‘Gen V’ Episode 8 Recap: “The Guardians Of Godolkin”

Chaos on campus! In the season finale of Gen V, the supe revolt that riled up Victoria Neuman’s town hall in Episode 7 (“Sick”) finds its true leaders in two people we know. There was our little group – Cate and Sam on one side, Marie, Jordan and Emma on the other – arguing about intent over the still warm body of Indira Shetty as the sum volume of the dean’s blood saturated the Karastan Kashmere in her living room. They’ve all been close to bloodshed. But was Shetty’s murder a slay too far? Not for Cate. “Marie, I did this for you. I did this for all of you. When I’m done, maybe you’ll realize I’m being a hero.” Which makes Sam express his desire to be a hero. As they see it. Whether detained as an illegal test subject or doped into submission, for these two Shetty’s death represents an act of retribution against human control of supes. And ignoring the protests of their former allies and romantic partners, Cate and Sam light out to free The Woods and fuck up more humans. God U? More like god help you.

Andre wasn’t in the death circle at Shetty’s because of his father Polarity’s acute health emergency, a violent seizure Vought’s docs say was brought about by the degradation of his brain matter. Metal manipulation, the superpower Andre and Polarity share, is slowly but surely killing them. Which from his dad’s point of view is reason enough to pass the suit onto his son. He apologizes to Andre, but admits that while he knew about The Woods and participated in a bunch of other heinous Vought-sanctioned shit, it was only to support and protect their family. School’s over, Polarity says. Wear the suit, and be the hero the company tells you to be. But then Andre gets a call from Cate. “It’s not too late – come be with me.” Be with her on campus, that is, where her version of heroism is playing out as a massacre.

Liberating those imprisoned in The Woods is noble; Marie, Jordan, and Emma would’ve found a way to do that, too. But Sam putting his fist through a security guard’s face illustrates the tenor of Cate’s cause. “You’re not inferior,” she declares to her newly formed army of aggrieved supes. “You are superior.” And they start brain-frying, laser-eyeing, and otherwise devouring every human they can find. Luke appears to Sam. Killing innocents? That’s how he’s holding humans accountable? But Sam’s got no time for an apparition of the older brother whose suicide left him behind. With one touch from Cate, any remorse he might have felt is removed, and so are his feelings for Emma. He won’t listen to her, either – cruelly, he says that Emma’s desperation over getting everyone to like her does not make her a hero – and the carnage continues. 

“I’m missing a farm to table fuck fest at Ina and Jeffrey’s, but someone has to save this fucking place.” Overlooking a Goldolkin quad strewn with bodies, Vought president Ashley Barrett is prepared to ram through a new member of The Seven as damage control against bad press. Too little too late, of course, as Cate’s supe troops continue their rampage. But she still gets Marie on the phone with the offer. Barrett even dangles the possibility of a reunion with her sister Annabeth, which certainly seems like a key tidbit for Gen V season two. (It’s already been renewed.) “You just need to take out some students. Cancel them. Cancel them from planet earth.” Marie doesn’t want to kill Cate, and with Jordan’s help tries to reason with her. But that isn’t gonna fly. When Cate instead reaches for Jordan with intent to mindwarp, Marie blows her arm off with surging blood power.           

What does being a hero even mean in a society that elevates its most corrupt supes and encourages its youth to emulate them? All season, even as she bonded with Jordan and Emma, Marie had to continually reckon with the corrupted reality that Vought represents. Godolkin? A sham. Its administrators? Self-involved greed heads. And like she once told Jordan, the megacorp itself is a twister of everything for its own gain. So she’s not exactly surprised when a sonic boom above heralds the arrival of the most corrupt supe of them all. Homelander.  

Still, because she’s inherently good, Marie cannot anticipate the brazen reversal of reality that unfolds. Sure, she just conjured blades of blood to kill a rogue supe who was attacking Ashley Barrett and some Vought execs. But Cate and Sam are the real culprits, the real ringleaders of this human killing spree. Which is a fact Homelander ignores. Instead, it’s Marie who he blames for the violence. It’s Marie who he says enjoys “killing your own kind.” And it’s Marie who bears the brunt of the energy that blasts from Homelander’s eyes as everything goes black.

So who’s still standing, and what’s left? 

With heavy hitter characters like Homelander, Soldier Boy, and even Grace Mallory surfacing in Gen V, season one of the series became an ever longer on ramp for the upcoming fourth season of The Boys. Remember when Mallory met with Shetty, and recorded their conversation? She apparently hipped Billy Butcher to the whole wild scene at Godolkin, because Karl Urban’s rascally supe hunter appears here in a midcredits sequence, examining the abandoned remains of The Woods. And after that fade to black, a Vought News report trumpeted “The Godolkin 4 Massacre” in another typically ugly reversal, pinning the campus chaos on Marie, Jordan, Emma, and Andre and declaring Cate and Sam “the new Guardians of Godolkin.” That seems to guarantee membership in The Seven for at least one of those two, and probably means nobody is returning for further study at God U. No, when we meet Marie and her friends again in season two of Gen V, it will be in the wake of their new status as prisoners in another Vought containment facility. In hospital smocks, the group considers their new predicament. They’re in a recovery room, with diagnostic equipment and gurnees and everything. But there are no windows and no doors. However they find their way toward some form of superheroism, it will have to start with getting out from under Vought’s thumb. Again. 

Maybe Grace Mallory, Billy Butcher and The Boys are looking to recruit some new members. 

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.