[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Gen V Season 1 Episode 4 “The Whole Truth.”]
Gen V is raising the stakes with each episode as the Supes at the center of this college-set tale become even more wrapped up in the shady doings of Godolkin University.
After the death of Golden Boy (Patrick Schwarzenegger), the academic institution is paid a visit by investigator Tek Knight (Derek Wilson), who is sent by Vought to find a scapegoat for the late Supe’s downfall. When he surmises that there isn’t anyone good enough to pin the death on, he suggests attaching that guilt to Dean Shetty (Shelley Conn).
Ultimately, his intention, as well as Vought’s, is to protect their secret operation known as “The Woods,” where Golden Boy’s brother Sam (Asa Germann) was being held until Emma (Lizze Broadway) helped him escape. While the connection between Vought, The Woods, and Godolkin University remains foggy, executive producer Michele Fazekas says, “We’ll get into that down the line where the question is, ‘Why does Vought need a college?’ We talked a lot about that.”
(Credit: Prime Video)
“They certainly want to monetize people as early as they can,” Fazekas acknowledges. “There’s an element of control, and then there’s The Woods.” She goes on to note that this poses another question: What is the purpose of The Woods? “We can’t control [the way] powers manifest, and we can’t control a lot of these superheroes,” Fazekas points out, hinting that The Woods “is very much a part of why the school exists.”
There have been subtle little hints at this. “If you notice within the school, there’s surveillance, and you’ll notice in the dorm rooms, there’s metal grates and all these glass doors that are just sort of in the background, probably built in the ’60s, and we don’t really reference them that much, but it’s like, ‘Well, what’s that about?’” she adds.
Shetty had a contingency in place though, revealing damaging footage of Tek Knight as he performed unimaginable sex acts to inanimate objects around the university. Blackmailing him, Shetty manages to protect herself, if only for a little while.
As for the show’s protagonist, Marie (Jaz Sinclair), she and her classmates found themselves in an unusual predicament after trying to stop Sam from killing Doctor Cardosa (Marco Pigossi) in retaliation for his mistreatment at The Woods.
Waking up in an unknown location when they’d just been in the midst of a fight is startling, to say the least. But Fazekas points out that blacking out “is not a unique experience for anybody in college. I think that happens a lot.” But does this blackout for Marie and her friends mean a little something more?
“Part of it is, ‘What is a superhero version of having a blackout drunk night?’ And as soon as Golden Boy dies in the pilot, it sets off this mystery, and it’s like that’s the first sort of layer of the onion that we’re peeling back,” Fazekas continues. “As they get closer to the truth, whoever is trying to hide the truth is going to try and stop them and go to greater and greater lengths to stop them.”
“I think the audience will know this isn’t just, they got s**t-faced and don’t remember. Someone is trying to stop them from figuring out the truth.” Could such a manipulation be Dean Shetty’s working, or someone else’s? Stay tuned to find out more as the season’s mysteries unravel.
Gen V, New Episodes, Fridays, Prime Video