Gen V Season-Premiere Recap: Brave New World

Welcome back to school! How was everyone’s summer break? Hopefully you had a much better few months than the rising sophomores of Gen V. Either way, there’s no time like the fall semester to start anew. An apple cider a day keeps the fascism away, right? The Boys has been an explicitly political show from the beginning, but recent seasons have leaned harder into real-world parallels, especially with Homelander’s ascent to governing power in the season-four finale. It was a bit unsettling last year to witness the supe-supremacist speech where Homelander vowed to take revenge on America’s “enemies” and ordered his puppet, incoming president Calhoun, to declare martial law. But the college-campus setting of Gen V has allowed the spinoff to carve out its own identity, coming at many of the same satirical targets from a different angle.

Take the recap early in “New Year, New U,” which updates us on where The Boys left off while filtering the big world changes down to the campus level. At least among conservative-coded Hometeamers and supe supremacists, it’s accepted knowledge that Robert Singer and Starlight colluded to kill Victoria Neuman, a deep-state conspiracy that necessitated Homelander taking control. Now, Godolkin University is “free from the woke agenda” and staffed entirely by supes, including the mysterious new dean, Cipher (a marvelously creepy Hamish Linklater). It’s pretty clear where some of these ideas originate: Rightwing leadership is hellbent on reshaping higher education in America right now.

Much of season one revolved around a supe-killing virus engineered by scientists in the Woods at Dean Shetty’s instruction; here, that’s not so relevant anymore, even though we know it’s still very much a factor in the parent show. Based on the opening flashback to 1967, just two years after God U was founded, the focus this time will be Project Odessa, led by Thomas Godolkin (Wicked’s Ethan Slater) himself.

This premiere has a lot to take care of, introducing new threats while untangling the messy fallout from the season finale. We last saw Cate and Sam taking power as the “new Guardians of Godolkin” after liberating Shetty’s supe test subjects and pinning the death of 12 innocents on Marie, Jordan, Andre, and Emma. Season two has no interest in limiting itself to a jail cell, though, so right away we learn that Cate has persuaded the administration to let the kids reenroll. Well, to let Jordan and Emma reenroll, since Marie is off the grid and Andre is dead.

We lost actor Chance Perdomo at the far-too-young age of 27 last year, and the show has a duty to wrap up his arc as naturally as possible while leaving space to mourn both the actor and the character. And honestly, this premiere does a pretty good job with a tough situation. We don’t need to actually see Andre’s failed escape attempt; hearing Jordan tell the story near the end of the episode is powerful enough. It’s easy to picture Andre making the rash choice to brute-force his way out when a safer method (an open maintenance pipe) falls through.

But easily the best Andre tribute of the episode is the scene between his father and Emma. When Emma walks into Polarity’s house, she finds him depressed, drunk, and full of self-loathing. It’s a foregone conclusion that she’ll ultimately convince him to get back up and start looking into Cipher — the man was present at Elmira when Andre died, and the prospect of revenge is tempting — but it also makes sense that Polarity initially wouldn’t see the point. Even setting aside his own role in “shoving Andre into the Vought machine,” there’s no way he can get his son back now. Sean Patrick Thomas’s performance here is deeply affecting, especially his disbelief at the idea of rectifying this somehow (“He was all I had!”). Thomas has always been one of the strongest performers on the show, and here he reaches new levels.

Emma kind of takes on the protagonist role for much of this premiere, and it suits her surprisingly well. She’s smart enough to understand the necessity of complying — she and Jordan read canned PR statements about their exoneration after being wrongfully accused — but also brave enough to proceed with her investigation of Cipher and search for Marie instead of just keeping her head down. Drowning her sorrows at a frat party, she happens to see a video of wounded Hometeamers lying in their own blood and recognizes Marie’s handiwork. So she gets Jordan’s reluctant approval to go find their friend, mentioning that Andre was the first person to help her see herself as a hero.

Marie has been through a hell of a day fighting off Dogknott (Zach McGowan), a bounty hunter with dog-like abilities who tracked her to a motel in Weehawken. All Marie really wants is to find her sister Annabeth, but she’s getting nowhere, and it doesn’t help that she can’t stop bringing attention to herself by beating up Hometeamers. Starlight herself has to step in to save her during the brutal Dogknott brawl, and she has some advice Marie doesn’t want to hear: Take a deal and return to God U. She wants her to look into Project Odessa, which Vought is apparently resuming.

In the dramatic final scene, Emma and Jordan find Marie, leading to the expected fight about Marie abandoning the group and arguably leading Andre to make a foolish sacrifice. But when Cate follows them there, everything escalates. Now, Cate has always been a bit inscrutable; her motivations are sometimes hard to parse, which makes her the show’s most potentially interesting character but also its most frustrating. In this episode, she’s still trying to play both sides: grieving Andre and “protecting” her friends, but also being a huge narc because she has no actual leverage over Cipher and Vought.

Cate’s efforts to manipulate Marie this time are laughable; she’s not on her A-game, and nobody trusts her enough to let those dangerous fingers anywhere near them. Case in point: Jordan blasting her into an electrical box when she reaches out for Marie. To make matters worse, Marie can’t risk touching Cate to heal her skull. All they can do is leave her to die.

Would Gen V really kill off Cate at this stage? I doubt it, especially since the cast is already down a major cast member. But you never really know with this bold, brutal franchise. Good thing we already have two more episodes available.

• Those explosive deaths in the flashback are basically Gen V dunking you headfirst back into this world. The tentacles shooting out of a man’s ass are particularly memorable.

• Another signature gross supe moment: Jordan punches a guy mid-butt-chug, causing him to explode beer (and whatever else) all over a group of people.

• Not a ton from Sam in this episode, but he’s with Justine now. Emma also gets a nice scene declining his truce offer and telling him off for, you know, killing people. At least Cate is still around to mind-control him into guiltlessness!

• Linklater’s performance is a real highlight of this premiere, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of him. We don’t know much about Cipher or his powers yet, and that blank-slate quality makes him all the more menacing — along with the moment when he almost sticks Cate’s hand in a blender.

• Zach McGowan will always be Jody from Shameless to me.

• Apparently Emma’s new party buddy worked with Jacob Elordi and already has a role secured in the sequel to Saltburn, titled Saltburnt.

• RIP to Chance Perdomo, to whom this season is dedicated.