Why You Liked … Gen V

Superhero fatigue isn’t about quantity. It’s about stories that don’t feel like they matter. Gen V has real weight because the stakes hit closer to home.

The Boys universe is satire writ large. It uses superheroes and ideology to reflect corporate greed, toxic fandom, and incels. A strength of the series is its pulls-no-punches approach; it’s unafraid of killing characters, even important ones, to serve the larger story. It’s not that we’re never sure who’s safe; The Boys doesn’t cast us adrift. It’s that the choices you make have consequences that will leave a mark on your soul.

The term ‘superhero fatigue’ has been bandied around by a lot of people, typically loudly by highly-paid execs who want 30% YoY growth from milking a dead cow. They don’t even want to buy oats to feed the corpse first. Since we can’t kill off heroes people love, there are no truly good or bad people in the latest run of superhero stories, and they won’t stay dead. There’s no reason to tune in, because aside from flashy special effects, nothing matters.

Gen V brings back the weight. It’s not because people die (and, they do!). It’s because the consequences we’re most afraid of in life aren’t death. It’s the hits our relationships take. Our friends and family—our circle—feel the impact of every decision. Gen V shows this through a very personal, very relatable story.

Table Stakes

We know the conflict between The Seven, front-of-house waiters for Vought, and Billy’s Boys. It’s huge stuff. Gen V focuses on a more personal, more relatable conflict. Marie and the gang need to work out what’s going on at the damn school.

See, another problem with superhero fatigue is that everything is McMassive. We can’t just have street-level issues anymore. It’s always, ‘The Sun’s going to explode!’ or, ‘Our universe is ending!’ A reason why hero groups like the Bat family are so popular is they’re street-level heroes, either with smaller power sets, or more immediate problems. Batman looks after Gotham, and its more personal, relatable civilian population. 

This is where Gen V shines. You and I are unlikely to have tangled with a superhero contingent or faced down a megacorporation, but many of us have been to school. Seen the mean girl be mean, or wished for some of the sparkle of the popular guy to settle on our shoulders. We can be invested in Gen V’s conflict because we understand it. We can relate to the challenges because we’ve had the same problems.

Instead of a global threat, our story here is navigating relationships with friends, managing peer pressure, and personal decisions. While the eventual threat in Gen V turns global, it’s still personalised through the young heroes’ experience.

Character Relatability

Speaking of friends, there’s a lot to like here. Take Jordan, for example. They’re more than token trans representation. Jordan is a powerhouse. They’re two halves of a whole, and the real gut-punch isn’t disapproving parents. It’s the evolving relationship with Marie, who’s caught between Jordan’s dual identities. The show isn’t shy about looking this right in the face and suggesting it’s something to work through, but not something you can’t deal with. It refocuses from gender to humanity.

We’ve talked about Jordan, but we can’t recognise Jordan’s power without respecting both London Thor and Derek Luh for their absolutely classful performances at being … each other. Lizzie Broadway steals whatever scene she’s in; her delightful presentation of character and discord, of yearning yet being strong, will make her a star for years to come. Jaz Sinclair shows us what it feels like to have a past you’re guilty of, and how you just can’t bury that much sin. And Maddie Phillips shows us what conflict, real conflict feels like.

The side characters are more than lipstick. The mean girl is mean, and the one who wants to be popular wants to be popular. There are gatekeepers to cliques, and space for people to be weird in their own weird way. The boys aren’t just there to punch stuff; they’re figuring out how to be strong while also trying to work out when to show softness. These are recognisable because they’re you, or you’ve seen them.

FRACTURED BUT WHOLE:

The Boys season 3 had a fractured team. Hughie and Billy fought, Hughie and Starlight couldn’t figure it out, Frenchie and Kamiko struggled, and Mother’s Milk was unable to ground them all. This left us emotionally fractured; our safe place to stand was lost. 

It’s not that Gen V shies away from inter-group conflict. But it knows that we can’t have a whole season of people sanding their balls against other people’s shit. The teenagers in Gen V use their words to work out their problems, making them more adult, more human than the grown-ups in The Boys.

Satire is Actually Satire

Where The Boys started out using satire to shock with purpose, later it felt like shock for shock’s sake. Gen V resets that balance. The violence and nudity are back to serving a point, not just going for Game of Thrones-style escalation. It uses satire to reflect society. It asks ‘what-if’ questions and answers them delightfully and darkly. We can’t help but be entertained when someone’s dick explodes.

So, What?

I admit to having a little fatigue after The Boys season 3, but Gen V has rekindled my interest in watching the parent series’ season 4. Gen V is a more personal story, while still tackling big issues. Not those about the world ending, but what it means to be a human living in our turbulent, difficult world. The groups we choose, or that choose us, cast long shadows.

Violence serves the story. Satire asks, and answers, questions. Heroes aren’t heroic because they’re bulletproof, but because they face the hard questions their choices raise. Gen V is a superhero story that won’t leave you fatigued; it’s grounded in consequence, and makes each decision matter.

Finally, a superhero show that gets it right.