Gen V season 2 has made its Prime Video debut – and, surprisingly, we’ve already learned a fair deal about its primary mystery.
First teased in Gen V season 2’s initial trailer, The Odessa Project seems like it’ll play a big role in the show’s latest installment and potentially provide answers to some of our biggest questions about The Boys universe. And, with season 2’s first three episodes out now, we’ve found out more than we probably expected to about this secret experiment and its ties to Compound V.
Full spoilers immediately follow for Gen V season 2 episodes 1 to 3.
Like the Supe-killing virus that was created and tested on numerous Godolkin University (God U) students in an underground facility called The Woods, The Odessa Project is a covert operation conducted in the bowels of the Vought-owned educational institution.
We’re immediately given some indication that it’s tied to the development of Compound V, aka the blue-colored serum that grants superhuman abilities to anyone injected with it.
This season’s first chapter, titled ‘New Year, New You’, opens with a flashback to 1967 and introduces us to Doctor Thomas Godolkin. The university’s founder and right-hand man to Doctor Frederick Vought, i.e. the inventor of Compound V and founder of Vought International, Thomas Godolkin tries – and fails – to stop his fellow scientists from self-administering a prototype version of the Supe-creating serum.
Long story short: they all die due to the various effects that the serum has on them, while Godolkin seemingly perishes from carbon monoxide poisoning after a fire breaks out in the lab they’re all present in.
Fast-forward to the present, and Gen V‘s primary protagonist Marie Moreau is on the run after breaking out of Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center following her imprisonment in Gen V‘s season 1 finale. It’s not long until she’s tracked down by the Supe known as Dogknot to the sleazy motel she’s hiding out in. Thankfully for Marie, Annie January/Starlight, who was last seen fleeing to whereabouts unknown in The Boys season 4’s finale, arrives and saves Marie.
How Annie found Marie is a question for another day, because Annie soon tells Marie that a Vought insider told Annie that Vought is looking to restart development on The Odessa Project. To find out if that’s true, Annie convinces a reluctant Marie to re-enrol at God U and, in the process, find out what Project Odessa actually is.
Coincidentally, Marie has her own ties to it. Reuniting with her besties Emma and Jordan in episode 2, aka ‘Justice Never Forgets’, Marie fills them in on the covert experiment. Later that episode, Emma – who teams up with Polarity, the father of deceased God U student Andre Anderson – discovers a secret room in the Thomas Godolkin wing at the university’s library.
Amid the Nazi, KKK, and other right-wing paraphernalia, Emma finds a file on The Odessa Project. Racing across campus, she finds Marie and Jordan, and hands over the file to the former. Cue a stunned Marie reading it and learning that not only was she part of The Odessa Project, but she was also the only survivor.
But wait, there’s more. Episode 3, titled ‘H is for Human’, Marie visits Aunt Pam, the best friend of Marie’s dead mom who’s refused to see Marie for years. Remember, Marie accidentally killed her parents when her blood manipulation powers manifested during puberty.
Anyway, after an initially frosty reunion at Aunt Pam’s home, Pam begins to open up to Marie about what she knows about The Odessa Project. Essentially, Marie’s parents couldn’t conceive naturally, nor could they resort to IVF treatment because it was too expensive. Step forward Vought, which offered them a way to have a baby (i.e. Marie) via its own IVF-style treatment at God U.
That’s not all. Pam shows Marie some print photographs of the day she was born – and, who’s standing there holding Marie as a new-born? None other than Cipher, aka the university’s enigmatic and recently installed new Headteacher. As it happens, Cipher, who Pam calls “Doctor Gould”, helped to deliver Marie.
That’s… a lot for Marie – and, by proxy, us as viewers – to take in, but the three-episode premiere of one of the best Prime Video shows’ second season isn’t the first time we’ve come across Project Odessa.
In The Boys season 4 episode 4, aka the one where Homelander takes a ultraviolent trip down memory lane to the lab he grew up in, a reference to something called ‘Odessa’ can be seen on a bulletin board.
At the time, the only thing we learned about Odessa was that it’s a “high security project of the strictest confidence”, and that anyone found to have broken the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) over the secret project would be sacked and sued by Vought.
Now that we know The Odessa Project has been going since the 1960s, it’s plausible that Homelander, who was born in 1981, was its first success story. It’s also possible that, given her own birth, Marie is the only time Vought has recreated the process that created Homelander.
As much as Gen V continues to pull the veil back on The Odessa Project and Marie’s involvement in it, though, the things we learn in The Boys‘ sibling show raise some interesting questions.
For starters, is it a way for Vought to create new-born humans with Compound V already woven into their genetic make-up? Thanks to The Boys, we know the chemical substance can cause side effects. Injecting it into children, teens, and even adults is an invasive and incredibly pain procedure, too, so these two issues would be solved if Vought finds a way to engineer new-borns with Compound V already locked into their DNA.
If Vought wants to restart The Odessa Project, does that mean Homelander, the US’ newly-installed shadow president, wants to create an army of Supes from birth, too? Considering he’s just been drafted in as God U’s new Dean, is Cipher secretly overseeing the resumption of this research? Is Marie safe or, because she’s the only other success story besides Homelander, could she be used a guinea pig to try and recreate/perfect the procedure? And what impact could all of this have on The Boys season 5, aka the Amazon TV Original’s final installment that’s due out in 2026?
Hopefully, Gen V season 2 will satisfy our need for answers in its next five episodes. With a week to go (at the time of publication) until its fourth chapter lands on one of the world’s best streaming services, let me know about your Project Odessa theories in the comments below.
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