This recap will have spoilers for Gen V Season 2, including episodes 201 (“New Year, New U”), 202 (“Justice Never Forgets”), and 203 (“H is for Human”), Prime’s spinoff of The Boys.
School is OFFICIALLY back in session and Gen V Season 2 is off to a dramatic and gay start. I’m going to be recapping this season for you here on Autostraddle dot com, where we can break down all the queer shenanigans our favorite young adult supes get up to. This one will be a little more condensed because we’re covering three episodes at once, but I’ll be sure to include all the juicy gay details. Because while The Boys all but buried their gay (RIP Brave Maeve, I hope you’re living your best assumed-dead life out there), it seems Gen V is not unlike Gen Z in their penchant for a more fluid understanding of sexuality. We have Marie (Jaz Sinclair), who is definitely queer because they have a thing for Jordan (London Thor & Derek Luh), the bi-gender supe who can shift between male- and female-presenting forms on a whim, and Emma (Lizze Broadway) who hasn’t explicitly said she’s bi/pan but has been saying very queer things from the jump (like wanting to have a threesome with a m/f couple, for example) and talks really close to her female classmates’ faces so I’m going to go ahead and assume is queer until proven otherwise.
Also a note that I’m sure anyone reading this already knows but I want to acknowledge: The actor who played Andre in season one, Chance Perdomo, passed away in a motorcycle accident before season two filming began. Instead of recasting him, the team decided to rewrite the season to explain Andre’s absence, and the season is dedicated to Chance.
Gen V Season 2, Episode 1
Let’s start with episode 201, which actually doesn’t even pick up where we left off, but instead takes us to 1967 where we see something called Project Odessa go awry when people inject themselves with blue goo only to self-destruct moments later in front of a very distressed scientist.
Back in the present day, we pick up a few months after we left off and not too long after the events of The Boys Season 4. The country is split between supe supremacists and “Starlighters”; Homelander has more control than any one asshole should; and the new dean, Cipher, is promoting Godolkin University as a place where supes can experience “freedom from the woke agenda.”
Jordan and Emma, imprisoned all summer for crimes they did not commit, are surprised to find themselves let out of a transport van on the GodU campus, with Cate of all people to welcome them. Cate looks behind them and asks after Andre, but Emma snaps at her, not believing Cate’s ignorance. But it’s clear Cate was telling the truth when she reads Jordan’s mind and learns that Andre died in Elmira, the prison they ended Season 1 in.
Still confused as to why they’re there and also where Marie is, the troupe is interrupted by Stacy, head of student life and a real pain in the ass, who also possesses a literal pain in the ass in the form of a stinger. And she lives by honeybee rules: if you get stung, you die, but if she stings, Stacy will die, too. This feels like Chekov’s stinger and I am weirdly looking forward to seeing how this comes to fruition.
The deal is: Jordan and Emma can rematriculate if they give their Vought-approved speech and agree to play nice.
I don’t know how anyone bought that this was something they did willingly, they weren’t even trying to fake a smile.
They reluctantly agree — what choice do they have, really — but keep asking after Marie, who escaped from Elmira and hasn’t been heard from since. In fact, Cate starts to suggest that if Marie had just waited, if Andre had waited…but Jordan punches her about it. There will be no disrespecting their friends on their watch. But later, when it’s just Jordan and Emma, Jordan says they don’t need Marie, clearly hurt that she left them.
When Cipher gives his start-of-school speech to the students, he talks about not being able to trust humans and calling Starlight a race traitor. Jordan and Emma can tell they’re in enemy territory and will have to watch their step if they want to stay out of Elmira going forward.
Me in my Catholic high school listening to my principal spew hypocritical nonsense.
Meanwhile, Marie is elsewhere, slinking around the shadows going hoodie-up into a convenience store, choosing a Brave Maeve Pride Bar over some Firecracker Freedom Sticks. A friendly stranger spots her the two bucks she’s short, which will be important later. Marie goes back to her seedy motel room and continues what we can imagine she was doing all summer: calling people to try to find her sister.
Later, she spots the kind stranger standing with other Starlighter protestors and sees them get antagonized by Homelander stans, who are unfortunately called Home Teamers. One of them punches her, drawing blood, which was his biggest mistake, because she uses that blood to kick his ass. As she leaves, the kind stranger thinks he recognizes her, but she tells him she’s nobody and smiles as she walks away.
“I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too?”
Back on campus, Emma goes to see Andre’s dad, Polarity, to tell him about Andre, but he already knows. She tries to recruit him to help them solve some of the mysteries they have — why she remembers Cipher being at Elmire, for example — but he’s too busy wallowing in self pity to help…and Emma tells him so.
That night, Jordan and Emma try to go through the college motions and go to a frat party, but their hearts aren’t in it. Jordan punches a frat boy for being a dick, Emma knocks her ex-friend Justine over and blows off Sam’s request for a truce, dropping truth bombs on him as she storms past. The whole ordeal ends up being too much for her, so she goes to the bathroom and cries…and ends up shrinking. Instead of stressing too much about it, she decides to play beer pong…as the ball.
When Sam finds Cate to ask her about the stuff about Andre and Elmira Emma told him, starting to get worked up, Cate just uses her powers to zap his emotions away again, as she’s been doing since last year.
Back at Marie’s hotel room, she gets an unwanted visitor when the supe Dogknott shows up. They have a knock-down drag-out fight and Dogknott almost ends up injecting Marie with something, but Starlight shows up and saves her just in time.
Starlight — sorry, Annie — tells Marie she can’t be on the run forever and tries to convince her to take the offer her friends took to stay at GodU. She tells her it won’t only be safer for her, but also Annie needs Marie to research something called Project Odessa, because Annie is worried it’s starting up again.
Annie (or maybe Erin Moriarty?) kind of looked like she was losing’ the plot at the end of the last season of The Boys, so it’s nice to see her looking almost normal here with some spark back in her eyes.
Marie doesn’t want anything to do with it, she just wants to find her sister, but Annie says she sees the hero in her and warns her that she can’t stay out of the fight forever.
Marie’s dust-up with the counter-protestors ends up on the news, letting Emma and Jordan (and, clandestinely, Cate) track her down. When they find her, Jordan tells her that Andre tried to get the rest of them out after Marie left, but he ended up pushing his powers too hard and had a stroke and died. Seeing they’re having a hard time convincing her, Cate steps out of the shadows to try to help, saying they’re safer at school, but then she sees in Marie’s mind that she met with Starlight.
I love them, your honor.
Cate goes to use her powers on Marie, maybe to convince her to come back to school, but Jordan shoots her with their powers instead, and Cate’s head smashes against the wall. Cate is barely conscious and begs them to help her, but Marie can’t help her without touching her, and if she touches her, Cate could use her powers on her…so they leave her for dead.
Gen V Season 2, Episode 2
On to episode 202!
Marie tries to record a video about how she super duper can’t wait to start her sophomore year at GodU, and even though it’s deeply unconvincing to anyone who knows Marie, it’s enough to force Cipher’s hand into letting her back in. At her meeting with the dean, Marie finds out that Andre had the same condition as his dad; that is to say, every time he used his powers, his physical health deteriorated. Cipher also said Andre knew that when he pushed his powers to try to open a steel door that fateful day. Oh also? Cate is alive. This is a lot of information for Marie, but she and Cipher seem to be able to see through each other’s bullshit, for the most part, so this semester is sure to be interesting.
Emma is itching to do something. Research Odessa, finish the job with Cate, she’s not particularly picky, she just can’t sit around and do nothing. Marie agrees they should look into what Starlight asked them too, but Jordan thinks they’re both a bit crazy. But luckily, Andre’s dad accepted a job at the school, so they’ll have an adultier adult to help them out a bit.
Sam goes to visit Cate at the hospital, and though she’s still catatonic, when a nurse touches her arm, Cate sort of possesses her, says “They left me to die,” namedrops Emma, then uses the nurse’s body to go on a bit of a stabby spree.
Emma quickly learns the classes at GodU are a bit different than she remembers. Or maybe SHE’S different. She is in a social media class being taught by Modesty Monarch, a butterfly-lady trad wife who believes feminism ruined America and whose comments are often filled with, and I quote, “hairy, baby-killing lesbos” attacking her. Emma tries to opt out of the class that she once might have loved, at the height of her Little Cricket days, but MM tells her in no uncertain terms that she’s exactly where the dean wants her.
Marie tells Jordan what she learned about Andre, and they snipe at each other a bit. Jordan is mad, Marie is sorry, but they’re just not on the same page right now. But when they go to the dean’s special “hero optimization seminar”, Marie and Jordan naturally fall back into working together to pass the test.
Back in Marie’s room, Marie is thanking Jordan for helping her while also changing, and catches Jordan looking at her longingly. Marie apologizes again, a little softer this time, and Jordan admits that their lashing out earlier was misdirected anger. They start to laugh together about their favorite Andre memories, and before long Jordan admits it was easier for them to be mad at Marie than risk losing her.
They take a moment, pressing their foreheads together, before going in for the kiss.
The forehead touch of our people!
Jordan is still in their femme form and asks if that’s okay with Marie, and Marie says lovingly and earnestly, “Anything and everything you do is okay.” Relieved that they’re back with one of the only people who truly accepts them for all that they are, Jordan goes back in for another kiss, and they fall back onto the bed, smooching.
Meanwhile, Emma and Polarity sneak into the school’s archives and find a secret room with lots of literal Nazi paraphernalia and also the Odessa file they were looking for. Emma is so excited she found it that she gets BIIIIG. THEN she’s excited she got big all by herself, and it’s a miracle she didn’t Alice in Wonderland herself right out of the building.
Emma is so deliciously chaotic, I love her dearly.
Back in the dorms, Marie and Jordan lay in bed together, and Jordan asks Marie out on a proper date. Not just canoodling now and then between life and death experiences. But a proper date, like going to Olive Garden and playing League of Legends after.
Also feels worth noting that Billie Eilish’s Birds of a Feather was playing for some of their sexy scenes.
Marie likes this idea, and Jordan shifts and starts kissing her again. Marie says she loves them, which surprises Jordan. But Jordan’s surprise doesn’t make Marie take it back, or claim it was a heat-of-the-moment slip; in fact, she doubles down, asking if it’s okay. Jordan starts to mutter about it being fine but, before they can really talk about it, they’re interrupted by fireworks outside.
The fireworks are to celebrate that Vought caught the people who attacked Cate…they said it was a hate crime by Starlighters and pointed the finger at the protesters Marie protected, including her kindly stranger, who the news says was killed by Dogknott. Marie says this is their fault, her and her friends.
Speaking of, Emma catches up with them and gives them the file she found. As it turns out, Odessa is Marie, Marie is Odessa.
Gen V Season 2, Episode 3
And with that, we venture on to 203! Which is also where I’ll pause to mention that this season has some great needledrops. The music department really knows what they’re doing.
This episode opens with the campus cafe barista taking three Xanax before going to her job as a human employee at a school full of supes and supe supremacists, where she is constantly harassed for things like Starlighter resistance posters she didn’t even put up. In fact, on this particular day, there’s a poster that just won’t go away, causing her nothing but unending trouble.
Our main crew is busy trying to parse out what it means that Marie is in the Odessa file. In fact, she’s the only one listed in the file who is still alive. Polarity thinks she was designed to be a weapon, but Marie doesn’t feel like a weapon, and she says people who look like her aren’t usually the Chosen One. Jordan isn’t sure if they can trust Starlight, but Marie thinks they can. Marie decides to ask her mom’s best friend Pam if she remembers anything about Odessa, since she’s in one of the photos they found, even though Pam hasn’t spoken to her since she accidentally killed her parents. But it’s worth a try! And hey, she had tried to adopt Annabeth right after their parents died, so maybe she knows where Marie’s sister is, too.
Cate is well enough to return to campus, dressed in black and looking overwhelmed as hell…but not in the usual way you might expect a mind-reader to be in a crowd. In fact, she can’t hear anyone’s thoughts at all. Also, her return goes viral and she accidentally Regina Georges the beanie look — one she’s rocking because of her gaping head wound — and if you watch the rest of the episode, more and more students are wearing beanies, with most of them wearing one by the crowd scene at the end. This little detail tickled me.
“One time, she punched me in the face… It was AWESOME!”
Stacy leads her back on campus and is oblivious to the tension when Cate comes face to face with our main trio, barely holding it together in the face of her ex-friends who left her for dead.
College was awkward for a lot of people but not usually “having to face the person you left for dead and pretend everything’s fine and normal” awkward.
Marie tries to talk to Jordan about why she dropped the L word and admits they were the first person they slept with. Jordan is a little wigged out by this fact at first and says you shouldn’t say “I love you” to the first person you have sex with. They start to fight about it, but they’re interrupted by Stacy the Stinger putting up holographic posters of Jordan that shift between their two forms depending on where you stand. As it turns out, Jordan has rocketed up to #1 in the school’s all-important ranking system.
Being #1 comes with a car and some sponsorship deals and fans asking to take photos and asking them to shift (which they politely decline) and yet another pre-written speech by Stacy, who says she uses words like “transtastic” and wants them to emphasize how supportive GodU has been to them. Jordan tries to point out they’re not trans, they’re bi-gender, but Stacy basically tells them to shut up and sing. She adds, “Next time a fan asks you to switch, tuck the junk, inflate the fun bags, and do it.” A real charmer, that Stacy. And haven’t we all experienced the kinds of people who tell you they’re an ally with one hand while they’re slapping you with the other.
Cate goes to see Ciphon, wanting to tell Vought and the world who really attacked her, but Ciphon says they can’t do that without telling everyone Cate lost their powers, and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that her value is directly correlated to her powers. Dejected, Cate leaves the dean’s office, but not before noticing a very fortified almost submarine-like door. Suspicious.
Cate goes back to her room to inspect her head wound when Sam busts in; he’s been tweaking out and seeing puppets again and wants her to clear his mind. Cate says she can’t, but instead of telling him her powers are busted, she says she doesn’t want to push him too far like she did his brother.
Sam storms off and starts destroying things, but Jordan calms him down. They sit together, get high, and watch Avenue V (which is Sesame Street meets Avenue Q), clearly the source of a lot of Sam’s hallucinations. They bond over missing the people they’ve lost, and seem to bury the hatchet between them.
At the campus coffee shop, the barista is being harassed again, but this time Emma helps her out. She is in full Helper Mode, trying to be the hero Andre told her she can be, so she vows to solve the mystery of the reappearing Starlighter sign, and eventually tracks down her betailed friend Harper, whose powers are chameleon (she can borrow powers for 60 seconds at a time) and is a secret Starlighter with her roommate Allie.
Also this whole exchange felt sexually charged, especially when Emma gets Hannah to show her her powers by saying, “Do me.”
Emma hears the rebels’ plans for more vandalism, but Emma wants them to go bigger. Full sabotage, something that can’t be cleaned up with some Magic Erasers. Hannah and Allie are doubtful they can make a difference, but Emma believes in them and wants to empower them to be heroes.
Marie goes to Aunt Pam’s house and while Pam doesn’t know about Odessa specifically, she knows about the clinic her parents went to so they could get pregnant with her and shows Marie some more photos of that day, including one of Ciphon. Pam calls him Dr. Gold and says he’s the one who delivered Marie. Marie also learned that her parents didn’t just put her in the Compound V experiment for the money; they genuinely wanted a baby. On her way out, Marie notices a room that looks suspiciously like a teenage girl’s room and goes in to snoop around. Sure enough, she finds cards addressed to Annabeth and finds out she’s been living with Pam for years. Marie and Pam fight, Pam insisting Annabeth doesn’t want to see Marie because she’s scared of her, and Marie is furious that Pam still doesn’t get it, that her parents death was an accident. Marie is furious that Pam made her feel like a monster, and let her sister think she was a monster all these years.
Marie has gotten so much better about believing she’s not a monster and also standing up for herself AND I AM PROUD.
On Goldokin Day, Jordan’s banners are hung up alongside Maeve and other past and present members of the Seven. Before they go on to give their speech, they find Marie and tell them that they love her, too. They were weird about it all week because it freaks them out, but they don’t want to regret not saying it, since they never know what the next day could bring, especially in the hellscape they’re currently living in. Marie kisses them and beams at them as they run up on stage.
“If you go, I’m going too, ’cause it was always you.” 🎶
But Marie’s smile quickly fades as Jordan strays from Stacy’s script after a few cringeworthy moments like “we were all assigned awesome at birth.” Jordan tells everyone watching that Andre is dead, that his powers killed him, and that he died a hero. They also say Cate wasn’t attacked by Starlighters. In fact, Marie looks on in horror as Jordan confesses the truth: They were the one who hurt Cate.
MUST PROTEC
This season is already off to a stressful start, with the parallels to our world being as prevalent as ever, as this franchise is wont to do, and I’m glad they re-established Marie and Jordan’s relationship, even if it is about to get a lot more complicated for them. Who knows what will happen to Jordan; on one hand, they’re #1, and Cipher has been talking at length about how important this ranking system is. On the other hand, they were booed pretty heavily when they admitted to attacking the school’s golden girl, so Vought might want to make an example of them. But also their friends won’t let them go without a fight. So who knows what will happen! Only time (and the rest of the season) will tell.
good post & article ……thanks.
best post ever
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