Gen V fans have had a rough go of it the last few weeks, the show officially canceled ahead of a season 3, while new prequel Vought Rising is going full-steam ahead as a planned multi-season series, taking over enormous chunks of The Boys season 5 in the process.

Now, fans were once again given the finger in the penultimate episode of The Boys, episode 7 out of 8, where, for the first time, Gen V members actually appeared onscreen instead of just being mentioned in passing. It did not go great.

In a two-minute scene, Jordan Li and Marie Moreau meet up with Starlight to give them intel on Oh Father’s location, as previously they’ve been mentioned as doing this and that to help the “movement” on Starlight’s behalf. But once they're there, asking to actually get in the fight, Starlight dismisses them, and Marie in particular, saying, “What good’s all that power, Marie, if you can’t control it?”

The problem here is that Marie has now spent two seasons of Gen V expanding her blood-based power’s capabilities to the point where in the end of season 2, she can now literally resurrect the dead. She has harnessed her power, and Gen V unveiled a specific plotline where she was at the power level of Homelander, the only other supe in the universe to have that capability, it’s said (I suppose this was before Soldier Boy came off ice). Homelander has now taken the V1 so perhaps that’s no longer true, but this, coming from Starlight of all people, who has as of late proven to be extremely useless at fighting, was more than a little obnoxious.

The episode does have a brief moment where Starlight changes her tune later on and says she needs their help, but whatever that could look like in the finale is unclear. One problem with all this is that it is tough to have Gen V building up its storyline to support The Boys season 5, but with far less viewership, large chunks of the audience aren’t going to understand who this ungodly powerful super is that’s flown in during the last two episodes to go toe-to-toe with Homelander. Estimates put Gen V at less than half of The Boys ' viewership.

I don’t think this is The Boys guru Eric Kripke hating on Gen V on purpose, it’s just being handled poorly. He spoke out about how he did not cancel the show and was lobbying hard for it to return.

"I did not cancel the show. One, I don't have the power to do that," he told Entertainment Weekly . "Two, I was fighting to keep the show, almost more than anybody else on Earth. So I'm as bummed as everybody else out there."

He goes on to say that he may use these characters in other places going forward, but obviously that will not be the 80-years-ago Vought Rising prequel. It’s possible that Marie and the others have a small-to-non-existent role because the thought was that this wouldn’t be the last we see of them, given the idea that Gen V would in fact return for season 3. And at that point, without the need to support The Boys storylines at all.

It’s a shame. I expect maybe something less-terrible to happen next week with Marie, at least, maybe one moment during what I’m sure is some sort of “everyone comes together to kill Homelander” moment, but perhaps that’s expecting too much, given what we just saw this week.

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