Earlier this week, Prime Video’s Gen V ended its debut season. The college-bound spinoff of the streamer’s popular series The Boys has managed to make its own separate name for itself with audiences, but the question was always going to be in what way it linked up with the main show. And the way it did so was….interesting, to say the least, and puts Gen V’s main cast in some interesting places come Boys’ upcoming fourth season and its own season two.
Spoilers from here on out.
Gen V’s finale, “Guardians of Godolkin,” ends with a pair of post-credits stringers that bring Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher and Anthony Starr’s Homelander over from The Boys into the orbit of Marie (Jaz Sinclair) and the other Goldolkin University kids. Talking to Variety, executive producers Michele Fazekas and Eric Kripke explained the pair of cameos were both separate ideas the team knew could provide an opportunity to feed into The Boys’ next season. “Homelander came before Butcher because we knew we wanted to see Homelander,” said Fazekas. “We didn’t go into this finale saying, ‘we need a Butcher cameo and a Homelander cameo.’ […] We wanted to be very mindful of when we did that. And it would come up over the season, and then it made sense to do it at the almost-final, culminating moment.”
Billy’s scene sees him exploring the ruined facility that once housed a virus that could potentially be used to kill supes (which is now in control of VP candidate Victoria Neuman, played by Claudia Doumit). In the second, Homelander attacks Marie at Goldolkin—which just became a battlefield involving her and her classmates Cate (Maddie Phillips) and Jordan (London Thor/Derek Luh)—for “attacking her own kind.” While Cate and Sam (Asa Germann) get crowned as heroes by Homelander, Maddie and Jordan, along with their friends Andre (Chance Perdomo) and Emma (Lizzie Broadway) are held captive in a sealed hospital.
Speaking to the Butcher cameo, Kripke revealed it came as The Boys’ writing staff was in the middle of breaking down season four’s plot. The Supe virus was already planned to be a “pretty big part” of that show, as was Butcher’s hunt for it. Because the writers wanted to establish that Billy knew of the virus without conveying it through dialogue, someone suggested that “it probably shouldn’t even happen in The Boys, it should happen in Gen V,” he recalled. Having two writers rooms helped, he continued, because all they had to do was ask Fazekas and Gen’s writers if they were willing to include it in their show.
Butcher’s appearance takes place “a couple of days” following Gen’s finale, continued Kripke, and the current plan for both shows is to avoid the timeline problems other superhero universes suffer from and be fairly linear. “There’s Season 3 of The Boys,” he explained, “and then after that Gen V takes place, and then after that The Boys Season 4 takes place. And then after that, Gen V Season 2. It’s all more like cars on a train than it is a plate of spaghetti.”
When it came to when we’ll see The Boys next, and where Maddie and company will be seen next, both Kripke and Fazekas were mum. But Kripke did reveal Boys’ progress is coming along, saying a majority of its editing is done and the crew is “deep” on music and visual effects. “There’s a lot happening behind the scenes on on season four, I can say that,” he teased.
Both Gen V and The Boys can be watched over on Prime Video. Kripke and Fazekas’ full interview with Variety can be read here.
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