Whose side is Cate really on? How is everything going to affect season 4 of "The Boys"? While some questions have been answered in the season finale of "Gen V," others remain a mystery.
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00:00 Whose side is Kate really on?
00:02 How is everything going to affect season 4 of The Boys?
00:05 While some questions have been answered in the season finale of Gin V, others remain
00:09 a mystery.
00:10 Warning, spoilers ahead.
00:11 Throughout the first six episodes of Gin V, the show seemed surprisingly self-contained.
00:17 Sure, you've got some cameos from the deep and some stray mentions of Homelander being
00:22 on trial, but for the most part, it felt like a small-scale conspiracy taking place in a
00:27 fairly closed-off school.
00:28 You didn't have to watch The Boys to understand it, and vice versa.
00:32 This all shifted at the end of episode 6, which revealed that Dean Indira Shetty has
00:37 been plotting to build a virus that will wipe out all of the Supes.
00:41 "Is there any risk of us getting sick?"
00:43 "No, none at all.
00:45 The virus only affects Supes.
00:47 It attaches to the compound V in their blood."
00:51 Immediately, the implications became clear.
00:53 If she succeeded, this would have massive repercussions throughout The Boys.
00:57 Not only could it mean the death of bad Supes like Homelander or the Deep, it would mean
01:02 the demise of Starlight and Kimiko as well.
01:04 Still, for most of the sixth episode, Jumanji, it seemed like the show would stay relatively
01:10 self-contained.
01:11 With the core characters reeling from the reveal that Kate had been betraying them and
01:15 wiping their memories, Jumanji seemed to serve the clear narrative purpose of getting the
01:20 gang back together.
01:21 The other characters learned Kate's backstory and were forced to confront their own sins
01:25 in the process.
01:27 By the end of the episode, the direction for the rest of the season seemed clear.
01:31 Kate would redeem herself and, win or lose, they'd all band together for the finale, likely
01:36 preserving the status quo for The Boys in the process.
01:39 Of course, those next two episodes weren't so simple.
01:42 Episode 7, "Sick," ramped things up even more, with Congressman Victoria Newman coming to
01:48 campus.
01:49 "If elected, our administration wants to put a new position in government that allows the
01:53 superhuman community to have a seat at the table."
01:56 For fans of The Boys, her interactions with Marie, not to mention her actions at the campus
02:01 town hall, were delightful to watch.
02:03 Still, there's something a little disappointing about how such a major plot point was wrapped
02:07 up by a character from another show.
02:09 "Sick" took the issue of what to do about the virus out of Marie's hands.
02:13 Marie, however, is our main character.
02:15 It would have been nice to see how she would have handled it on her own.
02:18 Gen V may have introduced some fascinating new characters, but in the end, the show isn't
02:22 really about them.
02:24 With Newman taking her own secret dose of the virus and the Soup Lives Matter crowd
02:28 spiraling out of control, it became clear throughout the penultimate episode that the
02:32 season's main purpose is to set up Season 4 of The Boys.
02:36 The finale, "Heroes of Gdalkin," makes this even more blatant, with both Homelander and
02:41 Ashley showing up to play major roles.
02:44 Things get more muddied with the lack of resolution.
02:46 The season's final moments involve Kate and Sam getting praised by the press thanks to
02:50 Homelander, whereas Marie, Andre, Jordan, and Emma are all demonized and locked away.
02:56 For how long?
02:57 We don't know.
02:58 It seems insane that they'd trap them in there for the entirety of Season 4, which means
03:01 we might end up getting a Mandalorian, Book of Boba Fett situation, in which a cliffhanger
03:05 in one show is resolved in another.
03:08 Of course, this is the trade-off with having a small spin-off show that's part of a larger,
03:12 ongoing series.
03:14 Gen V was always going to have to choose between staying self-contained or sacrificing its larger
03:19 sense of continuity for the sake of the franchise.
03:22 Maybe it's good that instead of attempting a nearly impossible juggling act, they opted
03:26 to firmly choose the latter over the former.
03:29 Now we know, more clearly than ever, that Gen V is not a self-contained thing.
03:33 There's some relief in the show no longer treading that awkward middle ground.
03:37 It helps that Gen V offers up a fun subversion of a classic superhero dynamic in the process.
03:42 In the finale, our group of Supes have splintered off into two camps.
03:46 Those who believe peaceful coexistence with non-Supes is possible, and those who don't.
03:50 On the anti-peace side of things is Kate, whose powers are strikingly similar to Professor
03:55 X from the X-Men franchise.
03:57 She can both control people's minds and read them.
04:00 It's a power that might not seem that dangerous at first glance, especially if you're an X-Men
04:04 fan who's used to Xavier using the power with good intentions, but it quickly made her one
04:09 of the scariest Supes on the show.
04:12 At first blush, the obvious Magneto of the pro-peace group is Andre, who can bend metal.
04:17 But if anything, the Magneto parallel here is Marie.
04:20 She's another bender with a traumatic early childhood that informs her motivations, and
04:24 she's most strongly positioned as Kate's main foil.
04:27 With its final episode, Gen V asks what would have happened if Xavier and Magneto had switched
04:33 places.
04:34 What if X-Men First Class, which also focused on a bunch of young adult superhumans, had
04:38 made Xavier the bad guy instead?
04:40 Like X-Men, Gen V ultimately takes the stance that peaceful coexistence between Supes and
04:45 regular humans should be the end goal.
04:48 Much like how Magneto in The Last Stand is clearly painted as being in the wrong for
04:51 trying to murder every single non-mutant near the end, Dean Shetty is portrayed as going
04:56 too far with her Supe-killing virus.
04:59 Both franchises insist that genocide is never the answer, but the worlds of these franchises
05:03 are different, and this argument also plays a little differently between them.
05:07 After all, the X-Men movies portray mutants as a thinly-veiled metaphor for vulnerable
05:12 minority groups.
05:13 The 2000s films in particular were clearly focused on the gay rights parallel.
05:17 It's why so much of The Last Stand focuses on the misguided creation of a cure for being
05:22 a mutant, and why X2 gives us a scene with Bobby and his parents that plays out almost
05:26 exactly like a coming-out scene.
05:28 "We still love you, Bobby.
05:31 It's just this mutant problem is a little…"
05:34 "What mutant problem?"
05:35 But the series always strained a bit under this metaphor, because the mutants in the
05:39 X-Men movies aren't legitimately dangerous.
05:42 There are a lot of reasons why real-life homophobia is bad, but a big one is simply that queer
05:47 people aren't actually a danger to anyone.
05:49 But it's hard to blame anyone who's watched Magneto casually destroy the Golden Gate Bridge
05:54 for concluding that mutants truly are a serious threat.
05:57 Nor is it easy to blame Huey for hating Supes after one of them accidentally exploded his
06:02 girlfriend.
06:03 The TV, meanwhile, exists in a franchise that treats its superhuman characters more as powerful,
06:09 privileged elites, not a persecuted minority.
06:11 The Boys, at its core, has always been an anti-cop show.
06:15 As the sudden prevalence of the "Supe Lives Matter" slogan in season three made clear,
06:20 the best real-world parallel for the Supes is the police.
06:23 Most of the Supes we meet are crime fighters who are rarely held accountable for their
06:28 actions, are passively excused by the press, incapable of properly owning up to their mistakes,
06:33 and will regularly indulge in revenge fantasies and cozy up to white supremacy.
06:38 Even the good Supes, like Starlight and Queen Maeve, are characters who basically play the
06:42 role of disillusioned cops, who've repeatedly tried and failed to change a broken system
06:47 from within.
06:48 "I really did want to make a difference.
06:52 I really did care.
06:55 I was just like you."
06:57 So when the college Supes in Gen V start complaining about how they're a persecuted minority during
07:02 Victoria Newman's debate, it rings a little hollow.
07:05 The most prominent character among them is Rufus, the campus date rapist, after all.
07:10 The Supes trapped in the woods might genuinely be mistreated, but these Homelander fans cheering
07:15 on "Supe Power" are not one of them.
07:17 They're a parody of white conservatives as the show's left-wing writers see them, people
07:22 who have it all, who genuinely think they're better than everyone else, yet still have
07:26 the nerve to self-righteously declare themselves victims.
07:29 "You will not replace us!"
07:32 It's a lot easier to see Kate's rampage in the season finale as villainous in this context.
07:37 After three seasons of "The Boys" and one season of "Gen V," it feels like, if anything,
07:42 most Supes in this universe have been treated far too leniently.
07:45 Most of them aren't persecuted minorities, they're a powerful group of people who've
07:49 got most of the media and corporations on their side.
07:52 But as "Gen V" has made abundantly clear, the situation is a little more complicated
07:57 than that.
07:58 Like the Andre out there who can accidentally slice a woman's neck at a bar and walk away
08:02 from it with zero consequences, there's a Supe like Sam who's spent his whole childhood
08:06 being tortured and imprisoned for things mostly out of his control.
08:10 Even Homelander, who has served as the perfect argument for why the ultra-powerful Supes
08:14 should never have been made at all, is still the way he is because of how horrifically
08:18 he was treated in his early childhood.
08:20 He may be the epitome of entitlement now, sure, but in his early years, he was denied
08:25 a lot of basic human rights.
08:27 Likewise, both Kate and Sam, the two characters who've come out most strongly in favor of
08:32 Supes' rights, are the two who've been wronged the most.
08:35 Kate was rejected by her parents for powers she had no control over, powers that her parents
08:39 gave her without her knowledge or permission.
08:42 Sam's motivations are obvious.
08:43 He's been mistreated in too near insanity for years, and even having a widely beloved
08:48 older brother wasn't enough to spare him.
08:50 Although the franchise has made it clear that Supes in this universe genuinely need more
08:54 government restrictions in order to keep everyone safe, the treatment of both Kate and Sam was
08:59 genuinely terrible.
09:01 Like Magneto before them, their motives are perfectly understandable, even if their actions
09:06 are clearly over the line.
09:07 The finale's last few moments have Homelander swooping down and settling things the way
09:12 he wants to.
09:13 That means Kate and Sam are being paraded as heroes, and the pro-Supe movement is now
09:17 stronger than ever.
09:19 It's tragic, because as sympathetic as Kate and Sam's motives might be, we know that their
09:23 cause will almost certainly be overshadowed by Homelander's self-serving, fascist ideology.
09:29 We don't know how much Kate and Sam will get to interact with Homelander in The Boys season
09:33 four, but it's easy to picture them both growing disillusioned with the cause the more they
09:37 interact with the guy.
09:38 As much as some Supes might genuinely be a persecuted minority in this universe, Homelander's
09:43 "Supe Lives Matter" movement has clearly been a metaphor for the alt-right from the very
09:48 beginning, and it's not clear if Kate will be down with that for very long.
09:52 There's also something particularly tragic about Sam's development, as he is introduced
09:55 to this group of Homelander fanboys at the worst possible time.
09:59 After a lifetime of being tortured for who he is, Sam is introduced to a guilt-free,
10:05 celebratory way of living, one without any of the complications involved with Emma's
10:09 more nuanced, non-genocidal approach.
10:12 Kate using her powers to make him feel nothing about the destruction he's causing is particularly
10:16 fitting, as this is the approach that Homelander's philosophy basically requires.
10:21 Like any hate movement founded on the demonization of other people, its followers pretty much
10:25 have to cut themselves off from any self-reflective emotions to continue doing what they're doing.
10:31 By asking Kate to take away his guilt, he's actively taking part in the willful blindness
10:35 towards human suffering that so many hate movements are built upon.
10:39 The big question Guardians of Gadalken refuses to address is exactly what went down with
10:44 Kate and Shetty in the penultimate episode.
10:47 In "Sick," we saw the two talk for a bit, and it genuinely seemed like Shetty had won
10:51 Kate back over to her side.
10:53 She said,
10:54 "One last push from you, and then we can leave all of this behind."
10:59 But the next time she and Kate were on screen, things were completely different.
11:02 Kate mentally forced Shetty to explain everything to the others, and then she forced Shetty
11:07 to slit her own throat, right in front of them.
11:09 It's an action that mostly makes sense, given what we've seen of the characters so far,
11:13 but it still feels like something's missing.
11:15 It feels like we've skipped a scene between the two that fills in this gap.
11:18 We just don't know what it is.
11:19 The fandom was filled with theories over the week-long wait, like how maybe Shetty wasn't
11:24 dead, and that Kate had simply given everyone else a fake vision.
11:27 The finale doesn't address these theories at all, which makes us wonder if they're holding
11:31 on to some big Shetty-related reveal for a later date.
11:34 Maybe this is one of those "Snape kills Dumbledore" situations, and Kate is furthering Shetty's
11:39 agenda while pretending to be on the opposite side.
11:42 After all, if anything could convince Butt and the government to see the wisdom in wiping
11:46 out the Supes like Shetty wants, the events at Galdakin University in this episode would
11:50 certainly be it.
11:51 Kate might seem like this universe's Magneto with Professor X's powers, but the Gen V finale
11:56 still leaves the possibility of her character being even more complicated than that.
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