The title for the last episode of the first season of Gen V was “Guardians Of Godolkin.” And the title for this season-two finale is…“The Guardians Of Godolkin.” While I could make a quick quip about how the show found itself right where it began, I’d rather look at this seemingly intention echo in earnest. After all, last season, the focus was on the Guardians of Godolkin as something to do with the university. This time around, the expression seems more to do with the university’s namesake. They’re very similar titles, but they do come to mean different things. That said, there were several moments of déjà vu throughout this episode, with bits and pieces (and tropes) being recycled from past ones—for better and worse.
We begin, of course, exactly where the season first kicked off: the fiery failed experiment that found several colleagues of Thomas Godolkin (Ethan Slater) injecting themselves with the V compound they were developing. The story Godolkin University students have long been told is that the pioneering scientist died in that fire—except we now know that he didn’t. It turns out that while the lab around him was burning, he injected himself with V1 and developed his own special power, the puppeteering one we’ve seen Cipher (Hamish Linklater) use all season. So yes, he was burned to a crisp, but like Soldier Boy, his V1-powered body was quite resilient. That’s how he’s survived all these decades and how he was able to manipulate a loser like Linklater’s Doug to do his bidding.
And what has he been doing with his life (and body) now that Marie healed him and set him up to destroy the very university that holds his name (which, let’s remember, he called a “monument to mediocrity” with little hint of irony)? Well, eating everything he can his hands on as well as sleeping with Sister Sage (Susan Heyward). Yeah, it’s a bit of an odd pairing—and suddenly that sex scene from earlier this season where Cipher and Sage fucked in front of Godolkin’s body makes a little bit more sense now. Their partnership is quite interesting, and I wish we’d gotten more of it, especially since it soon becomes clear to Sage that Godolkin is done playing her games and has plans of his own for God U that may go against everything she’s been scheming regarding Vought, the Seven, and Homelander.
Knowing Godolkin is up to something, Marie and her ragtag team of friends (her own “Scooby Gang” to must use a Buffy-ism that feels particularly apt) decide it’s best for Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas) to take Doug to the hospital because…uh, Marie doesn’t or can’t heal him? (This felt like a particularly needless plot device. The show had to get those two out of sight for when Black Noir attacks them and kidnaps Polarity and couldn’t figure out a less clunky way of doing it.)
In any case, back in their dorms, Emma, Cate, and Marie bond, instead, about how they remain broken kids who have thankfully found themselves. Marie may wish to blame herself for what happened to Godolkin, saying she’s nothing special. “I’m never going to be more than being the girl who cuts herself when she feels sad,” she says, admitting she’d been played perfectly, with Godolkin feeding her that “Chosen One” narrative so as to train her into being stronger with every training. But as Emma points out, they’re all various kinds of fucked up. “Everybody is,” she adds. “But we also have people can help us carry our fucking baggage.”
It’s a sweet moment that speaks to the mental-health undercurrent that runs throughout Gen V and which is threaded through so many of their powers. What other show, after all, has turned self-harm and eating disorders into necessary aspects of superpower beings? And it leads to the moment we all knew was coming: Apparently Marie has no way of healing Doug but somehow musters enough energy to finally heal Cate back to her old self. And just in time!
For Godolkin, like any good superhero villain, is making his plans explicit in the most public way possible. He’s taken control of the University, reset everyone’s rankings, and is inviting students to come to his seminar to prove their worth—and the chance to make the top 10 and join the Seven. (See? I told you we were retreading some season-one stuff.) Marie & co. feel it’s all a ruse to get to her, but they don’t quite know the full extent of his plan, which is to basically Battle Royale the entirety of the God U student population: He wants gods, not embarrassments who use their powers to, say, roofie young freshmen. “Prove that you belong or die trying,” he tells those who show up at his seminar room even after being warned by Emma, Marie, and the like.
Once more, Godolkin is using his seminar as a training ground. Only this time, he’s not looking to empower his pupils. No, despite Sage’s misgivings, he’s looking to make himself more powerful the more he fends off attacks from those God U students he finds himself controlling and pitting against one another. (Again, this kind of fight where Cipher quickly puppeteers supes against one another was more inventive and surprising the first time he did it. This doesn’t land as well, especially considering these supes have powers we’re not really too familiar with.)
His plan soon comes into focus. Not only has Godolkin figured out he can control more than two people at once (which is how he’d been able to control both Doug and Jordan during the battle, say), but he knows he’s just a few more bloodied fights with useless students away from being able to control Marie. And if he can control one Odessa baby, then he should be able to control the other one: Homelander himself. That’s bad news for Sage, who had never imagined Godolkin would continue puppeteering that way again and who had other ideas for Homelander.
But Godolkin is giddy and all too happy to get his new puppets to dance for him (to “Get Happy,” of course) and keep killing as many God U students as he needs to so there’s no stopping him. Except we know one person who could stop him. Well, two. First up is Polarity. He’s proven to be the only person capable of blocking Godolkin’s powers. It makes sense Black Noir was sent to intercept him—on Sage’s orders, no less. Sage rambles on (“No one is more powerful than a man with nothing to lose”) and proves that there’s nothing she loves less than not being in control. It makes sense she’d leave the door open to Polarity’s cell and basically encourage him to help thwart Godolkin’s powergrab.
But he won’t be alone. Because second up is Marie, who may have done away with the whole “I’m the Chosen One” story Cipher told her but also may be able to stop Godolkin solo. And when she shows up at the seminar, it seems at first like she’s at it alone. Except, of course, us keen-eyed viewers noticed that one of the students who was eager to help her had one particularly unique power: the black hole that was his asshole. And so, as Godolkin readies to fight Marie with all of the students there assembled, the aptly titled “Black Hole” (played by the dapper Wyatt Dorion) unleashes basically every good guy student at God U that includes not just Emma, Sam, and Jordan but also Justine and Harper.
Basically, they’re the last stand and won’t let Godolkin get away with his mass massacre of mediocre supes. And so they get to work, in what proves to be quite a chaotic action sequence where it seems Godolkin may eventually beat them. Only they’ve clearly concocted quite the plan, which ends up involving Ally’s powers (her prehensible pubes) and Harper’s own. (She gets to control his power for 90 seconds, puppeteering him into submission). And yet, just as Marie is celebrating (“We beat you. All of us. Even the useless ones”), she makes the mistake all supes make during climactic fights: She underestimates her opponent. For that’s the moment Godolkin realizes he can actually puppeteer her. “You know the key to evolution?” he asks. “Pressure.”
Jaz Sinclair gets some fun beats to play as Marie (note her jab at Annabeth for being the worst precog they’ve ever met) as well as an entertaining villain speech. She stresses how all her friends (frozen and in pain by her blood powers) are weak, despite being perfect specimens. They’ve betrayed their kind and so must make a difficult choice. But as she’s droning on, we finally see Polarity arriving on the scene, sending an electromagnetic pulse all through the room. For a moment, it seems there might be a standoff between Godolkin and Polarity. But then this franchise does what it does best, and we witness Marie blowing up Godolkin’s head. That’s one way of making sure he doesn’t get inside anyone else’s, right?
The badass (if rather expected) move nicely sets up just how much stronger Marie has become. It is the move that fueled much of the mystery around the freshman season of The Boys, but here it’s being bandied about by a hero in the making, not a villain in the shadows. Still, that tip of the hat to what’s come before, followed so swiftly by Gen V once more being swallowed whole into the OG series’ mythology, feels like déjà vu. Last season, it was Homelander who came in to do some cleanup at God U; and this time around, it is Starlight, a.k.a. Annie (Erin Moriarty), who swoops in to welcome the Gen V kids into the Starlight resistance. That feels both necessary and anticlimactic in equal measure, like getting a gold star and then being reminded that you weren’t really sitting at the grown-up table. Will Marie & co. prove to be key for the upcoming fifth and final season of The Boys? Might this move away from campus mean we’re not really getting a third season of this college-set spin-off? My guess is yes and yes, but you’d have to ask Eric Kripke about that.
Stray observations
- • Going into season two, Gen V had the unenviable task of writing around the loss of one of its protagonists. And while we’ll never see what a season with Andre (Chase Perdomo) could’ve looked like, “The Guardians Of Godolkin” proved that the Gen V writers’ room gave flowers to one of their own without needing to reconfigure their entire show. (I have to imagine Polarity’s role this season would’ve been taken up by Andre, no?) And that conversation between Doug and Polarity about how Andre was a great kind of hero (before Black Noir killed the former) felt like a loving tribute to an actor whose presence was surely missed by cast, crew, and fans alike.
- • I worried last episode that Slater may not be able to match Linklater’s equally chilling and entrancing villainy. And after watching the former take center stage as Godolkin this episode, I…still stand by that. It was probably an unspeakably hard task to follow in Linklater’s footsteps, but Slater’s Godolkin was just not as terrifying (nor as even-keeled and cool) as he needed to be.
- • I’m going to keep saying it: Eight episodes is not enough for the kind plot juggling Gen V was doing this season. Cate’s redemption arc? Given the short-shrift. Emma’s love triangle? Barely mined. Jordan and Marie’s relationship? Reduced to the same fight over and over again. Sage and Godolkin’s master plans? So intriguing and yet so underdeveloped. And that doesn’t even include Annabeth’s struggles about being confronted with her estranged sister. There was so much narrative fodder to explore here.
