ask her to admit on-air, during her Haley Miller interview, what really happened, giving Jordan the credit they deserve.

As Marie considers this, we jump over to Andre as he reels from the death of his best friend —  and contemplates something that's got him perplexed. Before Luke flew off into the sky and blew himself up, he hugged Andre and whispered in his ear: "Your dad has it." Anyone else might have chalked this up to some kind of deranged babble from a kid in the midst of a psychotic break, but Andre and Luke had been BFFs for years, and Andre's not about to shrug off his final words.

Andre eventually realizes that Luke's cryptic message referred not to Andre's actual dad (who's a powerful Godolkin board member and ex-supe Polarity) but the statue of his dad on campus. Andre finds the statue, carves a hole in it (in its groin, obvs) and reaches inside, finding a cell phone. On the phone is a video Luke made claiming that Brink knew something about his brother's death and had something to do with a secret facility beneath the school.

Andre breaks into Brink's office to investigate. Hidden on Brink's laptop is video of the young "meth-head" kid from the pilot (the one Andre and Marie helped catch) being tortured in a prison cell hidden below the school. And as Andre checks out the file name, he sees that this isn't just some random kid — it's Luke's brother Sam, who was supposed to have died years ago.

Elsewhere on campus, we catch up with Emma, who's scored a study session with Justine (Maia Jae Bastidas), one of the most popular girls in the Performance school. At first, it seems like Justine really does just want to be friends with Emma, as she opens up about her own struggles and compliments Emma on her socials. Soon, Emma comes clean about her eating disorder.

But the next day, Emma walks through campus to find students everywhere either laughing at her or pitying her… because Justine did a vlog revealing all of Emma's secrets. What a b—!

Back with Marie, we find her chatting with Dean Shetty about what she wants out of her time at Godolkin. Marie admits that she hasn't heard from her little sister in years, and hopes that if she can make it to The Seven and prove her worth as a hero, she'll finally be able to redeem herself in Annabeth's eyes.

Shetty sees an opportunity in Marie's desperation. What better way to redeem herself than the interview Marie's got lined up on Vought News? So now, Marie's got a dilemma on her hands. Does she take full credit for fighting Golden Boy so she can bolster her hero reputation in the hopes that her sister will be watching? Or does she do the right thing and give Jordan their due?

Of course, Marie takes the credit for herself, and immediately feels like s— about it. So she rushes off and tries to assuage her guilt by slicing into her hand and levitating her blood… a scene that's intercut with Emma purging and shrinking herself to microscopic proportions. It's a tough watch, but a very effective sequence that underscores the heart of this show — it's not as much about sex and superpowers as it is about struggling, psychologically damaged students.

Our episode ends with Andre making his way to the basement of the school to figure out what the hell's going on down there when he's caught by campus security. They tase him, knock him on his ass and prepare to throw him in a cell of his own when Cate appears and saves the day, using her mind-control powers to force campus security into an absurd series of sex acts instead of arresting Andre. Classic Boys-World s—.

Stray Observations:

• "This is gonna be big! Like post-9/11 big!" was as cringey as it was hilarious. Leave it to social media influencers to turn tragedy into opportunity.

• Cate is quickly becoming one of my favorite characters due to her brutal and creative usage of her mind-control powers. Can't remember laughing harder than when she forced campus douche Rufus to hit himself in the nuts with a bat once per hour while shouting "Jumanji!"

• I appreciate that this show is keeping its stakes both relatively small in scale and also laser-focused on adolescent issues: peer pressure, harmful rumors, popularity, eating disorders, self-harming behaviors, etc. There's plenty of room for the show to grow into The Boys-level stakes, but there's definitely no need to rush there.

Episode 3: "#ThinkBrink"

Gen V's third episode opens with a flashback to three years ago, where we see Luke visit his brother Sam in his cell beneath the school. Sam's freaking out after the news about Compound V got leaked, feeling betrayed by his parents for subjecting him to this complicated and painful life.

Luke tries to get Sam to calm down, but before he can, campus security enters and tases him. Luke doesn't take this too well, and puts his fist through (literally through) the face of the guard and gets himself tranq'd into unconsciousness.

Some time later, Luke is told that Sam died by suicide. He has trouble believing it at first, but eventually, with Cate's help, he accepts it. Sam was a sick kid and it's probably for the best. As we watch Luke try to move on, we move back to the present day.

We find Cate and Andre together after their nearly fatal run-in with campus security the night before. They resolve to do whatever it takes to save Sam, for Luke's sake. And though they both loved Luke and don't want to betray his memory, there's clearly a spark between Luke's former gf and bff. And after a beat, they can't deny it anymore… so they kiss and begin stripping off each other's clothes.

As we cut over to Marie, who finds Emma alone in their room, super tiny (like a third the size of an ant) clinging to a stitch of carpet. Marie helps Emma eat her way back to normal size and tells Emma she's worried about her, but Emma just deflects, insisting she's fine.

From here, we follow Marie to a meeting with Dean Shetty, who invites her to come to the fundraiser for Brink's death as her honored guest. Of course, Marie accepts, hot off the heels of her blockbuster interview on Vought News, trying to capitalize on her fame in any way she can.

But Marie won't be the only aspirant attending the fundraiser… basically all the main characters are gonna be there, and basically all of them will be attending with their messed up parents. Emma's mom arrives on campus and immediately starts criticizing her eating habits (wonder where they come from?). Jordan's parents show up and it quickly becomes clear that they don't approve of Jordan's gender fluidity. And Andre's dad, former supe and current God U board member Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas) pressures Andre to put on a happy face and schmooze it up so he can stay No. 1.

At the fundraiser, Marie is spinning from all the attention she's getting. Emma's mom pressures her to accept an offer for a reality TV show that turns her into somewhat of a sad, cautionary tale for girls with eating disorders. Jordan argues with their parents about their antiquated perspective on gender identity. Andre tries to confide in his father about The Woods, and learns that, to his shock, his dad knows all about it. Eventually, everyone gets sick of all this pressure and starts boozing their troubles away.

In the midst of this familial drama, Emma and Andre take a break from the party to share a joint outside. Andre gets to talking about what he's uncovered regarding The Woods, and Emma offers to help. Andre can't get past security without being spotted… but maybe she can.

By making herself super small, Emma manages to sneak into Sam's cell. When Sam first sees Emma, he's convinced he's hallucinating, but pretty soon he comes to accept that Emma's real, and she's here to help break him out… but there's one problem: he doesn't wanna go. He's scared to try to escape again, having been tortured into submission. The only way Emma manages to convince Sam to leave with her is by telling him that Luke is the one who sent her. At the mention of his brother's name, Sam relents.

But a security guard busts into Sam's cell looking for Emma. Sam tries to fight him off to give her a chance to escape, but he quickly zaps Sam into unconsciousness. Desperate to help this dude she's actually started to develop feelings for, Emma (still tiny) leaps into the security guard's ear… and burrows through his brain, killing him.

As Emma hops out his other ear, drenched in blood and brain matter, grossed the f– out by what she just did… more guards enter, surrounding both her and Sam. No way out.

Stray Observations:

• I love a good "everyone's parents are dicks" story. But weirdly, the most touching moment of the hour came from Cate, one of only two main characters without a parental presence on-screen. Turns out Cate killed her brother by telling him, while on a camping trip, to "leave and never come back." This, of course, was before Cate knew about her mind-control powers. Sadly, Cate's brother did exactly as he was told. He disappeared, and her parents never touched her again.

• I loved the Deep (Chace Crawford) cameo here, insisting Brink made him the man he is today. Which, if you know Deep… is not really something you want to be credited for.

New episodes of Gen V drop Fridays on Prime Video.

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