‘Gen V’ Season 2 Episode 1 Recap: “New Year, New U”

Season 2 of Gen V opens with a quiet dedication to series star Chance Perdomo, who died in a motorcycle accident in March 2024 at age 27. The role of Andre Anderson was not recast, but it’s also a tribute to Perdomo’s work that the storylines for the second season were completely rewritten. Which means as we return to this twisted young superheroes spinoff of The Boys, it’s with Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway) and Jordan Li (London Thor and Derek Luh) locked up alone at Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center. Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair), the fourth of their number, has escaped. So it’s up to them to carry the message of Andre’s death as they’re transported back to where it all began, Godolkin University, and greeted with manufactured charm by Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips). Andre’s gone, Marie blew off her mind-touch hand with surging blood power, and now she works for Homelander. But Cate is still smiling through the crazy. 

“Why don’t you read my mind, cunt?” Jordan says in their male form, and these first words to their double-crossing ex-friend are salty, choice, and so totally typical for the tone of this series. Welcome back to the The Gen V/Boys universe. Cate does read Jordan’s mind, and seems genuinely shocked to learn about Andre’s death at Elmira. But how genuine can she really be if she’s part of the new administration at God U? Hamish Linklater joins Gen V as Cipher, the new Dean of Students, and a guy Emma and Jordan saw lurking at the facility where they were disappeared. All Cipher wants to know now is where Marie is. And in the meantime, to push the Vought agenda, Emma and Jordan are subjected to a live spectacle, part struggle session and part reality show reunion episode, where they publicly declare complicity in the bloodshed of the Season 1 finale. (Or, “The Woods Tragedy.”) Cate and Sam Riordan (Asa Germann) stand as the new “Guardians of Godolkin,” and on campus, the supe student community couldn’t be more aligned with Vought’s reality-twisted party line. It’s as if what Andre, Marie, Emma, and Jordan fought for meant absolutely nothing.

In this TV universe, a secret lab like The Woods experimenting on young supes isn’t in itself shocking. Homelander himself was created in a secret lab. And another secret lab devoted to Vought dirty business appears in flashback form in Gen V Season 2. It’s 1967, and seven scientists – all of them white, all of them male, all of them gloating over their achievement – plunge seven syringes full of blue goo into their forearms. “Odessa Project,” a sign reads. “Top Secret.” But these guys are too confident. Don’t they know the spotty track record on secret labs? A young Vought scientist, this is Ethan Slater as Dr. Thomas Godolkin, bangs on the door. “It’s not ready!” But the blue goo does its work. And as their body parts transform, expand, and explode, the scientists experience carnage, Gen V-style. 

Project Odessa. Clearly it wasn’t ready in 1967, but back in the present on the God U campus, Cipher is giving blood and soil speeches about student supes becoming soldiers. Because “Make America Super Again.” Because “The Woke Agenda.” Because secret supe and almost president Victoria Neuman was the victim of a “Deep State Conspiracy.” As America’s history is rewritten in real life, so it is with the TV version, as Gen V Season 2 merges with the events of The Boys Season 4 and Cipher’s speech continues. The MASA crowd can’t trust humanity. Supes must seize their own racial identity. “Blue in our veins!” the new dean thunders. It seems the mysterious blue goo of Project Odessa is set to flow again.   

Marie Moreau, during her life on the lam, discovers what flows in the veins of the Hometeamers. With Homelander exerting his will over the country, his fanboys walk the streets, and when a bunch of those guys hassle some Starlighters, Marie and her blood power bounce the Hometeamers between their sets of truck nuts and the unforgiving pavement. 

It’s with a little smile as Marie protects the helpless against douchebag tyranny like this. She was always the most noble of Gen V’s young supes, even if her idealism took a hit after learning the truth about Vought. When we meet her again, Marie’s also buying burner phones and Vought-brand snacks at convenience stores, calling anywhere she can in search of her lost little sister Annabeth. Maybe she would have stayed on the run, searching for the last family she has and occasionally beating Hometeamers into bloody snot. But Gen V Season 2 gets its first Boys cameo moment when Starlight (Erin Moriarty) appears. “You can’t stay out of this fight forever,” Annie January tells Marie. (Taking as truth the events of the recent Boys finale, we’re also assuming this is the real Annie, not the shapeshifter Starlight she killed before escaping Homelander’s rogue supe roundup.) The rise of Project Odessa is the new fight, the latest Vought conspiracy for which God U is ground zero. Annie says by going back to school, Marie can get closer to gathering valuable Odessa intel.   

The run-in with the Hometeamers showed us something else about Gen V’s return, which is more confidence around the use of powers. In Season 1, Marie, like Emma and her ability to shrink and/or get big, was still finding a way into what she could do. Now it’s the second season, they’re facing down new enemies and a new conspiracy, and without Andre. A better sense of how and when to kick ass will be pretty key. And since Marie’s battle action moment also went viral – remember, in this universe, these college kids are supe social media influencers – Emma recognized the handiwork of her blood-wielding freshman year roommate. 

It’s a reunion under duress, once Emma and Jordan find their friend. Marie says she escaped Elmira when she saw an opening – a decision that also left the rest behind. With the likelihood of their survival seeming to diminish, Jordan says, Andre took it on himself to expedite their escape. He summoned all of his metal-manipulating power, pushed to bust open a giant steel door. But as Jordan says, it was too much weight, “He stroked the fuck out, dropped, and died.” (Another factor from last season being Andre and his father, Sean Patrick Thomas’s Polarity, and the shared burden of their superpower as a debilitating agent.) Losing Andre was bad enough. But Jordan feels like Marie acted selfishly when what their crew needed most was unity.

What’s done is done. Arguing about it will have to wait, because Cate followed Emma and Jordan to their meetup with Marie. She says they’re all safest at Godolkin, like being on campus under Vought house arrest is better than a cell at Elmira or getting rounded up in the streets. But then Cate’s mind-reader powers perk up. Hold up, Marie saw Starlight? And wait, “What’s Odessa?” She reaches out to amnesia-fy them when our supe heroes’ new sense of power strikes again. With one massive energy pulse from Jordan, Cate is thrown bodily into a wall and cracks open her skull.

Class Notes for Gen V Season 2 Episode 1 (“New Year, New You”):

• Cate is definitely Vought-pilled. But it doesn’t seem like she knows about Project Odessa, and when Sam Riordan’s damaged mind starts to wander – maybe we’re the baddies, etc. – a touch from Cate is required to keep him in line. (Apparently her tactical mind control still works via the one hand she has left.) At least in part, The Guardians of Godolkin are a function of propaganda.

• Cate isn’t necessarily in Cipher’s good graces, either. The new dean is dismissive toward her during a tense meeting in his office. But he’s also dropping entire chicken breasts, breading and bones and meat and all, into a blender? How much protein bombing does this evil boss supe’s currently unknown superpower require?

• And finally, while on the lam, Marie also had a run-in with Zach McGowan as a supe new to Gen Z, Dogknott, who’s like Dog the Bounty Hunter if he had the olfactory receptors of an actual canine.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.