Spoiler Warning: Spoilers ahead for the first three episodes of Gen V Season 2.In the wake of Chance Perdomo‘s heartbreaking death, Gen V has managed to respectfully shift the focus to an underrated character, continuing to honor the late actor and highlight his importance to the story with every new installment.
The first season of the popular spin-off ended with an explosive cliffhanger as Andre (Perdomo), Marie (Jazz Sinclair), Jordan (London Thor, Derek Luh), and Emma (Lizze Broadway) were falsely accused of leading a massacre that caused the deaths of many innocent victims and were subsequently imprisoned at a secret facility.
In the premiere episode, it’s revealed that Marie eventually broke out of the Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center and went on the run. The rest of their group didn’t fare so well. They weren’t released until some time later, following months of incarceration, but tragically, they were missing one member. In the premiere episode, Jordan confirms that Andre died during his own brave escape attempt that went wrong.
“He wouldn’t just go by himself, he waited for when we all had a chance. But when he took us, somebody had walled the pipe off with brick and he couldn’t pull it open … So he tried to rip open a huge steel door instead, and it wouldn’t move. His powers weren’t strong enough, and I begged him to stop.” – Jordan (Gen V)
As they return to their lives at Godolkin University and struggle to process their grief and their trauma, Andre’s father, retired supe Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas), steps up as a significant character. A beloved alumnus, Polarity takes a job at God U as the Associate Dean of Marketing, but his story really takes off when Emma drops the bombshell that she saw their new head dean, Cipher (Hamish Linklater), while she was trapped at Elmira. Polarity decides to help her dig up information on Cipher, hoping to one day avenge his son’s death.
The ‘Gen V’ Cast’s Grief “Fed Into” Their Performances
Several cast members have spoken out about how their grief affected their performances and the overall work environment in Gen V Season 2. Sinclair told The Wrap that she was “just trying to get through it and do him as much justice” as she could throughout production, while Maddie Phillips (who plays Cate) admitted it was “so hard” to grieve and work at the same time, but she tried to “just be there for everybody.”
Thomas was particularly affected by the scenes he shared with Broadway. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, he shared that he could “know what she was really thinking and really feeling” about Perdomo’s death in those moments, explaining that it “fed” into his own acting.
“I’d like to think it was the same way in reverse, that whatever was coming out of me about Chance fed her. Even in my scenes with Hamish [Linklater] who plays Cipher, the sense of the waste of a potential, of a future, I felt that. What Chance could have been, what Andre could have been really felt very powerful to me. The incalculable loss of that really hit me hard during those scenes.”
Recasting the Role of Andre in ‘Gen V’ Was Never on the Table
From the moment she heard of Perdomo’s passing, co-showrunner Michele Fazekas knew that she wanted to handle the topic in a sensitive way that would truly honor him and keep his memory alive. In the days that followed, production focused on finding a way for the character to die in the show that didn’t feel “exploitative or cheesy or any way that would be icky,” according to a sit-down with Entertainment Weekly. “No one at all was advocating recast,” Fazekas added at the time. “So that was quite easy.”
Still, this meant they needed to do some significant rewrites to the scripts for the episodes that had already been finished, especially when it came to a plot heavily featuring Andre and Sam (Asa Germann). This eventually led to the addition of Polarity’s quest to uncover what happened to his son.
“He really was the embodiment of grieving Andre and grieving Chance because he goes on a, basically, revenge story.”
Gen V Season 2 is available to stream now on Prime Video.
- Release Date
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September 28, 2023
- Network
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Prime Video
- Directors
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Nelson Cragg, Clare Kilner, Philip Sgriccia, Sanaa Hamri, Shana Stein, Steve Boyum
- Writers
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Craig Rosenberg
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Jaz Sinclair
Marie Moreau
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Lizze Broadway
Emma Meyer / Little Cricket
