The Boys’ Spinoff Is Worth Watching, Even If You’ve Never Watched Its Darkly Hilarious Predecessor

The Boys, Prime Video’s cynical, disgusting, hilarious superhero show, is back—sort of. The success of the original Boys, a darling of critics and audiences alike, has summoned forth a spinoff, possessed of the same profane spirit, and containing a similar amount of blood and guts: Gen V.

In The Boys, which will have its fourth season in 2024, “supes”—humans altered to become superheroes, by the early administration of a chemical called Compound V—work for the evil corporation known as Vought International. Corrupt and violent supes (led by Antony Starr’s fantastically unhinged Homelander) battle a cadre of vengeful humans (led by Karl Urban as Butcher and Jack Quaid as Hughie) who have got serious anti-Vought vendettas.

If The Boys is a David vs. Goliath story, Gen V is a coming-of-age tale. A group of young supes attend the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting, where they struggle in a perpetual rat race, fighting to get into the university’s “Top 10” list of best students and gain the attention of Vought higher-ups. A central group, led by Jaz Sinclair as Marie, a “blood-bending” young woman who mistakenly killed her parents, unravels a mystery and slowly comes to see the evil at the heart of God U.

Does Gen V work—as a college show, as a Boys show, as a show about young people’s issues? Below, Boys fan Rebecca Onion, a Slate senior editor, and college-show fan Nadira Goffe, a Slate culture writer, discuss.

Rebecca Onion: The Boys’ showrunner Eric Kripke says that Gen V is, he hopes, “one of the most realistic college shows anyone’s made.” Nadira, you were in college much more recently than me. Is this what your undergraduate experience was like?

Nadira Goffe: One of the things I’m both resentful of and deeply thankful for in life is that I had pretty mild high school and college experiences. I think that’s partially why I love teen soaps—on which I consider myself somewhat of an expert—because they depict teen adventures that are more exciting (though also more traumatizing) than what I’ve experienced. However, while my university wasn’t full of teens who could kill me in a heartbeat with their super strength or wipe my mind with their mind-control powers, it did—like Gen V’s God U.—have the internal politics of wanting to sustain a clean media image as a “good university for talented students,” something that has resulted in a few scandals. And, like in most colleges, I saw my fair share of fellow students dealing with or spreading awareness about common issues among young adults like eating disorders, sexual agency and consent, drinking and drug use, lack of LGBTQ+ rights, racism, and violence of various sorts. So, I guess what I’m saying is … surprisingly, kinda? What about you?

Onion: Also kinda! One thing that Gen V does well, in trying to be a “realistic college show,” is playing up the hothouse weirdness of a selective college. It’s a place where a bunch of horned-up teens and early twentysomethings are thrown together, all trying to “find their true selves” while also competing to have the best: the best friendships, the best internships, the best romantic relationships. I always thought these goals were incommensurate, to some degree, because what if the “true self” you’ve come to college to “find” turns out to enjoy a quiet life of tea and houseplants? No room for that at my undergrad, or at God U.! In that way, I guess the show was “realistic,” even though nobody ever flew above the quad and burst themselves into a million pieces—like the supe Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger) does in the first episode of Gen V—at my school.

In the God U. context, we see the competition between the students through the eyes of Marie, who comes to college from a place of deep trauma. She has no support—she killed her parents, by mistake, the first time her powers appeared, and her sister won’t speak with her—and if she fails at God U., she will join the other kids who hurt people with their powers, many of whom, it’s hinted, have lost their minds and been shunned from society because of what they did. What did you think of Marie, the classic audience avatar who guides us through this weird new world? (As a Boys rookie, you probably needed a guide, and badly!)

Goffe: I didn’t know what or who a Vought was, let alone a Compound V, so I definitely appreciated having a proxy newbie who is constantly bombarded with exposition dialogue from other characters.

Goffe: The show opens with Marie’s supe origin story, in which Marie experiences her blood-bending powers when she gets her period for the first time, which she obviously can’t control, leading to the tragic end that you’ve mentioned.

I sort of love this? We are constantly bombarded with menstrual media that is so flowery and serene—like those countless ads that show a slender woman twirling in a white dress—even though the experience of having a uterus is often anything but. Today, I think this tone of period marketing and discourse is lessening as the conversation around menstruation takes on a more empowering tone—it’s a process to celebrate, not ignore, fear, malign, or make pretty with milky euphemisms. But it’s rare that we see periods—at least in the context of womanhood—as badass. Marie’s story is heartbreaking, but it’s pretty cool to see menstruation as something that is so powerful it can even be deadly. Sure, the simplification of “your femininity or womanhood equals your power” is pretty cheesy, but Gen V complicates it in devastating and hilarious ways.

However, it should be said that present-day Marie, who is in better control of her powers, often has to perform self-harm acts to draw blood, usually in the form of cutting her palm, in order to weaponize it for battle. Self-harm is one of the many “quintessential teen issues” that the show attempts to flip on its head. I don’t know about you, but some of this I loved and some definitely felt tiring at times.

Onion: Whew, yes. I was listening to a segment on the show on the Ringer podcast The Watch, and co-host Andy Greenwald described Gen V as the most “irresponsible and appalling thing I’ve ever seen on television since we started covering it.” He described the spinoff as “incredibly cynical” for using young people’s issues—disordered eating, drug use, self-harm, burnout—as an amplifying device for the show’s drama and its plentiful violence.

On the OG Boys, the powers are sort of just randomly assigned to people who get Compound V as kids—Homelander has laser eyes and can fly; the Deep has gills and can talk to fish; A-Train can run super fast. Then, after the powers emerge, they’re massaged into character traits via the Vought media machine. Maybe the supes’ personalities reflect their powers a bit, but it’s not overdetermined.

But on Gen V, it’s like the writers brainstormed a list of issues that college kids might have and assigned each character one of them. We have Emma (Lizzie Broadway), Marie’s roommate, whose superpower is getting bigger and smaller, but she has to puke in order to do it, in the vein of “purging.” The ambitious nonbinary star-student Jordan can shift seamlessly between a boy body (Derek Luh) and a girl body (London Thor), but because “the South won’t like it”—clearly a comment on real-life political happenings—the Vought higher-ups think there will be a cap on how far Jordan can rise in the hierarchy. Cate (Maddie Phillips), who’s seen as the most popular and beautiful girl in the school, can manipulate people with her voice and touch. Golden Boy is a star athlete and student who burns out from his secret burdens.

I do have to say, I think I’m not quite at Greenwald-level disgust with this, but I find it a little ABC Afterschool Special for me. Especially because two of the main characters—Emma and Andre (Chance Perdomo)—have pushy momager-type parents who press them to achieve greater heights of success, which is such a classic teen-show dynamic. What do you think? Is this cynical or just kind of weak sauce?

Goffe: I go back and forth on this because I find some of these situations intriguing, and some entirely overwrought. For example, I’m not too fond of Emma’s belabored issues with an-eating-disorder-that’s-not-an-eating-disorder, although I do love her character overall. It’s not merely that, if she pukes, she immediately gets small, and then she can get big again instantly. Instead, bingeing and purging determine her size at any point in time, so she has to be constantly mindful of what she eats. It’s clunky—she’s ashamed because her bingeing and purging is “gross,” but still maintains that she’s in control. (There’s a funny scene where her overbearing mother, who thinks Emma has shrunk an inch or two shorter, offers to measure her height and reminds her to eat enough.) The behind-the-scenes peek at her power feels cynically shoehorned in, yes—but The Boys universe seems to be a deeply cynical world, in which I don’t think Emma’s classmates would care about this as much as they do in the show because it’s entirely believable that teen supes might be used to their peers having to do disgusting or dangerous things to control or maximize their powers.

What I do find interesting, and what actually convinced me to watch the show without having ever seen The Boys, is Jordan’s transitioning power. I saw a fan edit of the character and immediately wanted to check out the show because I think it’s one of the more original powers, derived from a much more interesting “teen issue,” on display. I find Jordan’s power incredibly campy and fun, though I could understand an argument that it is pandering or cheesy. And let it be known that if I, a cishet Black woman, could choose to transition into a man at will, especially one as hot as Derek Luh (which, whew), I would all the time. It is kind of a serve to see Jordan transition into a girl just to spite their father, and it’s interesting to see Jordan fight for their identity in the most intimate and public spaces. However, Jordan’s power also plays an interesting role in their budding romance with another character, when Jordan fears that their partner will be like everyone else in the past who wanted Jordan to pick a gender and stay with it. Now, I wasn’t sure if that felt eye roll–worthy or earnest. What did you think?

Onion: I totally agree that Jordan’s power is probably the most compelling one. I was reminded on the subreddit r/TheBoys that this is not the very first time a “teens have powers” show has come up with this idea—shout-out to the character Curtis Donovan on Misfits, who once impregnated himself while he had the power to switch sexes—but this is different, because Jordan is like this for life. I can’t believe how perfect the dual casting of Derek Luh (likewise, whew) and London Thor is.

Onion: If nothing else, I’ll stay with this show to watch how Jordan’s plotline develops. But another reason to keep watching is the way the writers integrate social media, and its users’ fixation on reputation and clout, into the world. (These matters are also key in The Boys.) These kids at God U. can choose two career tracks: crime-fighting, which is seen as prestigious and desirable, and entertainment, which is seen as less than. But the crime-fighting superheroes are always also entertainers. The division is interesting, and I think there are places the show can go with it that could surprise us.

Will you keep watching? And would you recommend that other non-Boys people pick it up?

Goffe: Ah, yes Misfits! How could I forget about that show, which I loved? It’s the first time I was introduced to Game of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon and The Umbrella Academy’s Robert Sheehan. But you’re right, I appreciate Gen V’s take on gender more, and I love the way it digs into not just social media, but specifically influencing and content creation. The show pretty explicitly lays out that good attention, whether in the form of heaps of followers for entertainers or positive approval ratings for crime fighters, is the only way to make something of yourself as a supe. I’m really interested in seeing where that goes, and so I will definitely be finishing the show.

Because of everything we’ve laid out, I would recommend this show to the Boys-unacquainted if they like teen soaps. It’s about teen superheroes, all with deep-rooted childhood trauma, trying to unearth some hush-hush evil plot going on in their university, putting their middle finger up to corrupt authority, while also, of course, wanting to have sex with each other all the time. Of course it’s melodramatic. But it’s also really fun and deals with some hotbed topics in interesting ways. I can’t wait to see how our Heroes of Godolkin get through the semester.