Do you need to watch The Boys before Gen V?

Gen V premieres on Prime Video at the end of the week, and it is set in the world of The Boys. Do you need to watch The Boys first?

When it comes to spin-offs, it’s not always necessary to watch the original shows first. Other times it is. With Angel, the storylines wouldn’t have made sense without watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer first. However, when it comes to The Continental: From the World of John Wick, it’s a prequel, so there’s no need to watch the John Wick movies first.

So, what about this latest spin-off series? Gen V is set in the world of The Boys, but do you really need to start with the OG series? There may have been elements of the Eric Kripke series that you didn’t like, or maybe you read the comics and didn’t like the adaptation, but now you want to give this college-set spin-off a chance.

There will be The Boys spoilers in Gen V

Kripke has confirmed the timeline for Gen V. It will take place during and after the events of the third season of The Boys. That’s the most recent season available to stream on Prime Video. While Season 4 is somewhere in the production process, it has been halted by the strike action and there’s no release date just yet.

So, what about Gen V? Well, if you don’t want to have the third season of The Boys reuined for you, now is the time to watch it. There will be mentions of the events. There may even be some archived footage from the series used to give us another angle of events that went down. We know that Soldier Boy has a cameo appearance, which does suggest that we’ll get something from The Boys Season 3 at a different angle or something that happens just before or after a scene we watched.

It will also be worth understanding the world that the new series is set in. After all, the show is going to assume you already know about The Seven, Payback, and the many changes that have happened over the years. With some of the series set after the third season, there’s going to be the assumption that you know the real Homelander. So, you’ll probably want to watch that series first.

Gen V will premiere on Prime Video on Friday, Sept. 29.