The Boys universe suffers from a terminal case of tunnel vision. No matter what interesting ideas the Prime Video series comes up with, they all inevitably come second to the franchise’s main villain: Homelander (Antony Starr). Both The Boys and its college-set spinoff, Gen V, are doggedly focused on the threat the nationalistic supe poses to the world, to the point where any challenge to his reign, however promising, is ultimately cut down before it reaches its full potential.
Such was the case with Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), the former vice president who came the closest to presenting an actual threat to Homelander himself. At the end of The Boys’ fourth season, she was unceremoniously murdered to make way for a much less interesting showdown, that between Homelander and Billy Butcher (Karl Urban). To call the loss of her character frustrating is a massive understatement — but above all, it’s emblematic of The Boys’ fatal flaw. It plows over the new to double down on the same tired conflicts, but Gen V presents a glimmer of hope with its new villain, Cipher (Hamish Linklater). The new dean of Godolkin University was presented as an unknowable force in Gen V’s first batch of episodes, but Episode 4 offers a huge revelation about the character, and the threat that he might eventually present to Homelander.
