The Big Picture

• Gen V, a spin-off of The Boys, explores the lives of supes at Godolkin University, delving into the pressure and chaos of college life.
• Unlike The Boys, Gen V focuses more on character development and contains R-rated content that stems from real experiences, rather than aiming to shock viewers.
• The Gen V creative team are unsure of how many seasons the series will have, aiming to let the story and characters guide them rather than forcing a specific episode count.

[Editor's note: The following contains some spoilers for Gen V.]The Amazon Studios original series Gen V, set between Seasons 3 and 4 of The Boys, takes the blood splatter to Godolkin University, where only supes are allowed to attend and train to be the next generation of heroes. And while not all supes go bad, the pressure of being at the top of the class mixed with a heightened level of college chaos can lead any superhero to the brink of villainy.

During this interview with Collider, co-showrunner Michele Fazekas and executive producer Eric Kripke (showrunner for The Boys) talked about what guides them when it comes to the R-rated content, what Gen V does that The Boys does not, why they don’t want to overstay their welcome when it comes to the amount of seasons for the series, whether Gen V characters could appear on The Boys, shooting the epic house fight in episode four, and the intentional decision for when each Jordan would be in any given scene.

Collider: When it comes to the R-rated content in Gen V, unlike The Boys where it felt like you were testing out and seeing what you could get away with, you really jump into that territory, right from the start, with this show. Do you feel like you’re pushing that content even further in this series?

MICHELE FAZEKAS: We never approach that as being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous. It has to come from the story. It has to come from the characters. I’ll point to the episode where Marie wakes up in Rufus’ dorm room and blows up his dick. But here’s the thing, where that comes from is actually a very real place of women who are in college, who are coerced into having sex or who find themselves in danger from predators. There are a lot of women in my writers’ room and we’ve all had experience, not like that, but where you can really click into what that is like. So, we’re never starting from, “What’s the outrageous thing?” It’s like, “What is the story, and then how can we,” as Eric [Kripke] coined the phrase, “supe-ify it?” But it never comes from, “How can we make people wanna throw up?”

ERIC KRIPKE: That’s true.

Eric, what were you most enjoying about Gen V that you couldn’t do with The Boys?

KRIPKE: I love what Michele and Tara [Butters] and the writers have done to make it its own animal. The thing I love the most, just even looking at fan response, what’s so gratifying that people are responding to are the things that The Boys can’t do. There’s an emphasis on character in Gen V because the world of Gen V is a little more contained and it’s a little more character focused. The Boys canvas is so unwieldy in some ways. Every time you write a scene where it’s, “The President of the United States enters,” you’re always like, “Oh, that’s so big.” It’s so nice to have a scene of just two people passing a bong back and forth and talking. The stuff that I really dig in Gen V is just that these powers are metaphors for what these characters are going through versus The Boys where the powers are metaphors for societal issues. There isn’t the same requirement to have such direct commentary on the world. You can just focus in on who these people are and what they’re going through. I have to say, that’s very refreshing.

What is the long-term hope for this show? Do people even think in terms of five-season series anymore, or is it more general, in the sense that it’s open-ended?

FAZEKAS: You never wanna overstay your welcome or just fill time. And so, we’re approaching it as, where does the story take us? Where do these characters take us? And what would a natural ending be? I don’ t know that we have like an answer to that yet, but we’re not being driven by, “We need to have X number of episodes by this amount of time.” That’s the benefit of being on a streaming platform where you’re not having to fill a 22-episode season between this time and this time.

KRIPKE: I’m literally the worst person in all of history, at predicting how long a show should go because I said Supernatural was five and out, and was on record often. So, the lesson I learned from that experience was to never predict how long a show could go because no one’s ever been more wrong than me.

We see various crossover cameos with characters from The Boys and Gen V. Can we expect to see any Gen V characters in future episodes of The Boys?

KRIPKE: I can neither confirm nor deny. Look, they exist in the same world and one of the joys of the shows is that the shows can sing to each other.

FAZEKAS: Marie has already shown up in The Boys.

KRIPKE: Oh, yeah, that’s true. Marie had a little Easter egg. As long as you don’t need to see the other show to enjoy the one you’re watching then we’re totally open to that stuff. It really bums me out when you’re watching a franchise and it’s like, “Oh, wait, did you watch the 12 other hours? Because you’re not gonna understand any of this unless you see that.” And then, it starts to feel like homework. So, as long as you can just watch it and enjoy it then, yeah, we’re totally open to that kind of stuff.

I loved the fight in the house in episode four with Sam against pretty much everybody because it was cool to see everybody’s powers against each other. What’s it like to shoot a sequence like that, where everyone has these different powers and you’re showcasing what that looks like between everybody? How much more complicated is it to do something like that?

FAZEKAS: Very. It’s a huge process. It has to be really well-designed and planned. You need time to do it, and you always feel like you never have enough time. Those big ensemble scenes are fun. What you end up seeing, when you cut it together, is such a tiny fraction of what was shot. It’s fun, but it’s big.

How did you decide when the female Jordan would be presenting versus the male Jordan? I’m so fascinated by that character. Were there ever times when it wasn’t working one way in a chosen moment, so you flipped it? How did you balance that?

FAZEKAS: I was very intentional about that. It comes from the story. It comes from where that character is in a moment. We have not been like, “Let’s just shoot it with both actors and we’ll figure it out in post.” We’re always very intentional about who you’re seeing in any given moment. So, there’s not one answer to that. It just comes from how the story or the character is. When I read the pilot script, I was like, “Oh, there’s your secret weapon. I have never seen this character before,” which is a very rare thing.

Gen V is available to stream at Prime Video.