Gen V Season 2 Reveals Two Dramatic Changes In Vought Leadership Before The Boys Season 5

This article contains spoilers for "Gen V" season 2, episode 5, "The Kids Are Not All Right." 

Vought International has a new CEO, and it's not who you'd think. "The Boys" season 4 saw the villainous Homelander (Antony Starr) take control of the corporation that made and controlled him. However, from what we have seen of the powerful supe's business acumen, it's pretty clear that running a giant conglomerate isn't among his laundry list of superpowers.

Cue Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), the hyper-intelligent supe who became an instrumental part of Homelander's power grab during "The Boys" season 4. Sage makes a sizable and sordid cameo as Dean Cipher's (Hamish Linklater) lover-slash-hookup, and when they later meet in a more formal setting, he casually notes that he's surprised she took the Vought CEO position. As a response, she remarks that ex-CEO Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie) certainly can't handle the position "in her state."

This quick exchange reveals two things. One, Sage is now the Vought bigshot instead of Homelander. This makes sense given the latter's focus on self-serving optics and utter lack of true leadership ability, but it's still a fun reveal that'll no doubt impact "The Boys" season 5. However, the second revelation might arguably be even more interesting: Ashley's last-ditch attempt to escape the Seven's kill list by taking Compound V in the season 4 finale was a success — in a way, at least. Ashley has quietly become one of the best characters on "The Boys," so it's good to find out that she's still around, even though the V seems to have turned her into ... something.

Sister Sage will be an important player when "The Boys" ends with its fifth season, but let's face it: Ashley is the bigger mystery here. The long-suffering Vought minion-turned-CEO had been on something approaching a redemption arc before Homelander decided to remove the company's key humans from their positions (and the mortal coil). While there's no way that the show will allow her a traditional one (this is "The Boys," after all), her being name-dropped on "Gen V" confirms that she still has a role to play.  As such, let's indulge in some speculation about the powers the beleaguered Ashley might've gotten from her desperate dose of Compound V.

There are two particularly strange options to run with here, and I strongly suspect that "The Boys" will choose to run with one of them. The first is that Ashley has turned into some sort of blobby abomination, possibly something approaching the show's version of Mother's Milk's (Laz Alonso) gruesome mom from the original comics. The other option is that she's now a powerful but highly erratic supe entity that'll eventually end up mopping the floor with her current nemesis the Deep (Chace Crawford) and possibly others. This could be, for instance, some version of the element-powered Malchemical, the She-Hulk expy Shehemoth, or perhaps one of the more extreme-looking G-Men.

Granted, some of these characters have been mentioned in passing on the show, but "The Boys" has been known to mix and match power sets before. Who knows? Perhaps Ashley will even receive a set of original powers that befit her neurotic personality. Let's just hope that she gets the opportunity to use them in a meaningful way.

"Gen V" season 2 is streaming on Prime Video.