Tek Knight rises: Meet “Gen V”'s fascist Batman with a twist

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Gen V season 1, episode 4, "The Whole Truth."

Tek Knight, a well known supe from The Boys comics, has been name-dropped on the series adaptation as far back as season 1. A woman from a support group for the human casualties of heroes recalled how he once saved her life but then left her paralyzed when he broke her spine. The character got another mention in season 2, when Mr. Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) mentioned the movie premiere for Tek Knight Lives.

Now, Tek Knight himself has made his debut in the show's growing cinematic universe. Derek Wilson (Future Man) portrays the supe in the fourth episode of spinoff series Gen V, now streaming on Amazon's Prime Video.

An alumnus of Godolkin University, the premier college for young supes, he arrives on campus as the host of the Vought+ true-crime series The Whole Truth. Armed with his annoyingly enhanced powers of deduction, as well as a reputation for killing and/or beating his subjects into comas, he hopes to hide the true story behind Golden Boy's (Patrick Schwarzenegger) suicide from the public by pinning it on a patsy.

Brooke Palmer/Prime Video Derek Wilson as Tek Knight on 'Gen V'

And in true The Boys fashion, there's an added twist. A nod to the character's sex addiction in the comics, Tek Knight happens to have a tumor that compels him to screw anything that remotely resembles an orifice. (Bathroom hand dryers, donuts, decorative skulls, vacuum cleaner suction tubes, car gas tanks, the tops of hazard cones, etc.) "It's really not like us to leave dry-humping on the table," Eric Kripke, who heads The Boys and executive produces Gen V, playfully tells EW in an interview alongside spinoff showrunner Michele Fazekas.

"I don't think we left anything on the editing floor, because it was so much fun," Fazekas adds of filming a humping Wilson on set. "We even have a little post-credits one, which we were so happy about." (That's the hand dryer one.) "A lot of it was scripted, like the donut, or he would add one. There was the tape, where he would just kind of lovingly stroke the tape. Endless comedy."

Kripke explains how he was reluctant to feature Tek Knight in the early seasons of The Boys. "In the comics, he's basically Iron Man and we cannot afford to do that suit," he admits. Jessica Chou, who wrote Gen V's fourth episode and, more notably, "Herogasm" for The Boys season 3, then brought up the character for the college-set spinoff.

Dynamite Entertainment Tek Knight, as seen in 'The Boys' comics from writer Garth Ennis and artist Darick Robertson

"Her pitch was, 'Let's make him more Batman than Iron Man.' He's a combo of both," Kripke continues. "He has his own underground cave, [but] instead of Tony Stark, if we made him the world's greatest detective, then he doesn't need a big, crazy suit. We can have fun with true-crime shows and the inherent fascism of Batman."

This year's superhero movie Blue Beetle also cracked a similar joke when George Lopez's Uncle Rudy shouts, "Batman is a fascist!" "I mean, it's right there baked in," Kripke jokes of DC's Dark Knight. "He's a super wealthy dude..."

"He doesn't actually have superpowers," Fazekas adds.

"Goes around punishing poor people for stealing bread," Kripke continues. "It's right there!"

After EW exclusively revealed Wilson in the role of Tek Knight, Kripke hinted on social media that the character could pop up again on The Boys season 4, which wrapped filming in April, prior to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. When asked about that potential, he deflects: "I shall neither confirm nor deny." So... definitely maybe then.

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