How Gen V Season 2 Fixes A Major First Season Plot Problem

This article contains spoilers for "The Boys" season 4 and "Gen V" season 2, episode 2, "Justice Never Forgets."

"Gen V" is just as fun and twisted as "The Boys," but there's one key difference: While the Boys' fight against the show's resident Donald Trump analogue Homelander (Antony Starr) is both topical and necessary to stop the supes from unleashing hell on humanity, Godolkin University should be nigh-obsolete.

That's a bold statement, but hear me out. As "Gen V" keeps showing us, the whole "injecting adolescents with Compound V and creating an entire education system for the tiny percentage of them that develops semi-useful powers" modus operandi is expensive and cumbersome. It's more likely to cause countless deaths and send young supes to the asylum-style Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center via the Red River Institute than it is to produce profitable superpowered influencers and fake crimefighters. It's a major hassle as business models go — especially since Vought has a far superior option on the table. 

V24 is a Compound V variety that grants temporary superpowers and can be given to sensible adults. It has its issues, like a $2 million-per-dose price tag and a tendency to make the user crazy and/or dead in the long run, but come on: Vought has already been dealing with control and cost efficiency issues with a great many of its existing supes, only constantly and throughout their lives. Ever since "The Boys" introduced V24 and Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) made clear that he seeks to replace supes with V24 users within five years, I've had a hard time understanding why Vought still chose to keep training more supes that it fully intends to replace soon. Fortunately, "Justice Never Forgets" fixes this plot hole and reminds me that God U still has its uses.

As the episode reveals, young supes can "level up" in power, sometimes in surprising ways. This alone is more than enough motivation for Vought to keep extremely careful tabs on them with a tightly-controlled supe school system — after all, it would be bad for business if, say, an unsupervised wall-crawling teenager suddenly manifested the ability to create black holes in his hands and feet.

To make sure that the message comes across, "Justice Never Forgets" explains the concept twice. First, Cate (Maddie Phillips) recuperates in the hospital after Marie (Jaz Sinclair) and others attacked her in the season 2 premiere ("New Year, New U"). She instinctively lashes out at two staff members, showing the completely new power of taking over people's bodies and manipulating them like puppets — a considerable change from her usual power set of reading minds and controlling people with touch and verbal commands. This isn't the only time "Gen V" has hinted that Cate has untapped potential, but it is the first time she demonstrates a whole new aspect of her powers. 

Later, Dean Cipher (Hamish Linklater) offers more exposition on the subject, as he tries to forcefully trigger power development in select students with his "seminar" — that is, having Vikor (Tait Fletcher) beat everyone up in hopes that someone levels up during the ordeal. Students learning to use their powers better isn't a new concept for "Gen V," and folks like Marie and Emma (Lizze Broadway) have demonstrated more control over their powers as the series has progressed. However, Cate's brand new puppeteering trick is a strong implication that powers can suddenly manifest in a dramatically different way than usual, which may well be what Cipher is after.  

Apart from the episode's implication that Vought has needed to observe the God U students' power development more closely than we knew, there's another likely reason for the school's ongoing existence: Homelander taking over. The brutal ending of "The Boys" season 4 left the leader of the Seven as the de facto head of both Vought and the country, and tensions between supes and regular people are at an all-time high. 

Strong as he is, Homelander wants adoring, supportive supes to do his bidding. While he himself grew as a prisoner in a secret lab and has demonstrated fairly little interest in God U apart from a quick cameo in the "Gen V" season 1 finale, he would have to be far more unhinged than he already is to pull the plug from the nation's primary supe-training facility. So, instead of the imprisoned Stan Edgar's V24 plans, we get what we see in "Gen V" season 2: Not only does God U have more resources than ever, but it's now staffed by supes who are quite openly training the students as soldiers for Homelander's cause. 

It's a dramatic turn of events that's also a logical follow-up to "The Boys" season 4. Combined with the power evolution reveals of "Justice Never Forgets," it also makes for a pretty airtight explanation why God U isn't likely to go away any time soon ... that is, unless Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) gets a chance to open that can of supe virus nearby.

"Gen V" is streaming on Prime Video.