Binge-worthy: Gen V has teen superheroes fighting the grown-ups seeking to control them
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
(From left) London Thor and Derek Luh as Jordan Li, Chance Perdomo as Andre Anderson and Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau in Gen V.
PHOTO: PRIME VIDEO
Follow topic:
Gen V (R21)
Prime Video
4 stars
Does anyone remember Heroes? The American drama (2006 to 2010) about average folks who discover they possess superpowers debuted to instant acclaim and popularity, before its quality fell off a cliff in its second season.
From there, the series sputtered on until it was cancelled after its fourth season.
When The Boys premiered on Prime Video in 2019, the show held the same excitement for this reviewer as the first season of Heroes.
Like Heroes’ first season, The Boys is a superhero show with visual flair, great dialogue and character-driven stories packed with surprises.
Luckily, it has managed to maintain its standards after three seasons.
In September, The Boys’ spin-off, Gen V, was introduced. Seven episodes in, the show – set in Godolkin University, an institution for teens with superpowers – has proven to be just as engrossing as its parent series.
1. Dirty fun
The pedigree of The Boys indicated that it would push the boundaries of good taste.
It is based on the comic book series of the same name co-created by Garth Ennis, the Northern Irish-American writer known for penning cynical, high-violence stories aimed at older readers, such as supernatural fantasy Preacher (which was also made into a series that ran from 2016 to 2019).
Gen V shares The Boys’ penchant for gross-out gags.
It anticipates the schoolyard question – “If this superhero can do this with his body to fight the bad guys, what else can he do with it in his private time?” – and answers it with scenarios that include dorm parties and stunts performed for social media clicks.
The set-ups are often breathtakingly clever and, of course, gleefully juvenile. The show has thoroughly earned its R21 classification.
2. It gets political
The South Korean hit fantasy series Moving,
Gen V delves deeper into the idea of militarised superheroes and adds a beautifully rendered layer of corporate satire.
Officials from Vought International, the sinister entity that runs Godolkin University and the entire superhero programme, are back-stabbers and bootlickers.
Their main job – and it is a job they excel at – is fooling members of the public into voting against their own interests.
In the show, average citizens are also mocked for their cultish worship of superheroes, a devotion that the Vought minions are only too happy to milk for maximum financial gain.
(From left) Maddie Phillips as Cate Dunlap, Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau, Lizze Broadway as Emma Meyer, Derek Luh as Jordan Li and Asa Germann as Sam in Gen V.
PHOTO: PRIME VIDEO
3. Black Mirror-style imaginings
New student Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) has the power to control the flow of blood, a skill that others find disgusting, so she is ranked low in an online rating system whose algorithms determine whether one is a goddess or a pariah.
Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway) has the power to shrink or grow, but a video taken without her consent and posted on social media makes her the school’s laughing stock.
When superheroes commit crimes, Vought’s media channels pump out propaganda designed to gaslight the nation into thinking it saw nothing.
Like Black Mirror (2011 to present), the show imagines current technology taken to dystopian limits.
While its set-ups do not always work – some are mentioned in one scene and forgotten by the next – they give the series a moral code that its creators wisely decided it needed.
