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17th September 2025
05:39pm BST
Gen V, one of Prime Video's best shows, has returned for its second season, and JOE had the opportunity to speak with several members of its cast.
For those not aware, the series is a spin-off of the streamer's smash-hit The Boys, which takes place in a United States where much of the population possesses superhuman abilities and are treated like celebrities.
This is despite the fact that some of the most beloved "superheroes" often abuse their powers behind closed doors, rather than using them for good.
Gen V, meanwhile, is mainly set at Godolkin University, an educational institution designed to train young adult supes.
The second season sees student Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair, Sabrina) - who has the power to manipulate blood - and her friends become embroiled in a decades-old mystery involving the founding of the college that could have dangerous and far-reaching implications.
It soon becomes clear that Marie is somehow a part of the hidden secret, something that puts her on a collision course with Goldolkin's mysterious new leader, Dean Cipher (newcomer to the franchise Hamish Linklater, Midnight Mass).
While Gen V season one was already a hit with both audiences and critics, we believe its second batch of episodes is a major step-up. It delivers huge heaps of the franchise's trademark mix of gory superhero action, shocking humour, and rich celebrity/political satire. Yet, it also bolsters the blend by having a more emotional story and a brilliant new villain in the form of Linklater's hard-to-pin-down dean.
Indeed, the second season was always going to have an undercurrent of sadness. This is because season one star Chance Pedomo tragically passed away at the age of 27 before production on S2 began.
Instead of recasting the character, Gen V's scribes instead rewrote the batch of episodes to pay tribute to the actor and Andre.
S2 begins in the aftermath of Andre's mysterious death, with his friends - including Marie - teaming up with his dad, celebrity superhero Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas, Cruel Intentions), to get justice.
Speaking about Chance's death and returning to the show's set without him, the cast describes the situation as "really intense, very shocking and tragic".
Sinclair said: "Being there, just back where we all were, it's a lot to process and a lot to be faced with daily.
"I think that we all really tried our best to support each other, and the writers really were intentional about working it into the story.
"We all just wanted to do him justice and also be there for each other to process, because it was really intense and tragic."
Co-star London Thor added: "It was comforting to feel like his character was still part of the season, for sure. All throughout it, it felt like he had a big part in it, which was really nice."
Thomas, who plays Chance's character's father on the show, also described coming back to the set without the young star as being "very eerie, very strange", explaining:
"I hadn't worked with anybody else really on the show, aside from with Chance. Even though I had done season one, it felt like a brand new show to me because he wasn't there.
"But at the same time. Everything that Chance really was in real life, really I feel informed how I approached coming to work every day. Because I really wanted to make sure that he got his due in terms of what he means to the show and what he meant to me.
"Hopefully I just did my part in telling that story."
The scenes of Thomas and the rest of the cast mourning Andre, and thus Chance, are indeed the most moving in the entire franchise to date.
Also setting Gen V season two apart from what came before is the arrival of Hamish Linklater as the season's new villain: Dean Cipher.
Cipher is determined to push the students of Goldolkin harder and harder to reach their full potential, for reasons that are slowly explained over S2's eight episodes.
Even though the viewer doesn't know the dean's motivations (or even what his special abilities are), it's clear he is bad news, from his condescending and swaggering energy to the way he can whip up a crowd into a frenzy during his public speeches about how supes should rule over the rest of humanity.
On the similarities between the enigmatic Cipher and the actor's similarly mysterious villain in Netflix hit Midnight Mass, Linklater tells JOE: "Both of those characters, they think they're doing the right thing. They think this is for the betterment of their community.
"So that always makes it easier to invest in as a performer if you're not just told: 'Your job is to twist your moustache'. I mean, sometimes it really is fun to twist your moustache, but, fortunately, the writing was great on [Midnight Mass] and is so spectacular on this show. So you just follow the writing."
Linklater hadn't seen any of Gen V before learning of the role of Cipher, but became hooked soon after.
"I didn't know the show before reading it, and then, watching the show, I was like: 'This is like some of the most compulsive viewing I've done in my life'," he said, adding: "I just wanted to be a part of it."
Jaz Sinclair and co-star Maddie Phillips are full of praise for Linklater, with the latter calling acting opposite him "a really great learning experience".
"It definitely made me look at my lines a little bit more than I would. I didn't want to drop the ball with someone who I know is extremely good," she added.
Sinclair, meanwhile, said: "I just loved working with Hamish so much. I think he's a tremendous actor, and every time that we were in a scene together, it felt like a ping pong match because I never quite knew what was coming next.
"His choices are also interesting, and I also didn't know the whole story about him. Like, I didn't know what Cipher's deal was, and he did, and so some of the stranger choices that he made, especially in the beginning of working with him, I was like: 'What the fuck is that?', she confessed, laughing.
"But it just all ended up making so much sense and being such a beautiful performance."
Obviously, The Boys and Gen V have become known for how gory and shocking their action and satire can be. When we ask Linklater if he was ever scandalised reading the scripts as a newcomer to the franchise, he said, joking: "Was I scandalised? Come on, I come from off-Broadway."
However, he then confessed: "Yeah, I was scandalised!
"I've never signed so many nudity riders on a show and been covered in so much blood.
"That should tell you. These writers need different therapists from the ones they're going to."
Several other members of the cast also said they are often shocked at the "crazy shit" in the scripts.
Yet, Sinclair and co-star Lizze Broadway note that the more shocking parts only hit hard because the viewer believes in the characters.
On this, Broadway explained: "I think the show itself has such a great voice, and at the end of the day, it's not about the shock value.
"It really is about the characters and the story. So, I think that's what makes the shocking stuff so good, it's all grounded in character."
When asked about any themes and topics the Gen V cast were eager to explore this season, actor Derek Luh summed up the series perfectly.
"I think when describing Gen V, I always love to say that it's like humanity first, superpowers second," he said, before stating that he was very happy his character Jordan - a bigender supe (Luh shares the role with London Thor) - got to fall in love this season, but also learn to stand up for themselves.
Meanwhile, co-star Asa Germann shared with JOE what he found so moving about Gen V S2. He said:
"I think that one of the things that was so fun about the first season is that it really shepherds all of these individual people and their struggles and their lives and how their powers mirror that. That's one of the brilliant kinds of social commentary that the show is able to do.
"In the second season, I think when you finish it, what you really end up getting is a sense that this show is about a group of misfit people who come together and try their best to find a way through the world.
"I think that this season does such a terrific job really honing in on that, and by the end of it, especially having just watched it, I was really taken aback by how beautiful that message is. For me, that really is what the show winds up being about."
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The first three episodes of Gen V season two are streaming on Prime Video now. The rest of the eight-episode season will drop weekly on Wednesdays.
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