Gen V Producer on That Huge The Woods Reveal in Episode 6

Gen V has burst onto the television scene with such superhero strength over the past month that it’s almost threatening to overshadow its sibling show, The Boys. The series takes place in the same world, and at the same time, as The Boys, but it follows the younger generation of supes at Godolkin University who are still mastering their powers (but are no less ambitious or dangerous).

Lifehacker Australia recently had the chance to interview showrunner Michele Fazekas, who dug into the specifics of some of Gen V’s characters, how the collaborative process worked with the team on The Boys and how that major Episode 6 reveal came about.

Gen V and The Boys crossovers

Existing within the same superhero world as The Boys, it was inevitable that there would be some crossover between the two shows. Some of these are quick and subtle, like The Deep’s (Chace Crawford) status as a revered alumni of the university. Others are meatier parts, like the return of Colby Minifie as Vought CEO, Ashley.

When it came to recruiting the cast of The Boys onto Gen V, Fazekas said it was a “very organic process” that started with The Boys executive producer, Eric Kripke, reaching out.

“A lot of it was just sort of people’s availability and who was available and who was travelling or who was working,” Fazekas explained.

The showrunner added that they were never turned down for any of the cameos that they requested.

“We didn’t also want to overdo it. I think we wanted to have the connections to the show and have them be special. And I feel like the danger of overdoing it is like, then why do you even have a spin-off? Like, can the show exist on its own? That was a big, important thing that we wanted to make sure that even if you’ve never seen The Boys, you can still enjoy Gen V.“

Power or curse?

To achieve this, Gen V is filled with memorable new characters. One of the main heroes is Marie Moreau, a girl with the power to wield her own blood as a weapon.

Throughout the series, Marie can be seen cutting open her palms to allow her to telekinetically bend her own blood. This has brought up the question of the limitations of Marie’s powers. Does she heal quickly? Does she have an endless supply of blood?

Fazekas cleared up some of the misconceptions for us:

“She has some scarring on the palm of her hand, but it’s not as much as if she were a full-on human. So she can regenerate quicker, she can produce blood quicker, but that does take a toll on her. She also can control other blood that’s not just her blood.”

Fazekas added that there was a version of the pilot script that saw Marie chugging an “iron-heavy smoothie” to aid her powers, but that it was ultimately scrapped.

Gen V’s secret weapon

Looking at the wider cast of Gen V, there’s an assortment of new and interesting characters, many of whom haven’t been seen before in the graphic novels.

Jordan Li is a stand out amongst this group. Played equally by London Thor and Derek Luh, Jordan’s abilities allow them to shift genders, with each of their personifications resulting in different powers. The inclusion of such a character has been a significant step in the representation of gender fluidity on screen.

“When I came onto the show, I thought, oh, this is your secret weapon,” Fazekas said. “Because it’s very rare that it’s like, Oh, I’ve never seen this character before. I’ve never seen this idea before. If you notice, like, all the powers have a metaphor for the psychological, mental, emotional states, experienced by these sort of age groups.”

“So with Jordan, with gender identity, we actually hired a writer who’s a trans writer. But Jordan is not trans. We had to be really clear about that, because an actual trans person cannot change gender at will. But it is a sort of an allegory for trans. And we really liked that.”

It’s a move that the LGBTQ+ community also seems to have welcomed:

“We were, I think, a little nervous. Like it’s a show that offends everyone… The Boys is supposed to be offensive,” she continued. “I don’t want to hurt someone, I don’t want to harm someone – that was like my two things with any character. And, so far, the trans community, the non-binary, gender-fluid community has seemed to really embrace it, which is such a win.”

Gen V: Episode 6 reveal

(Spoiler warning for Gen V Episode 6, don’t read until you’ve seen the latest episode!)

Now, let’s get into some plot details. Throughout Gen V, there’s been an ongoing mystery about ‘The Woods’ the shady medical facility within Godolkin University that has been imprisoning and experimenting upon supes.

Episode 6 contained a significant reveal about The Woods – that Dr. Cardosa has engineered a superhero-only virus that Dean Shetty wants to release en masse.

Fazekas shed some light on this reveal:

“That happened late in the [writers] room, kind of halfway through,” she said. “We knew they were doing something bad. But we didn’t know what.”

“We knew that Shetty was the bad guy, but we didn’t even know what her agenda was. So when we started to talk about her as [someone who] just hates all superheroes, she wants genocide, we started developing that story in the room.”

The idea of a supe virus is something that will no doubt have massive repercussions for every character in Gen V, but also potentially the wider The Boys universe as well.

“Anything we do on the show has an impact on The Boys, so obviously, Eric has to be involved and co-signed everything, but he was on board,” she said, before pausing “But, I can’t tell you anything about how it impacts The Boys.”

What’s next?

All too quickly, Gen V is approaching the end of its season. Luckily, more is on the way. Prime Video recently confirmed a second season of Gen V has been ordered. But before that, we’ll be seeing more from the mothership show. According to Fazekas, the upcoming finale of Gen V could be intertwined with season 4 of The Boys.

“We’re launching, not into our next season, but we’re launching into The Boys’ fourth season and we had to sort of build toward that,” she said. “…I think it’s really interesting working on this show, we’re sort of alternating now between Gen V and The Boys. So some of what we have to do is set up our second season and some of what we had to do was set up The Boys fourth season.”

As for the more immediate future, Gen V has two episodes remaining. Even in a season that has already involved exploding brains, limbs and other appendages, Fazekas promised the wild scenes aren’t over yet.

“There’s (sic) really big things to come. There are big sequences to come,” she teased.

Gen V airs weekly on Prime Video on Fridays.