Commentary: ‘Gen V’ Suffers From The Spinoff Curse
by Frank Martin
Conceptually, spinoffs are great. It’s a way for fans to get extra time with characters and universes they enjoy while producers get to make more stuff without worrying about fan interest. However, there is a caveat to making spin-offs in a shared universe. When a property features a wide-ranging storyline, those events have ramifications for everyone in the universe. So spinoffs often follow the lead of the main program rather than charting their own path. This is exactly the case with Gen V.
As a spinoff of The Boys, Gen V primarily takes place at Godolkin University, a college for super-powered individuals. After the events of the first season, Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), Jordan Li (Derek Luh/London Thor), and other students were detained. In order to recuperate the school’s public image, they were released from captivity by Cipher (Hamish Linklater), a mysterious man now serving as dean of the school. Over the course of the sophomore season, they discovered Cipher is in fact the school’s founder, and they must stop his plans to cull individuals with weak superpowers from the student body.
During Season 1, The Boys universe was relatively stable, so Gen V was able to follow its own plotline pretty much unencumbered from what was going on in The Boys. But things were very different by season two. Homelander (Antony Starr) had more or less taken over the country and turned it into a fascist state where superheroes reign supreme. In order to continue, Gen V had to create a new storyline within that framework. It couldn’t just go off in its own direction as it may run contradictory to the main narrative for the overall franchise. This is the curse of many spinoffs as they are often boxed in by the main entry.
Gen V is now streaming on Prime video.