The first three episodes of Gen V dropped this week so we’re straight into episode two from that packed first episode. We’ve met our students at Goldokin University, we know remotely of the mystery they’re trying to hide, being ‘The Woods’ and roughly we know how this show fits into the whole The Boys universe with characters we’ve seen from that show already appearing in this spinoff.
Previously on Gen V
In the last episode, Marie Moreau discovered she had blood manipulation powers after she got her first period and started controlling her menstrual blood. Unfortunately, she accidentally kills her parents due to not being able to control her powers and loses her younger sister who thinks she’s a monster.
Once enrolled at Goldokin University, her dream university, she meets an interesting cast of characters. After struggling to get into the class of her choice and almost being expelled, thanks to the corrupt school system run by Vought, she ends up running into Luke/Golden Boy who has just killed Brink.
Golden Boy goes on a rampage attempting to kill Marie, to keep her silent and also has an all-out fight with Jordan. After being comforted by Andre, he decides to fly into the sky and blow himself up, causing his blood and body parts to rain down on everyone.
Gen V Episode 2 Recap Review
We start the episode straight after the bloody mess that occurred last episode, getting to see everyone’s reaction to what happened as Luke’s body parts are just being swept up. We finally get to see how Vought is dealing with this situation and we did get a tease last episode within the “This Season on Gen V” segment where Ashley says he’s a chronic drug user.
Now in this episode, we see how Vought came up with this as Ashely is speaking to Dean Indira and Polarity on the phone to decide how to cover everything up. It’s interesting to see this point of view cause it shows us that there’s no care for these people being students, they all get treated the same way as the heroes as all Vought cares about is making money, we simply know this because first thing Ashley complains about is having to burn $45 million worth of Golden Boy merch.
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Even though we know that Jordan Li actually fought with Golden Boy, Ashley decides not to have them involved and just to use Andre and Marie as she doesn’t want to get gender roles and pronouns involved as it wouldn’t roll over well with the people in Dallas and Fort Lauderdale. Once again it shows how corrupt Vought is and where their priorities are, only choosing Andre and Marie to win over the NAACP ( National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
From this moment on, we cut to the morning after and see Marie wake up to the news that she’s suddenly now in the top ten ranking, we also get to see the reactions of the rest of the students as this is a placement that doesn’t seem to earned and this is something that’s played out throughout the whole episode. We delve into the morality of Marie, Jordan and Andre on the whole topic, Marie is stuck between whether she should be taking all this unearned praise because of the situation she’s been put in her whole life or if she should be honest about the situation. Jordan just wants to feel seen again after the death of Brink as he was the only person who appreciated them for who they were. Andre isn’t happy with Marie climbing her way to the top by lying and using them.
It’s all quite complicated but they all have their valid reasons for how they feel about the aftermath of Luke’s death and the new ranking system. After this, we move on to preparing for the interview that Andre and Marie have to take part in, we get to see Andre talk to his dad Polarity for the first time and get an idea of how their relationship is. Though at first glance it seems that Polarity is proud of his son Andre for becoming number one and for almost earning his way into the seven, it becomes very clear that he’s not happy because of what his son wants but because this is the life he wants for his son. Polarity very much clearly wants to relive his past glory through his son and doesn’t have any remorse for the death of his son’s friend and will go to any lengths to make sure that Andre is at the top. I think this is something that will become more clear to Andre, the further we get into the show and we could possibly see him relinquish his first place.
We then move on to see Emma in her drama class where it’s then found out that Justine knows about her sexual encounter with Liam from two nights before. Justine ensures Emma that Liam is always like that and that it has nothing to do with her, she then invites her to be partners for their work. At first, Justine seems like a completely different character from what we expected, comforting Emma about her power and allowing Emma to be open in front of her, ensuring her about her insecurity. Not long after though, it’s all revealed that it was all a facade and that Justine quickly made a video about it. This obviously upsets Emma as she feels betrayed after being open about what activates her power.
We see Emma storm into Justine’s room, where we can see her also possibly getting ready to embarrass another student by making it look like she’s giving oral to her own tail. Justine mentions that she didn’t know that it was a secret and that she seems to be overreacting but after Emma storms out in tears, Justine seems to realise that she’s made a mistake. I think it’s safe to say that Justine does seem like the character that she is, a horrible person who uses people for her own gains but, there could be a possibility that she genuinely feels sorry about what she did to Emma and we could maybe see a true apology in a future episode.
Marie shockingly finds out that she’s now been accepted into the class of her choice, entering the class late, we can see it has a new teacher after the death of Brisk who is now Dean Indira. Marie seems very happy to be in this class and going back to what we said earlier about these character’s morality, we see Jordan stop her and ask if she thinks taking all this glory is right even though it was Jordan who fought Luke. Marie doesn’t seem to care as she almost got thrown under the bus last episode but Jordan asks her to please confess during the interview that it was them who fought Luke.
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In this situation, there isn’t necessarily a right side or a wrong side. Jordan wants the credit that they’re due and wants the respect they deserve as it is already hard to roam around as a supe who is non-binary as many people don’t accept it, as we clearly saw at the start with Ashley. Marie just wants to take what she can get because she’s already been dealt a hard life and she wants to be able to start her family again with her sister. It all creates the question of whether Marie is crossing the line and we get to dive further into that later on in the episode.
We now get into Andre who very dearly misses his best friend and is the only one curious about what really happened, especially as Luke’s last words to him were “Your dad has it”. Cate joins Andre on this investigation, not being able to get anything out of his father who is clearly oblivious to what is going on, Andre finally realises what Luke meant. They head to Polarity’s statue on campus and find a hidden phone in Polarity’s crotch. On the phone is a video of Luke confessing that they’re keeping his brother Sam under the school which is the facility nicknamed ‘The Woods’. This confuses them as they first thought Sam committed suicide but are now starting to realise that everything they knew might be a lie.
Andre misses out on the interview as he decides to further investigate and he finally finds out that not only was Luke right about Sam being under the school but Sam was also the boy he helped get captured a few nights ago. Trying not to get caught by the guards, he makes his way out and sees them heading underground, by shock he sees a random bystander get killed for being seen in the vicinity and this causes him to make some noise. Lucikly Cate is nearby and helps distract the guards, who were using sonic devices to harm Andre. Cate seems to have overused her power and faints.
We go back to the interview where Marie finds out shocking news that they tried to contact her sister but unfortunately discover that her sister wants nothing to do with her. This affects her emotionally and she decides on an impulse not to tell the truth about Jordan and instead take all the spotlight for herself. We know that she’s doing this so she can eventually win over her sister but it also shows that she’s prepared to make people suffer for her gain and maybe Marie is just as bad as all the people who work at Vought as she follows the same mindset as them. Do whatever needs to be done to stay at the top and get what you want no matter who suffers from it. Marie tries to go to Emma, knowing that she may have made the wrong decision but Emma is nowhere to be seen and is elsewhere, vomiting to get small. It is unknown why she is getting small during this scene.
Marie then goes to see Dean Indira to find out if she knew about her sister. Indira denies it but it’s hard to tell if a character like this is telling the truth when she can easily lie about an underground facility in the school that’s harming students and experimenting on them for a reason that is currently unknown. I can expect Indira to emotionally manipulate Marie throughout this show and later use her towards her advantage unless Marie decides to start caring about her peers and discovers the whole situation about The Woods. For now, Indira is not a character that can be trusted.
Final Thoughts
Gen V Episode 2 is a major improvement from the first episode. It builds on what took place during that episode and we get to see the true colours of certain characters. The show continues to dive deeper into what’s going to be the season-long conflict which is The Woods and we’re quickly finding out a lot of information about it. I won’t be surprised if we somehow have to deal with another conflict midway through the season.
There are some characters like Cate who at first seemed like they would be a pain to be around but she seems to be a truly caring character and I can’t wait to see more from her and to see how Jordan’s story plays out, especially after Marie decided not to tell the truth about them fighting Luke.
This was another good episode and it seems like Gen V already has a place within The Boys universe.
Rating: 4 out of 5
The first three episodes of Gen V are now streaming on Prime Video with further episodes set to release weekly.
