It’s a New Year in a New School

When is a TV spin-off not just a TV spin-off? Over the many, many decades of television history we’ve seen plenty of prominent shows receive spin-offs. The Adventures of Champions spun-off from The Gene Autry Show. A Different World came out of The Cosby Show (as did many allegations about Bill Cosby’s behavior, but that’s a different topic). CSI birthed a whole franchise of other cop shows. We’ve even had whole television universes, like all the interconnected shows of Normal Lear, and, of course, the Arrowverse. All of these created a bunch of independent shows that usually ran their own arcs, their own stories, their own complete sections of their universe, while only occasionally crossing over (sometimes for larger events).

What’s more unusual is a spin-off that is absolutely integral to the fabric of the parent series. While Angel and Buffy regularly crossed over, you could generally watch one series without having to keep up with the other. The big threat on Buffy never required a massive storyline tied in from Angel to resolve itself. The Arrowverse hosted massive, multi-episode, multi-series events, but each show’s big finale arc was self-contained. You almost never see a show that requires the viewing of a spin-off, sister series to make its main storyline comprehensible. But then we have Gen V, the spin-off from The Boys, which essentially functions as Season 3.5 of the parents series.

Full disclosure, I finished Gen V: Season 1 while starting my watch of The Boys, so some details for where characters from the spin-off end up was disclosed on the main series. Even if I didn’t know that, though, it would be clear that major developments from one show would affect the other. Superheroes cross over into Gen V. Prominent figures from the main show play key roles in the spin-off. This series sets up plotlines that absolutely continue over on The Boys. The show is, through and through, so very much connected to the main series that to keep up with one you need to keep up with both. It’s interesting.

I supposed it does make sense. In the original comics the arc that would become Gen V, “We Gotta Go Now,” was the fourth volume and involved a superheroine killing herself, drawing the attention of the CIA unit, the Boys. The spin-off Gen V is very, very loosely based on that arc, but whether in comics or the show, it does prove integral to continuing the storyline for the series. It’s interesting because it forces you to keep up with a second series, even if (for both shows) the total number of episodes is still less than the average broadcast TV season. It’s just a lot to expect viewers to keep up with (and if you want to see viewers think a series has become homework, just look over at the MCU).

Still, the show does a credible job of getting you engaged and making you interested in this side story that, in the end, proves critical to the main story. In part that’s because we get a new setting, and new characters, to help flesh out the overall world of The Boys (without having any question about whether it’s continuity or not, like with Diabolical). It’s also because the story being told is quite engaging and interesting, one that almost could work on its own even if it didn’t have explicit ties to the overall continuity of the main series. Gen V does what I wanted, which was give me more of the fucked up storytelling of The Boys, and it does it with aplomb.

Gen V focuses on Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), a super-powered orphan who, years earlier, accidentally killed her mother and father when she got her period (which was also when her powers first manifested). Marie has the power to control blood, and when her period happened and she started controlling her own blood then, it freaked her out. Her mom barged in, thinking her daughter was in trouble, and Marie sliced her open with blood daggers. Then she did it again to her father. It was a mess, and Marie ended up in an orphanage, Red River, while her younger (non-powered) sister was adopted and broke all contact with Marie. All she wants is to find her younger sister and prove to her that she, Marie, is not a monster.

To that end, Marie gets into Godolkin University, a school for superheroes. Riding on a scholarship, Marie wants to make it into the criminal studies track, and would do anything to prove herself. She catches the attention of the cool kids, the ones at the top of the university “superheroes in training” leaderboard – metalmancer Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo), telepath Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips), gender-shifter Jordan Li (London Thor and Derek Luh), size-changing Emma Meyer / Little Cricket Lizze Broadway, and pyrokinetic superhuman Luke Riordan / Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger) – and starts hanging out with them. But when Golden Boy suddenly kills himself, it leads the group to question everything that’s going on at the school, and just what the university is really up to.

I really like the change of setting and characters for Gen V. While I do enjoy the characters over on The Boys, I think giving us a new cast with a new perspective on the same world helps to flesh out and enhance the overall composition of The Boys. We can view superheroes, Homelander, Vought, and the whole society supporting them through a different lens. These aren’t hardened agents fighting against superheroes; these are kids that went to university thinking they’d be trained to make a difference. Once they learn not only that there’s shady stuff going on at the university, but also that Vought funds it, wants it, and doesn’t give a shit about actually doing good, it changes everything they thought they knew about being a supe.

Fitting this series in between the seasons of The Boys also allows us to come in with knowledge about the greater world. When the characters here talk about how they’re going to make a difference, we can laugh at their naivety even as we celebrate Marie getting a chance at a new start. It’s a balance between realizing everything is fake but that fakeness can still benefit the people that need it. I appreciate that the show is able to find that kind of nuance even as it presents a gory, at times freaky, and very often oddly funny (just wait for the puppets) season of television.

Setting the show around Marie’s own journey helps to ground it with stakes. Marie came from a group home, one where she couldn’t have privacy, didn’t have her own computer or her own phone, where she couldn’t really be herself. Her escape to college gives her the chance to have all that she wants and to finally be the person she knows she could be. But there’s also the threat that if she doesn’t do well in the school she’d get kicked out and sent to an adult super-care facility, one where she’d basically be treated like a prisoner for the rest of her life. She has to make it. She has to do well. We care about her and her journey. The show earns this.

Because we care about Marie we then are invested in her relationships. We like the back-and-forth friendship she has with her roommate, Emma. We appreciate the hard choices she has to make around her new friend group. We respect how they all come to view heroics the way she does. Marie is our throughline in the series, and also our beacon of hope. She helps us cut through the violence and bullshit that is core to The Boys, and her brightness is what gives Gen V its true heart.

And then when things inevitably turn to shit, because this is set in the same world as The Boys, we can be horrified along with Marie. This show doesn’t shy away from the dark reality of this world, and the story here feels like a natural progression of everything going on in the parent series. Gen V perfectly fits into the world, giving us a new perspective while still also affirming everything we know about this reality. Superheroes can’t be trusted, Vought is evil, it’s hard to be good in a world so bad. We feel this and we care about it more because of Marie and her friends. I’m actually more invested in their story than in what’s going on with the main characters of The Boys because these students aren’t quite as deep in the shit just yet. They’re easier to like and respect and care about.

The ending of this season sets up dark adventures for the next season, while also creating an interesting plotline that will play out over on The Boys: Season 4. I liked it and, absolutely, I want more. This show is great, and I think it works even better because it ties itself so tightly to the main series. You can’t have Gen V without The Boys, but then you can’t continue The Boys without the story threads started here in Gen V. There aren’t a lot of spin-offs that have attempted this trick or done it quite so well, but that’s a credit to the creative teams behind these shows. They clearly know what you’re doing, crafting a compelling world of superheroes gone wrong at every level.