The Boys & Gen V Review
Recently, The Boys finally came to an end, and it’s one of those shows that is totally worth reviewing.
The premise of The Boys is quite interesting. Heroes exist in our current world, but, well, they aren’t exactly heroes. They are super-powered characters, built from a chemical compound called Compound V, posed as heroes, but they are what you get when you mix absolute power with capitalism, celebrity culture, and social media. Very dangerous. “Supes”, as they are regularly called, are not necessarily there to do good. They are there to improve their exposure, protect their public image, sell movies, increase revenues, and, occasionally, save someone if the cameras happen to be around. Our protagonists aren’t exactly heroes either. Billy Butcher and his Boys are humans bent on bringing the Supes down for their own very personal reasons, mostly revenge. They are anti-heroes standing on some extremely dubious moral ground, and Butcher in particular spends most of the series proving that hating monsters doesn’t necessarily stop you from becoming one. Not all Supes are bad, as we eventually get to see, and not all of the Boys are terrible either. Those grey layers are what make the show compelling.
Across five seasons, what starts as a relatively small revenge mission gradually escalates into something much bigger. The Boys first expose Compound V and Vought’s involvement in creating Supes, while Hughie, Butcher, Frenchie, Kimiko, and Mother’s Milk become increasingly entangled with Starlight and the Seven. Stormfront then pushes the series into the politics of radicalization and manufactured outrage, Soldier Boy gives Butcher a weapon powerful enough to threaten Homelander, and temporary Compound V starts blurring the line between the people hunting Supes and the Supes themselves. By the fourth and fifth seasons, the fight is no longer really about exposing Vought. Homelander has grown from an unstable corporate mascot into a political figure with an army, institutions are collapsing around him, and Butcher’s hatred of Supes has evolved into something dangerously close to genocide. What began as “a bunch of guys trying to kill superheroes” somehow ends with the fate of an entire country, and potentially every Supe on Earth, hanging in the balance.
During the breaks between seasons three and five, we were also introduced to Gen V. Gen V is essentially the teenage, university version of The Boys, following a new group of Supes at Godolkin University, Vought’s prestigious training ground for the next generation of superheroes. The first season follows Marie Moreau, Jordan Li, Emma Meyer, Andre Anderson, Cate Dunlap, and Sam Riordan as they discover that, underneath the university, Vought is naturally running horrifying experiments on young Supes. Because of course it is. The second season picks up after Homelander’s rise, with Godolkin becoming increasingly militarized and Marie discovering that her powers, and her origins, are far more important than she realized. By the end, the group has effectively graduated from university drama into the anti-Vought resistance, eventually crossing directly into the final season of The Boys.
For fans of superheroes, it’s easy to recognize twisted versions of familiar characters. Homelander is the evil Superman. Maeve is basically a Wonder Woman who gave up morally before slowly finding a reason to care again. The Deep is a pathetic, sexually frustrated Aquaman with the dignity of a wet sock. A-Train starts as The Flash if The Flash were a corporate-sponsored asshole, although, surprisingly, he ends up having one of the better redemption arcs in the show. Soldier Boy is the obvious Captain America analogue, except with considerably more radiation, trauma, drugs, and toxic masculinity. And so on. Not every Supe is a direct parody of an existing superhero. Some are distorted combinations of familiar powers and archetypes, while others are simply cursed with abilities that would make you seriously question whether Compound V was worth the trouble.
What makes The Boys compelling, however, isn’t simply the twist that heroes are bad and villains are good. It’s the complex relationship between power and morality that every character has. There are plenty of scenes that will shock and impress not because of the explicit gore, exploding bodies, flying organs, or the obligatory Seth Rogen-style sexual joke, but because of the characters’ actions and, more importantly, the consequences, or complete lack thereof, that follow them.
Homelander is obviously the best example. He begins as someone desperately dependent on public approval despite being practically untouchable. Every smile, every speech, every heroic pose is calculated around being loved. As his power grows, however, that need slowly changes. He discovers that he doesn’t actually need everyone to love him. He only needs enough people to worship him and everyone else to be afraid of him. That transformation is much scarier than the laser eyes.
Butcher follows almost the opposite path. He begins with a hatred that is at least understandable, then repeatedly crosses lines in the name of doing what needs to be done until there are almost no lines left. By the finale, Homelander and Butcher are still enemies, but morally they have moved disturbingly close to one another. Hughie, in many ways, remains the counterweight to both of them. He starts the series as probably its least powerful character and ends up proving that refusing to become the monster can be considerably harder than simply defeating one. Karl Urban is excellent throughout as Butcher, somehow balancing the character’s brutality, humour, and self-destruction, while Tomer Capone is equally good at making Frenchie feel surprisingly vulnerable and human underneath all the chaos.
As for Gen V, it’s a cool spin-off and genuinely good at world-building. It introduces new characters, new problems, some wonderfully bizarre powers, and occasional appearances from the main The Boys cast without feeling like every episode exists purely to set up another show. Unfortunately, it is also wasted by the fact that its second season became its last. The ending clearly leaves Marie, Jordan, Emma, and the others with more story to tell, and their appearance in The Boys doesn’t really resolve that. They simply become part of the wider resistance before being sent towards another mission. It works well enough as part of the universe, but not really as an ending to Gen V. Easy to watch and digest if you’re really into the Vought universe; totally dismissible if you don’t have the time or energy.
Another delicious aspect of the series is its satire and caricature of modern-day society. It’s basically the DC/Marvel version of Don’t Look Up, with even more blatant, yet perfectly valid, metaphors. Vought is simultaneously Disney, Amazon, a defense contractor, a pharmaceutical company, a news network, and a social-media marketing department from hell. Every disaster becomes an opportunity for branding. Every political movement gets merchandise. Diversity can be packaged into an advertising campaign. Outrage gets focus-tested. Tragedies become PR exercises. Superheroes have approval ratings, movie contracts, product placements, social-media teams, and carefully engineered public personas. Truth itself is mostly irrelevant. What matters is which version of reality gets enough engagement. The series happily mocks corporate virtue signaling one minute and conspiracy theories, political radicalization, celebrity worship, online echo chambers, and culture-war outrage the next. Some of the references are subtle. Most absolutely are not. Sometimes you’ll watch a fictional Vought advertisement and think, “Come on, nobody would actually do this,” before remembering something almost identical probably happened in the real world six months ago.
The most surprising factor of the show, however, is how divisive it can be among fans. One would think that the psychopathic, narcissistic, murdering, morally bankrupt Homelander would be relatively easy to identify as the villain. The man regularly murders innocent people, manipulates everyone around him, demands unconditional loyalty, and slowly builds an authoritarian cult around himself. And yet, somehow, Homelander has actual fans who genuinely support the character rather than simply enjoying Antony Starr’s excellent performance. Which makes the finale particularly satisfying. When Homelander finally loses the one thing that made him untouchable — his power — there is no mastermind left underneath. No great leader. No fearless warrior. No god. There is just a terrified, pathetic man begging Butcher to let him live.
For five seasons, Homelander spends his life convincing everyone, including himself, that his power makes him superior. Strip that power away and the entire persona collapses almost instantly. And that may ultimately be the best summary of The Boys.
For all the exploding heads, laser eyes, giant penises, superhero fights, whale collisions, and increasingly creative ways of covering Hughie in blood, the series was never really about superheroes. It was about power. Who has it. Who wants it. What people will do to keep it. What happens when nobody can hold them accountable. And how easily power can convince someone that being stronger somehow makes them right.
The Boys occasionally pushes its satire so far that subtlety gets thrown out of a window somewhere around the third exploding body. It can be excessively violent, deliberately disgusting, and sometimes so absurd that you wonder what kind of brain-melting writers’ meeting produced what you’re watching. But underneath all that blood is a surprisingly consistent story about power, celebrity, revenge, radicalization, and morality.
Five seasons were enough. The story escalated as far as it reasonably could, Homelander got the ending he so very much deserved, Butcher almost became the very thing he was hellbent on destroying, and Hughie somehow managed to survive while remaining the same through all of it.
Not every show needs to become a cinematic universe lasting twenty years. Sometimes you just need to kill evil Superman with a crowbar and call it a day.
