‘Gen V’ Season 2 Episode 8 Recap: School’s Out (Forever?)

Earlier this season, when she was under Cipher’s control, Jordan said it was like being the car that he was driving. So imagine how Doug has felt for the last 30 years, as Thomas Goldolkin used his mind, body and soul as a daily driver. We get some insight on Godolkin though, from Doug’s imprisoned real time perspective. The blue goo the Vought doc jabbed himself with in 1967? It was V-1, the same compound administered to first-generation Vought supes like Soldier Boy and Storm Front. That’s why he doesn’t age. As for Project Odessa, Doug says it really did create god-tier beings in Marie and Homelander. It’s one thing Godolkin wasn’t lying about. And later, as Polarity drives him to the hospital, Doug offers the man some valuable clarity of vision on the untimely death of his son. “Andre,” Doug tells Polarity, “was the greatest hero I’ve ever seen.” Underneath all the puppetting, Doug turned out to be a pretty nice dude. Too bad he gets impaled on the blade of Black Noir’s sword. 

A supe from The Boys dropping out of the sky to slice somebody open in the second season finale of your series spinoff is one way to keep the momentum of this TV universe pumping. (At the end of Season 1, it was Homelander doing the dropping.) It’s also a message to our crew that the chaos will continue. As they prepare to face a renewed Thomas Godolkin, their battle will take place in a divided superhero landscape. We catch Thomas and Sage indulging in food and wine post-coitus sensory overload, giggling over “Phase II” of their plan. It involves Homelander, but it is not aligned with him. And there is still the Stan Edgar factor. Another faction, in search of total power. Season 2 has brought the Gen V crew closer. But it has also established further instability in the super-world they inhabit.

And this series still nominally takes place in college, so you might get Rufus’d, lose time, and wake up with dicks drawn on your face. 

“Prove that you belong, or die trying.” On campus, Godolkin is mad with his renewed power. Puppeteering many supe students simultaneously, he forces them to kill each other as the ultimate expression of his Survival of the Supest philosophy. For these young supes to use their power for sex, money, likes on social media – it’s embarrassing. Even as boils appear on his refreshed skin, Godolkin seems to think his god-tier road test is going well. (“I’m accelerating my own evolution.”) He’ll be left with only the strongest from this culling. Sage watches it all, stunned. It is not what they planned. Homelander is blowing up her phone; she ignores his call.

When Marie arrives in the seminar training room, she pays off her action movie moment from the Elmira jailbreak. It’s true, her full potential has finally been reached. And if he releases his puppets, she won’t use all of it to kill him. Godolkin siccs his charges on her, and Marie fights through the scrum with both blood and fist. But it’s all part of their plan. Let’s call it Operation Trojan Butt. Quantum Rear End Guy is on the crew’s side now, and with a Jordan pulse blast from inside his ass, Godolkin is knocked from his feet as the rest of the crew emerges, ready to fight.

Jordan, Sam, and Greg are punching people. Emma gets big of her own volition, and kicks Godolkin to where Ally can detain him with her supergrow pubic hair. One touch from Harper, and she now has 15 seconds of puppet-mimicking power. The Secret Starlighter breaks his controlling spell, and the crew evacuates the other students from the seminar room as Marie turns to face Godolkin. “We beat you. All of us. Even the useless ones.” 

The crew knew Godolkin would try to puppet Marie. But his plan, as told to Sage, sounded even more diabolical. If he could control one Odessa baby in Marie, why not puppet her cousin, too? Make Homelander his everyday driver? We will never know if that could have happened. As she watched the plan they made together fall apart completely, just so one more man could consolidate power for himself, Sage went her own way. She allowed Polarity to walk from Vought custody, because she knew his power would impede Godolkin’s push.

Thomas Godolkin does manage to take control of Marie – for like two seconds. Once Polarity arrives, his powers break the connection. And using only her mind, Marie gives Godolkin a fatal full-body phlebotomy. “That was for Andre,” she tells Polarity, as the bloody remains of God U’s latest dean of students burble and sploot before them.

Marie, Jordan, Emma, Cate, Sam, and Annabeth are driving through the night. They are still targets of Vought. Jordan has forgiven Marie for all the leaving, but also says they can’t be together. (As friends, yes, but more is TBD.) Leaving Greg behind on the God U campus, Emma kissed him, and delivered a message of her own to the Secret Starlighter. (“Fuck. Shit. Up.”) And Annabeth has decided not to return to her old life with Pam. “You’re a hero, Marie,” she says, hugging her sister. This crew, this fucked-up little functioning family, will face whatever’s next together. 

So howabout joining the resistance? Like Black Noir appearing out of nowhere as the Vought threat personified, Annie January drops out of the sky in front of the crew. And she’s on a Starlight recruiting mission. Would Marie and her friends like to join up? Emma: “We kinda already have a resistance? But yeah, no, like some type of merger.” Emma and the rest of our friends look legitimately starstruck in Annie’s presence, but they’re psyched. A-Train arrives, because after the events of The Boys Season 4, he’s part of the resistance too, and now they’re even more psyched. Homelander’s probably gonna go after his fellow Odessa Baby in Marie Moreau. And Vought’s gonna keep on Voughting. But for the crew on Gen V, it looks like class is dismissed for good.

Class Notes for Gen V Season 2 Episode 8 (“Trojan”):

• Gen V Season 3? Creator Eric Kripke says there are ideas percolating, but we have nothing solid to report. Maybe gaze into the Prime Video series renewal orb yourself, and tell us what you see.

• With nothing official on a Gen V S3, we’ll toss out a theory. As Marie and the crew graduate to official resistance group status, maybe Harper, Ally, and Greg hold it down for the Secret Starlighters at Godolkin University, with Polarity as their clued-in campus advisor.

• Our friends were looking for Stan Edgar’s bunker when Starlight and A-Train showed up. While we never saw Edgar again in Season 2 of Gen V after Episode 6, we know he’s still angling for power in this TV universe. Plus, Edgar comes complete with an intriguing additional character in his granddaughter, Zoe Neuman. Zoe is herself a powerful supe, the inheritor of Victoria Neuman’s legacy, and like Marie Moreau, an ex-Red River Orphanager. We think Stan and Zoe will be a big part of whatever Kripke’s got cooking for the upcoming finale season of The Boys. And after that? Who knows?

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.