Amazon and Eric Kripke have had a whale of a time (or, in the case of The Deep, an octopus of one) adapting Garth Ennis’s comic The Boys and using it as a raunchy, gory, curse word-fueled romp through the politics of the world in which we live. Now, after skewering the superhero genre with their main series, they’re set to do the same thing to the high school teen drama with Gen V, about The Boys’ version of a Xavier Institute.
Amazon, through their YouTube channel, released a new trailer for the upcoming 2023 series, detailing the world of Godolkin University, a Vought International-run school for superheroes complete with all the backstabbing and unethical experimenting that entails.
“Welcome to Goldokin University,” the trailer opens. “A safe space for you to thrive.” As series lead Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) crosses the campus under the watchful eye of a giant bronze statue of Homelander it quickly cuts to the inner hallways of Godolkin where a dorm room has the word MURDERER spray painted across its door in red. A warning sign bearing the image of Black Noir tells would be visitors that there’s no Lookie Loos, making the school more of a private prison than a private institution. Shots of Vought soldiers on campus intercut with Marie Moreau in a bathroom filled with blood.
Guest appearances by Vought head, Ashley Barret (Colby Minifie), and A-Train (Jessie T. Usher), reveal some of the tie-ins between the spinoff and its parent series. Clancy Brown (Spongebob Squarepants) is revealed as a teacher pulling a gun on somebody off-screen. The trailer cuts to a shot of guts being cleaned out of the campus main square by a hazmat crew as well as a shot of a Vought version of Sesame Street leading to a puppet having its spine pulled out. A brief glimpse of Patrick Schwarzenegger’s Golden Boy show up as well as Vought guards dragging his unconscious brother down a hallway.
The trailer reveals Marie Moreau pulling out a pocket knife and another shot of her using her blood to strangle someone—her powers in action, in other words, which involve the very real idea of a person cutting themselves played for drastic dramatic effect. Lizze Broadway, Chance Perdomo, and London Thor, as other series regulars, investigate the nefarious goings-on while getting beat up and bloodied. As the trailer winds up, an interviewer asks Marie Moreau about a moment in which she showed true bravery, wondering where she got her courage: “I’m superhuman, right?” Moreau answers. “We’re made of steel.”
Gen V debuts in 2023. No specific release date has been set.