Gen V Season-Finale Recap: Life Is a Miracle

From early on, season two of Gen V has featured frequent crossovers with the larger universe of The Boys. That choice makes sense, in a way; Homelander’s ascent to governmental power at the end of season four of the original show had far-reaching effects, which should trickle down to the campus level.

But the show runs into some trouble when it tries to work in reverse, shoehorning in Boys cameos to suggest the possibility of permanent changes to the overarching story line. Gen V characters can pop up in The Boys, yes, as we saw when Sam and Cate rounded up the Boys at the end of season four. But Gen V can’t do anything that rocks the boat too much before the final Boys season, just like Marvel TV shows can’t make too many changes to the MCU (especially the older ones like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Gen V usually does a good job keeping the stories separate enough that they can play out on their own terms. But Justine Ferrara and Michele Fazekas’s script for “Trojan” plays up the connections, and not just in that final scene. Sage is back for Cipher to bounce off — except now Cipher is the OG Thomas Godolkin, binge-drinking and binge-eating and binge-fucking after decades spent “living inside a condom” of other people’s consciousness. And while Homelander doesn’t make a physical appearance like in the last finale, he looms large.

We get some basic clarification in this episode about how Godolkin has lived so long: After taking the original V-1 that made Soldier Boy and Stormfront ageless, he survived the fire (glimpsed again in a 1967 flashback) and picked a human puppet named Dr. Fielder to live through. Almost 30 years later, when that guy got too old, Godolkin settled on Doug as his replacement host and caretaker, then hopped to his body and made him kill Fielder. He planted Odessa for Starlight to find, pushed Marie’s powers until she could heal him, and got her to do it voluntarily.

So what now? Well, despite being the most intelligent human being on the planet, Sage believes she and Godolkin can live a happy life together in her Vought Tower apartment, presumably combining their powers with Homelander’s in pursuit of their shared supe supremacist agenda. Of course, he has bigger and somehow … evilm(er) plans? (It’s actually unclear how much his and Homelander’s plans differ aside from who’s sitting on the throne.) He announces his existence to the world via a livestream announcing his open advanced seminar, where students of all stripes can duke it out for the coveted top-ten spots. Marie’s competing livestream does nothing to stop the rush of clout-chasing 20-year-olds.

Godolkin treats the first group of kids basically how you’d expect: He calls them undeserving of their gifts, then mind-controls them into maiming and killing each other, then conducts the injured survivors in a fucked-up puppet dance to prove how powerful he is. It’s disturbing, sure, but we got a massacre on campus in the last finale, and we’ve already seen versions of the seminar in this season. Besides, Ethan Slater is good, but he can’t devour the scenery as memorably as Hamish Linklater.

Throughout all of this, Sage mostly just sits back and shakes her head disapprovingly — though she makes the right decision in the end by letting Polarity walk after Black Noir captures him. Again, Sage was a pretty interesting character in The Boys, but here her naïveté (not to mention her emotional dependence on her ancient boyfriend) stretches belief, especially when she ignores a call from Homelander during the seminar. And the show never really explained how this partnership was born in the first place. Sage mentions that Homelander was part of their “phase two,” but what does that look like? As soon as Godolkin tells her he wants to evolve so that he can control and overpower Homelander, his plan seems even more doomed to fail. The stakes were already a little low here, but even more so after learning this is his big idea. We all know Homelander isn’t going anywhere at this point. Godolkin started this all, but it’s obvious he doesn’t have the juice.

Case in point: He gets foiled by a ploy from Black Hole, who smuggles a whole supe rescue team into the seminar via the gravitational singularity in his anus. There’s a battle, with Godolkin turning his remaining student pawns against the gang, but they manage to rescue the pawns after Ally restrains Godolkin with her magic pubes (yup) and Harper takes control of his powers. Marie turns this into a Sky High–esque lesson about how Godolkin got beat by the supposedly useless superheroes, though he undercuts her message a bit when he takes control of her himself.

That segment allows us a nice glimpse of Jaz Sinclair in villain mode, with Marie harnessing blood from all the corpses (in the process fulfilling Annabeth’s vision) and taunting her sister as a terrible precog. But Polarity arrives just in time to stop Godolkin-as-Marie from killing everyone, and Marie polishes off the dean by effortlessly exploding his head and saying, “That was for Andre.”

“Trojan” is only about 44 minutes long, and the individual character arcs do feel a little ill-served. Polarity does get some great moments, bonding with Doug over how much they loved Andre, which also works as a final Chance Perdomo tribute. And Marie and Jordan’s long-anticipated breakup is somewhat affecting, with Jordan forgiving Marie for leaving but insisting they can’t be more than friends. Ditto Marie and Annabeth’s full reconciliation, with little sis calling big sis a “hero” after years of hating and fearing her. That means a lot.

But Cate gets almost no attention outside the nice sequence of Marie apologizing and healing her. Even Emma’s story is underserved: Yes, she manages to self-enlarge without bingeing like she’s been attempting all season, but what exactly triggered that? (Hopefully, it wasn’t just seeing her two boyfriends punch a guy together.) It’s nice that she gets a kiss with Greg, but we’re left with her once again on her own, and it’s unclear what the future holds.

At Polarity’s advice, the gang is back on the run now, potentially forever. But this ending feels a little weightless; for one, we just saw the gang on the run, plus those two trips to Elmira. I can only speak for myself, but I’m not totally keen on a version of Gen V where Godolkin University is only a secondary setting.

And I really don’t know what to think of the final scene, in which Starlight and A-Train show up and enlist the gang to join the resistance. Presumably this sets up some Gen V cameos in the final season of The Boys, but to what end, and how will that connect to a possible Gen V season three? It’s impossible to say, especially because we don’t even know if Vought and Godolkin University will still be standing by the time this show comes back. (They probably will be, because systems have a way of surviving, even if the villains at the top eventually die off.)

I respect the choice to integrate Gen V more fully into the Boys universe in season two, but it raises all sorts of questions the show can’t freely answer or even really hint at. This is an okay season finale, featuring most of the beats we were promised from early on, but it’s not the most satisfying experience overall. I’m still onboard, but the path forward for Gen V is murkier than ever, and that’s not always a good thing.

Extra Credit

• Poor Doug, who gets stabbed and killed by Black Noir during the kidnapping on his way to the hospital. I’m glad the show was at least able to keep Linklater around for a bit of the finale. He’s 90 percent of the reason to watch this season.

• Rufus is surprisingly present in this finale, first roofie-ing Sam and Emma at the frat and then barely surviving the seminar. He’s surprised the gang saves him at the end, but I wouldn’t take that as some indication that he’ll be a good dude from now on.

• If Harper’s powers reset after 60 seconds, couldn’t she just borrow someone else’s powers for a second before taking control of Godolkin again?

• Honestly, Marie and Jordan’s relationship didn’t truly get the time and space to blossom this season, so the breakup feels kind of premature even if it makes sense. The peril of eight-episode seasons, I guess, but they could’ve used a little more screen time.