After Gen V’s polarizing season 2 finale, there are certain things that a potential season 3 has to do to serve the characters and avoid the show’s past mistakes. The Boys creator Eric Kripke has confirmed that plans are underway for Gen V season 3, but Amazon has yet to officially renew the spinoff for a third outing.
Kripke implored fans not to wait, and to watch Gen V’s new episodes as soon as possible, because now is the time that Amazon is keeping a close eye on the viewing figures and deciding whether a third season is viable. If Gen V season 3 does happen, these are my demands.
A Return To The Franchise’s Satirical Roots
At the end of Gen V season 2, The Boys franchise became the very thing it was satirizing. Rather than subverting the conventions of traditional superhero narratives, it just played right into them. The season finale culminated in an action-packed everything-and-the-kitchen-sink final battle against the big bad and a corny message about the power of friendship.
Now, the only thing separating The Boys from Marvel and DC is its graphic violence and curse words. In Gen V season 3, the show needs to go back to the franchise’s satirical roots. This is supposed to be an over-the-top spoof of superhero shows, but it’s been slipping into a straightforward superhero story, and that needs to stop.
A Break From The Formula
We’ve only had two seasons of Gen V so far, but the show has already settled into a familiar formula. In both seasons, God U gets an evil dean, Marie and her friends uncover the sinister conspiracy around the new hire, and the whole thing culminates in a blood-soaked climactic confrontation on the campus.
In its third season, Gen V needs to break from this formula and tell a new story. It seems as though that’s the plan, since the season 2 finale fully abandoned the God U campus and added Marie and her friends to the Boys’ roster. But they seemed unlikely to return to campus after season 1’s ending, and that still happened.
Emma Needs To Finally Find Love
Emma has spent both seasons of Gen V looking for love, and she hasn’t had much luck. She meets a lot of guys who fetishize her shrinking powers without bothering to get to know her, and when she did get into a loving relationship with Sam, he ended up betraying her and getting her locked in a hellhole of a prison.
In season 2, Emma got a new love interest, Greg, but it wasn’t meant to be. The show seems to keep teasing a reconciliation between Emma and Sam, but Emma rightly shuts it down every time it comes up. In season 3, Emma needs to finally find love — and not with Sam; she deserves someone a lot more stable.
More Team-Ups With The Boys Characters
Throughout its first and second seasons, Gen V has flirted with the idea of a crossover. Homelander showed up on the God U campus at the end of season 1, and Starlight showed up to help the Gen V kids when they were on the run in season 2. But the season 2 finale teased a full-blown “merger” between the two shows.
After Marie and her friends escape from God U, Starlight and A-Train catch up to them and propose an alliance between their two anti-Vought resistance groups. It would be great to see more team-ups with The Boys characters in Gen V season 3. Imagine volatile Sam teaming up with aw-shucks Hughie, or acid-tongued Emma teaming up with acid-tongued Butcher.
Stop Using Andre’s Death For Dramatic Brownie Points
Since Chance Perdomo tragically passed away at age 27 before filming, Gen V season 2 had to be retooled to write his character Andre out of the show. This meant that Andre’s dad, Polarity, was given a much bigger role, while Andre himself was killed off-screen in a failed escape attempt at Elmira.
Throughout the season, the show kept using Andre’s death for cheap dramatic points. Every time it wanted to give the audience an emotional gut-punch, it brought up Andre’s untimely passing. But since the actor actually passed away, it felt exploitative to keep bringing up Andre’s death to manipulate the viewers’ emotions.
Ryan Butcher Should Enroll In God U
Ryan Butcher was a little kid when we first met him in The Boys, but Cameron Crovetti is aging so rapidly that he’s already a teenager on the brink of turning 18. Over the past couple of seasons, The Boys has developed Ryan from a plot device into one of the show’s most interesting characters.
As Homelander’s young ward, Ryan has gone down a dark path. He clearly still has a good heart, but he’s been acting out in shockingly violent ways. In The Boys, Ryan’s character is framed through the rivalry between Butcher and Homelander. In Gen V, he could come into his own if he enrolls as a student at God U.
Don’t Rush The Big Bad
When Gen V season 2 revealed that Dean Cipher had been mind-controlled by Thomas Godolkin the whole time, it was a shocking surprise and a great twist. But it may have happened a little late in the game. It meant that we only really got one full episode with Godolkin as the big bad, and Marie managed to defeat him by the end of it.
It felt a little similar to the ending of The Boys season 3. The whole season was building up to this huge confrontation, but it ultimately felt underwhelming because the show rushed into it. When Gen V season 3 introduces its big bad, it shouldn’t race to their untimely demise — it should give them time to develop.
Emma Needs To Learn How To Get Big On Purpose
All throughout Gen V season 2, the show was teasing that Emma would finally learn how to control her powers and get big on purpose. But despite all that teasing, it never happened in the finale.
In season 3, Emma needs to figure out how to enlarge herself by her own free will. It’ll be awesome to see her grow into a giant on cue and kick someone across the God U campus.
Marie Needs To Finally Forgive Herself
At the beginning of Gen V, we learned Marie’s tragic backstory. When her blood-bending powers initially started to show in her childhood, she didn’t know what was going on or how to control them. As soon as she got her first period, before she knew it, she’d accidentally killed her own parents. She’s been living with that guilt ever since.
Now that Marie has reconciled with her sister Annabeth and learned to use her power to do the opposite — literally bringing people back from the dead — hopefully, in season 3, she can finally forgive herself. Marie deserves to unload this guilt she’s been living with her whole life, and find some semblance of happiness.
Explore The Aftermath Of The Boys’ Finale
If Gen V does get a third season, it’ll be after The Boys has ended with its fifth and final season. In the endgame of The Boys, the titular vigilante squad will have their last shot at defeating Homelander. If they do manage to kill Homelander, then it’ll completely change the hierarchy of power in The Boys universe.
Since this is a shared cinematic universe with multiple shows on the go, The Boys franchise has the unique opportunity to explore the aftermath of its own ending. After Homelander is defeated (maybe) in The Boys’ final season, then Gen V season 3 can explore a post-Homelander world and the power vacuum that would follow his long-awaited demise.
