[This story contains major spoilers from the Gen V season two finale, “The Guardians of Godolkin.”]
School’s out for the summer at God U, with Gen V’s leading supes passing with flying colors in the season-ending fight against Godolkin.
The finale helps set up the major battle against Homelander (Antony Starr) in The Boys‘ fifth and final season, but also closed the book on season two’s villain twist, some of its leading heroes’ biggest tests and the multi-episodic tribute to the late actor Chance Perdomo and his character Andre, whose on-screen passing ultimately helped shape several other characters’ journeys across season two.
“I don’t think we would have had this finale,” says showrunner Michele Fazekas, when asked about how the writing team, which had four scripts at the time of Perdomo’s death, wrote the ending with his character in mind. “I think it would have turned into a very different season. I don’t know what, but it wouldn’t have been that. We somewhat started from scratch on a lot of the storylines, and the way we build the story is we try to go where the characters are leading us.”
The episode doubled as a swan song for the Gen V showrunner, who, after two seasons at the helm of the spinoff, has taken on showrunning duties elsewhere, and thus, returning in some capacity is unlikely. “I don’t think I could,” she tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Obviously, there is timing, but no and that’s ok. I’m very happy with my work on the show.”
While classes are out for season two and Fazekas has graduated from Gen V, executive producer Eric Kripke notes that the YA series is not done if Prime Video is willing to give it and its supes another school year. “That’s a little bit up to the audience and TV gods, but we’re ready and willing if we get the nod,” he shares in a separate interview about potential plans for season three.
In two separate conversations combined below with Fazekas and Kripke, THR discusses how Gen V season two sets up aspects of The Boys season five, unpacks that Godolkin performance and failed crusade, and explores how the writers developed a group of supes to counter The Boys’ biggest antagonist.
***
At the end of season two, viewers see A-Train and Starlight appear to invite the Guardians of Godolkin to join the resistance. How much of a role will these young supes, who now kind of look like their own hero team, play in The Boys season five? And how will it be different from the cameos of season four?
ERIC KRIPKE They are palying an important part. Part of the fun of wrapping out season two that way is that we really get to set the table for season five, where there’s now this active and growing resistance led by Starlight that A-Train is an important part of. They’re really trying to take the fight back to Homelander and this sort of fascist government. By the same respect, we still work hard to try to maintain our balance that The Boys is about The Boys, and Gen V is about Gen V. The characters provide crucial assists, but it’s still about The Boys, and you can watch it without having watched Gen V and vice versa. But watching both is still a much more fun experience.
Those final moments with their arrival felt a little bit like the shows were merging, as if this could be the end of Gen V. But you don’t see it as that?
KRIPKE We don’t play it in season five of The Boys that this is the end of Gen V. We leave them open-ended because we actually have more Gen V story to tell, and we’d love to tell it. It depends on the ratings and how many people end up tuning in. We have to make it so Amazon picks us up for another season.
“The Hand That Feeds” by Nine Inch Nails plays in those final moments of the finale as the Gen V and The Boys characters meet. It’s a song about rebellion and challenging the establishment and status quo. But it’s also a political anthem critiquing the Bush administration’s foreign policy that the band didn’t perform at the 2005 VMAs because they weren’t allowed to project an image of Bush’s face. Were you aware of that history when you chose it, and if not, how did you land on it?
MICHELE FAZEKAS I did not know that. Our editor, Maura [Corey], put it in there. She’s really, really good at music. We spent a lot of time editing it so that certain parts of the song hit at the right places. So credit to our really amazing editor.
All season, we’ve heard Marie can stop Homelander, but there’s also the group that surrounds her whose journeys this season sort of represent themes — anti-corruption (Cate), courage over fear (Jordan), the power of difference (Sam), maintaining empathy in the face of cruelty (Emma), rejecting fear of the other (Annabeth), and collectivism over individualism (Marie). Those all feel a little like antidotes to fascism. What did you want to highlight through Marie and her friends about what it means to go from a maladjusted teen to an adult, and the kind of supe necessary to stop Homelander?
FAZEKAS At its heart, any show like this is a coming-of-age story. So what you have in a college show, whether or not it’s a superhero show, is these kids who are away from their parents, on their own for the first time, and they have to figure out who they are. Who am I myself, and who am I outside of outside influences? Now, at a place like Godolkin University, we’re going to get constant input that you should be this type of superhero. Can you fight that? Can you ignore the outside stuff and really dig down and figure out who you are as a person? What I find interesting about Gen V is the heroes on our show are sort of the villains on The Boys, but they haven’t been corrupted yet.
And the entire existence of Godolkin University, in part, is: how do we corrupt these kids? We figure out what they want, and then we offer it to them. Cipher knew that with Marie, you want to be powerful. You want to know how powerful you can be, and I can teach you that. So I do think it is about embracing who you are, understanding who you are. Marie and Annabeth were able to mend fences when Annabeth admitted, listen, the reason I’m so mean to you is because I’m blaming myself, and it’s easier to blame you than blame me. It’s all around the idea that truth is the thing that is the most important, and being true about yourself and being true about what you want. It sounds very self-important in a way, but that’s where we ended up.
Marie helps clinch this fight against Godolkin, only after momentarily waffling on the ethics of how to use her powers. Michele previously spoke about what makes Marie different from Homelander and brought up that she was nurtured differently. What other things in your mind make Marie different from Homelander?
KRIPKE She’s absolutely right about the childhood. We’ve been very clear, and you see it with Ryan, too, this nature-nurture argument of how important nurturing is. You can almost line them up. Every single character that isn’t a monster, like, had a good childhood.
Marie also has a great band of friends who love her, not fear her.
KRIPKE Exactly. She has people who trust her, and she trusts. I’d say another thing that’s different is Marie’s still young, and just because she’s incredibly powerful doesn’t mean she has perfect control over it. There’s a journey. She’s not Neo at the end of The Matrix. Those become bummer, boring Messiah characters, and she’s not that. She’s still a person and has a hard time wrestling with the amount of power that she’s finding herself to have.
The gang doesn’t just grow personally but also within their romantic relationships, which seem to have all fallen away by the finale. Why did it feel right to not tie everyone up neatly in a bow before they go fight, and had you thought about where they might go if the show gets to continue?
FAZEKAS I think for both Jordan and Emma, it shows growth for them. Even if Marie didn’t want it, Marie had to accept it. It’s these first love relationships. You’re going to be messy, and you’re going to lose yourself in it, and you’re going to make bad choices. So when Jordan ends things with Marie, we’re not slamming the door on that. We’re not slamming the door on anything with Emma and Sam, or even Emma and Greg, if that is the way she goes. But what I really like is that it shows their emotional level up. I need to figure out who I am outside of us, which doesn’t mean that we can’t revisit it in the future. But it shows maturity.
Beyond Marie and her friends, in that final fight, you have two God U students whose powers were running jokes all season, but become essential players against Godolkin. How early on did you know they’d play that pivotal role, and what does it say about Godolkin’s ideology?
FAZEKAS We did not know that Black Hole was going to play a pivotal role. He was just a joke based on a real thing called butt chugging that people do in college, evidently. As the season went on and we were figuring out what Godolkin’s ultimate goal was, it started to become a nice counterpoint. He’s talking about all of these useless superheroes and wanting to get rid of them so we can only focus on the good ones. I really liked telling the story that even the ones that are supposedly useless end up defeating him. That’s what elevated the other characters in a really fun way. I also love the storyline of Emma trying to join this small resistance, where all they were doing was graffiti, and she’s like, “No, let’s really fuck shit up.” She becomes somewhat of a leader in that little group. But when we initially introduced them, we didn’t have a clear idea that they were going to pay off in the season finale. It just organically happened.
Viewers finally see Ethan Slater fully embody Godolkin after Hamish Linklater had been playing him as Cipher for seven episodes. Meanwhile, Linklater becomes Doug. How did you work with them, and if they worked together at all, in order to get to that twist that just plays out so well and ultimately sets up that finale fight?
FAZEKAS They didn’t work together, I don’t believe. We let Ethan see Hamish’s performance, and what we told him was, “We don’t want you to be doing a Hamish Linklater impersonation. Just watch it and see what you can incorporate, if anything.” Just so he knows who he’s supposed to be — and he did. It’s very subtle, which I really like. Just the way he pronounces things, or the specificity of his language, and how he says words. Then I have to say, Hamish becoming a different person, becoming Doug, was — that was all Hamish. He’s so good. He wanted to talk it through, well, who is he, and who was he, and where is he from? So he sort of created that himself. I don’t think for a moment that [he is] not a different person than [he’s] been these past seven episodes. He is a ridiculously talented person. Both of them take their craft seriously and want to study it and want to understand the history of their character.
We see Sage’s relationship and plan with Godolkin, like his head exploding, seemingly explode as well. Is she doing a death march here? How much does Homelander know about what’s going on?
KRIPKE Well, it all went pretty sideways on Sage (Laughs). The story about Sage that we really liked — and it was Michele Fazekas’ notion — was, “Why can’t we give Sage a love story? Does she always have to be just such a calculated robot?” She genuinely loved the guy, and she had this plan. They were gonna move in together, and they were gonna break it to Homelander in a really careful way. They were going to be this power couple. She had this vision of a happy world with the other smartest person in the world, and he just went fucking nuts. She’s begging him not to do this. She knew that his going down that path was going to be destructive for both of them. There’s a reason she let Polarity out of that prison in the final episode. She knew that she had to ultimately protect her own hide. We play a bit of that. She comes into season five a little heartbroken. This guy really broke her heart. She was already a misanthrope, and it just makes her even more so.
Godolkin is seemingly gone, although you’ve teased he may appear in Vought Rising. We also have Stan Edgar, who appears this season, and now Marie. Who is Homelander up against in The Boys season five? Who are the players, and how fast is this pushback on him?
KRIPKE He’s got a lot of people in line who want to bitch slap him. (Laughs) Obviously, Butcher is in the front of that line. But there’s Stan Edgar, Marie, Annie, Huey. They’re trying to mount a real push, but they’re also outgunned, outmanned. You’re in an entire country that has drunk Homelander’s Kool-Aid. They’re outmatched by the size of the hundreds of superheroes that are in every town across the country, who have been given authority over the police. So it really is a true underground resistance against a fascist government, which definitely has no comparison or parallel to anything going on anywhere in the world.
***
Gen V season two is now streaming on Prime Video.
#Gen #Season #Finale #Boys #Season #Eric #Kripke #Interview
