Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Gen V Season 1, Episode 7.
The Big Picture
This week’s episode of Gen V, “Sick,” brought some major developments and reveals about the series’ plot in this first season. In their investigation into The Woods, Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) and Jordan Li (London Thor/Derek Luh) sneak into Dean Indira Shetty’s (Shelley Conn) office at Godolkin University while she is away meeting Cate (Maddie Phillips) to see what they can find on her — a lot more than they initially intended, as it turns out.
Shortly before Dr. Edison Cardosa (Marco Pigossi) enters the office and starts muttering to himself about “increasing the viral infection rate” (referring to the Supe-killing virus he developed for Shetty), Marie finds a physical file revealing that one Paul Shetty and Lily Shetty — Indira’s husband and daughter — died in Transoceanic Flight 37. The official story about this incident is that the airplane was hijacked by terrorists and fell into the Atlantic Ocean, but Shetty keeping a whole file dedicated to the event implies that there’s actually more about it. In fact, we actually saw the whole incident take place back in The Boys Season 1, but that was such a long time ago, it’s not surprising if anyone’s memory needs to be refreshed.
From the world of “The Boys” comes “Gen V,” which explores the first generation of superheroes to know that their super powers are from Compound V. These heroes put their physical and moral boundaries to the test competing for the school’s top ranking.
Cast Jaz Sinclair, Chance Perdomo, Maddie Phillips
Genres Action, Adventure, Comedy
Seasons 1
What Happened With Transoceanic Flight 37 on ‘The Boys’?
The incident we’re talking about occurs in Season 1, Episode 4, “The Female of the Species,” and, although still early, The Boys was already showing it meant business with storylines such as the bill about Supes being allowed into the military via a contract with Vought. The whole issue is naturally controversial, but, as Vought is never willing to take a loss, VP Madelyn Stillwell (Elizabeth Shue) decides to take action when an opportunity presents itself. When she catches wind of an airplane that was hijacked over the Atlantic Ocean, she immediately decides to send Homelander (Antony Starr) and Queen Maeve (Dominique McElligott) to intercept it.
During the whole impromptu briefing for the mission, Homelander has a blasé attitude, looking almost as if he doesn’t want to accept it, but Stillwell emphasizes how important it would be before any actual complaints can be made. Technically, the plane is over international waters, but a successful rescue would mean Vought’s bill would easily pass in Congress. Unfortunately, though, no one planned how to actually perform the rescue, which is a recipe for disaster in a delicate situation such as this one.
The rescue actually starts pretty well. Maeve opens one of the aircraft’s doors from the outside, immediately pulling one of them outside, too. As she walks the aisle inside the passengers’ cabin, Homelander also boards the plane and kills the hijacker who is facing Maeve. Instantly relieved, the passengers burst into applause for the two heroes, who move into the cockpit. There, the last terrorist kills the captain and is killed by Homelander immediately afterward. The only problem is that, in doing so, Homelander actually lasered the aircraft control panel, making it impossible to fly (and land) the plane.
Maeve still tries to figure out a way for them to finish the rescue, but Homelander refuses, arguing that he can’t carry the airplane as he has no physical support and that he couldn’t carry the passengers out of the plane to safety as that would mean going back and forth 123 times. All throughout the scene, he’s just as blasé as he was during the briefing and is so unconcerned with the outcome of the mission, that he starts to walk out while claiming the passengers would be okay. Maeve desperately tries to convince him to take at least some of the people to safety, but he refuses. Once it becomes clear to the passengers that they are going to be left to die, Homelander threatens to laser them and then offers Maeve the chance not to die with them.
‘Gen V’ Hints at Homelander’s Demise on ‘The Boys’
As the episode ends, Homelander and Maeve watch the wreckage of the airplane drift to shore. Being the opportunistic media person that he is, Homelander declares on a live news broadcast covering the disaster that he and Maeve reached the aircraft three minutes after it crashed into the ocean because they were “not in the chain of command,” and that NORAD decided to scramble F-16s instead of calling Vought. That’s the last we heard about the situation on The Boys, but now it has become a point of interest again in Gen V, through Marie and Jordan’s discovery. There’s just one problem with that, Indira Shetty dies at the end of this week’s episode of Gen V, compelled by Cate’s orders. She was shaping up to be the series’ main villain and, after Marie and Jordan discovered her reasons — though she is definitely not in the right to propose a genocide of the Supes — at least her motivations were compelling to the audience. So now the question remains: what will be done with the information that Shetty’s husband and daughter died in Transoceanic Flight 37?
It’s not publicly known that Homelander and Queen Maeve actually boarded the plane before it crashed. Homelander is directly responsible for the crash, as he blew up the flight controls and fled without providing help. Right now, he’s about to be trialed for murder after killing a protester in The Boys Season 3 finale, but if this kind of incriminating information should become public, it would make for an even worse case against him, and we know Homelander doesn’t take it well when the public opinion is against him. We know Grace Mallory (Laila Robins) knows about Homelander’s involvement in the Transoceanic Flight 37 crash, though it’s not revealed how. But Shetty’s death is bound to be made public soon and, with it, she will either be publicly crowned as a champion of young Supes by Vought or turned into a terrorist if her intentions go public. Right now, Godolkin University has a lot of public attention, and the reaction Marie, Jordan, and Emma had to Shetty’s death is a hint that they will not likely let it slide. As twisted as Shetty’s endgame was, no one deserves to die the way she did, and her family deserves justice for the way they died, too.
Gen V is available for streaming exclusively on Prime Video in the U.S.
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