Gen V Confirms a Popular The Boys Theory, Opens Up an Array of Opportunities
It is clear that this subtle detail was not an accident.
As we learned in season 1 of the original show The Boys, the evil corporation Vought used a Christian charity to deliver Compound V to hospitals across the country. There, it was injected into pregnant women and newborns, usually with the encouragement from their parents, who hoped to raise their children to be superheroes.
Instead of a generation of superhero defenders, humanity got physically and psychologically broken teenagers, many of whom would prefer their parents to ask if their children wanted to be what they were made to be.
Some children who have discovered superpowers (sometimes quite disgusting ones) are sent to psychiatric hospitals, some hide from the world, and others dream of going to Godolkin University. This is the only educational institution in the country where the young supes are "loved and supported."
Gen V is inextricably linked to The Boys, and it couldn't exist without the characters from the original series. Queen Maeve and Black Noir posters can be seen on the walls, and Ashley Barrett appears in person.
Another character that connects the two shows is Maverick, the son of Translucent, who is killed in season 1 of The Boys. What’s interesting, in Gen V, Maverick has the same powers as his father — he can become invisible and has super durability thanks to the skin made of carbon meta-material.
This directly supports a major fan theory that supes inherit the powers of their parents.
There aren't many examples of this theory, since supes don’t have children very often, but we saw another confirmation of it back in The Boys — Homelander's son Ryan had the same powers as his father. While it may seem like a coincidence in Homelander's case, the fact that Maverick has the exact same powers as his dad, too, leaves no room for doubt.
Apparently, the children of supes acquire powers in the same way as their parents, with the help of the injection of Component V, but somehow the injection does not give them new abilities, but rather awakens what was already in their DNA.
This detail suggests that another theory about Hughie may also be true. Throughout all three seasons of The Boys, we didn't know much about Hughie's mother, but since he was able to teleport after taking the component, we can assume that his mom was also a supe, with the exact same abilities.