‘Gen V’ and Knowing When to Fold ‘Em
Sometimes a mystery needs cultivating. Sometimes it’s best to just slam right into the reveal.
NEW STANDARD DISCLAIMER: This newsletter aggressively spoils things.
I’ve always been able to simultaneously enjoy and disdain superhero narratives1. On the one hand, they’re terrific fun, with everyone all buff and spandexy, shooting frickin’ lasers out of their eyes and stuff while they battle doom and villainy to exhaustion2. On the other hand, they often do all this stuff in really dumb ways, they’re often faced with equally superpowered villains, turning every climactic battle into a slugfest, and they often sport some truly terrible CGI effects.
Being able to hold two distinct thoughts in your head is a sign of a functioning brain3, however, so it’s okay to both like and not like these sorts of stories. This is why I really enjoy The Boys, Amazon Prime’s anti-superhero series based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s comics where the “superman” is a sociopath named Homelander (Antony Starr) and the supes all use their powers to build brands and sell sponsorships while also casually murdering normals and, often, each other4. On one side you have Zach Snyder’s hamfisted flirtation with “What if Superman, but fascist?” themes in his messy, overly loud films. On the other you have Homelander, a man who has to work hard to resist his urge to laser everyone out of existence when he’s having a bad day (and he has a lot of those)5.
Based on my affection for The Boys, I watched its spinoff, Gen-V, which is set at a superhero college where young adults whose parents inexplicably dosed them with an experimental drug in the hope that they would develop superpowers are trained in stuff like brand management and crimefighting6. It’s also a fun show7, although it lacked a true soulless, empty-eyed villain like Homelander to really gas it up. The first season’s story was a little bumpy, but it featured a nifty little twist that was handled well, in large part because the writers didn’t try to stretch the reveal past its expiration date.
In My Defense, He was a Puppet at the Time
So, one of the Gen-V kids who team up to investigate a mysterious facility on campus that seems to be performing experiments on superhero kids is Cate (Maddie Phillips), who can control minds when she makes physical contact with you8. At a crucial moment in the Scooby Doo-esque investigation the students are conducting, they all simultaneously lose time, waking up at a wild party with no memory of the previous hours, but with plenty of evidence that it was quite a wild and sexy time. They all seem to have completely forgotten about their investigation, or at least the most recent events of it.
If you think about it for a moment, you might guess the twist here: Cate has been a double-agent of sorts, using her mind-control powers to sidetrack any efforts to get to the bottom of things, and when she thought they were all about to break the case she panicked and basically deleted a few days from their brains. At this point, I’ll admit I expected this mystery to be dragged out a bit, because that’s what most shows would do. They set up a twist like this, then play around with it for a while, trying to whip up some extra tension9. But Gen-V doesn’t go that route—the show reveals this to the viewers very shortly, negating any chance at tension.
And good thing, too, because as noted above if you think about the scenario for a moment, it kind of reveals itself. It’s not exactly a deep mystery, and the only reason you don’t suspect anything prior to this moment comes down to writer tricks: We’re not given any other clues that anyone is experiencing memory lapses or other problems, or any indication that Cate has secrets. Withholding information from the audience is the oldest writer’s trick, of course10, but even so this one wouldn’t have held up for long. Revealing it more or less immediately worked much better, because it probably caught most folks still in the process of piecing it all together, and it maintained the plot’s momentum.
She'd Raw Dog That Pillow Until She Saw God
Twists are fun, but they sometimes become the whole point, and trying to preserve a mystery beyond it’s sell-by date often inspires your audience to spoil it for themselves, and then wonder why it was such a prolonged mystery in the first place. Sometimes the pivot point between success and failure in a story is knowing how long to string along a mystery and when to just open that kimono and spill everything11.
And here’s the fundamental truth about twists: For all the fun of the reveal and the moment of surprise or shock they can inspire, that is a one time effect12. Once a reader or viewer has been through that part of the story, they’ll never be surprised or shocked again. The more important aspect of any twist is the consequences—the mess they make and how the characters deal with them. In Gen-V, if they’d tried holding back Cate’s secret activities any longer it would have ruined the pacing and momentum of the story in favor of artificial mystery box plotting. By ripping off the veil more or less immediately, we got to the much more interesting fallout of the reveal—how Cate reacts and the decisions the other characters make as a result of this new information, how it potentially shapes previous events now that we know Cate has been manipulating people13.
Of course, on superhero shows there are a lot of ways to fix broken plots. Characters resurrect, discover new powers, lose powers, transport to alternate universes—you never know what’s going to happen, which is part of the genre’s charm. Just like me. I’m what they call a Wild Card.
NEXT WEEK: Doctor Who messes with the canon.
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The same way I enjoy and disdain pilsners.
One thing I admire about The Boys universe is how they make it plain and explicit that the musculature is literally molded into everyone’s suit. Reminds me of those old inflatable Hulk muscles I always wanted as a kid.
For example: Having both tea and no tea simultaneously. This is a reference, and I am a nerd for making it.
In fact, this is the only superhero universe that seems to understand that murder would quickly become the de facto solution to any superhero’s problems. What’re you gonna do, arrest Superman?
I love Antony Starr’s performance here, especially when Homelander panics and instantly his eyes start to glow so he can just melt everything away and start fresh, because, honestly, same. Also: Let's make “to laser” the default term for homicide.
And also party a lot and have a lot of sex, which is really what college is for.
Although I have now hit my quota of scenes where tiny, thumb-sized lady superheroes have sex with full-sized penises, and that quota was, unsurprisingly, one.
This is silly, of course. When I was in college any woman who touched me in a friendly way could have ordered me to assassinate the president and I would have done it. And then proposed marriage.
Or never bother to solve it at all, leaving that Russian in the Pine Barrens forever more. This is a slightly less-nerdy reference.
Right up there with naming your character after yourself and making them perfect in every way. Hey, I can’t help if that’s where write what you know led me.
For example, if you’ve been wondering if I' wear pants while writing these essays, the answer is I wear a kimono. Better or worse?
Much like how I can seem charming and witty the first time you meet me, and then you realize I repeat the same jokes and observations every damn time you see me. And also appear to be wearing the same clothes.
Man, if I could delete memories from people I’d be doing it constantly. Like someone would say “Hey let me introduce you to my friend Jeff” and suddenly it would be six hours later as I tried for the 134th time to be cool and charming.