Gen V season 2: Who adies? Is there a Homelander cameo?

Gen V season 2 ends with its eighth episode, The Guardians of Godolkin, released October 22, 2025, on Prime Video, with showrunner Michele Fazekas steering a cast led by Jaz Sinclair, Lizze Broadway, London Thor, Derek Luh, Asa Germann, Sean Patrick Thomas, Hamish Linklater and Ethan Slater. The finale answers the headline questions directly. Only two central characters die, the mid-credits and post-credits slots stay empty, and the only cross-show faces belong to Starlight and A Train.

The hour also clarifies how Thomas Godolkin is alive and why his reach extends across a campus, then pushes Marie Moreau’s abilities into terrifying clarity. Across a seminar that turns into mass hypnosis, a possession that briefly bends Marie into a weapon, and a closing recruitment pitch, Gen V season 2 threads its plot to the final season of The Boys without needing a Homelander walk-on.

Who dies in Gen V season 2’s finale

Doug Brightbill, the human whose life was hijacked by Thomas Godolkin, is killed during a roadside ambush in the finale. Polarity is driving Doug to off-book medical help after the previous episode’s injuries when Black Noir II carves through the roof and drives a blade into Doug’s heart. With Marie not present to accelerate healing, there is no reversal. Gen V season 2 ties Doug back to Project Odessa and to Marie’s creation through earlier reveals, which is why this death closes a loop as well as a life.

The other death belongs to Thomas Godolkin himself. The episode opens with a period lab sequence that confirms Godolkin injected V1, the anti-ageing Compound V variant, which explains both his unweathered face and his long-range control. His plan is a cull disguised as a “level up” class that corrals students into a choreographed demonstration to strengthen his broadcast. He finally seizes Marie and uses her own blood control to flatten allies until Polarity arrives, his electromagnetism resisting the influence long enough to free her. Marie then ends the threat by rupturing Godolkin from within. Marie said to the corpse of Godolkin,

“That was for Andre,”

and then, in a second beat, stated,

“Thanks for the level up, a–hole.”

That sequence also carries the finale’s most consequential relationship line. During the campus chaos, Jordan steps back from romance without stepping away from solidarity. Jordan remarked,

“We always end up in the same place, and I don’t want to be angry with you,”

and added,

“But I would love if I could be your friend.”

The dialogue reflects where Gen V season 2 leaves the core group as it pivots them toward a larger conflict mapped by The Boys.

How the finale plays out and what it sets up for season 5 of The Boys

Much of Gen V season 2 episode 8 is a cause-and-effect chain that flows from the V1 reveal. The seminar exists to widen Godolkin’s control until a Marie-level mind is within reach, and he uses her briefly to hurt the very people who kept her alive through a season of losses. The team invades the room via a portal assist, the choreography sequence sells Godolkin’s confidence, and the possession proves his ceiling. The release comes from Polarity’s intervention, which clears the way for Marie’s decisive strike.

In parallel, Noir’s clean execution of Doug ensures no testimony survives to complicate Vought’s narrative. The last minutes move the cast into position for the larger war. Starlight emerges from the dark to invite the fugitives into the resistance, and the search radius that found them is explained a beat later when A Train appears. Starlight remarked that covering two hundred miles,

“took 30 minutes,”

A line that underlines who helped her locate the group. Gen V season 2 ends without a sting, which keeps the energy focused on the recruitment rather than a shadowy pivot.

Is there a Homelander cameo, and who actually appears

There is no on-screen Homelander in the finale of Gen V season 2, and there is no tag after the credits. The episode answers the cameo question with Starlight and A Train only. Black Noir II functions more like a hired blade than a cameo, but his ambush is the season’s surgical kill, and it connects the campus fallout to Vought’s larger apparatus. Sister Sage operates as an offscreen policy bridge that helps explain how the power structure reacts to Godolkin’s sudden visibility and sudden death. Every piece points in the same direction.

Starlight’s invitation formalises a resistance that has quietly expanded across The Boys, A Train’s return becomes a practical tool for reconnaissance, and Marie’s new ceiling reframes the odds of the final fight. In other words, Gen V season 2 sets the table for season 5 of The Boys through concrete roster moves rather than cameos.

Stay tuned for more updates.