Season two of *Gen V*, the college-aged spin-off of *The Boys* that some fans argue outshines the original, is back in action, kicking off on Prime Video with a three-episode drop. The new season wastes no time confronting the tragic passing of cast member Chance Perdomo.
In the wake of the gnarly superhero show’s premiere, its showrunner shared how the team chose to honor Perdomo’s legacy throughout the series. Speaking with *Deadline*, co-showrunner Michele Fazekas revealed how the writers’ room approached handling Perdomo’s death.
Last March, the 27-year-old actor, who portrayed *Gen V*’s magnetism-manipulating hero Andre Anderson, died following a motorcycle incident. The tragedy led production of *Gen V*’s second season to pause, allowing the cast and crew to grieve.
This production hiatus also gave the writers’ room time to deliberate over whether they would recast or write off the character. Ultimately, they chose the latter.
The show opened with a tribute that reads: *“For Chance.”* What followed was *Gen V* giving Andre a heroic send-off, portraying his sacrifice to protect his friends between the events of the two seasons.
“I think we had set out at the beginning, because we sort of knew right out of the gate, we’re not just gonna recast him, and literally no one was saying recast,” Fazekas told *Deadline*. “Studio, network, and everybody was kind of like, ‘No, of course not.’ So, we knew that we had to treat this character—as much as people have lost the real Chance, our people have lost Andre.”
She continued, “And what does that look like in a world where it’s superheroes in college and a lot of ridiculous gore and funny? We just sort of made it like we wanted the season to certainly honor him, and then at the end, we realized the season is about him—everything, and all of the drive comes from him.”
Fazekas added, “So, by the end, I was very sort of proud of that, and I just remember being in the writers’ room and talking about Andre because we had broken Andre’s story.”
The co-showrunner also revealed that the *Gen V* writers originally planned five episodes focused on Andre’s story within the season’s eight episodes, which they had to cut following Perdomo’s passing.
“We definitely did actually talk about it, like, I think it’s OK to actually grieve something, ’cause you grow to love these characters as much as you love the people who are portraying them,” she said. “And in some ways, we knew Andre better than we knew Chance. Chance was in Toronto. We spent more time with Andre in a way, and it was like, losing Chance is incredibly unimaginable in a way, but we all were like, ‘Oh, we also lost this Andre guy we really liked.’ So, at the end, I was like, ‘Oh, this was about Andre, and it was about Chance, the season was.’ I’m very proud of that.”
*Gen V*’s approach to honoring Perdomo’s passing carries an emotional weight that uncannily echoes what director Ryan Coogler did with *Black Panther: Wakanda Forever* in the wake of Chadwick Boseman’s passing in 2020.
Like Coogler’s film, *Gen V* interweaves the loss into its narrative, making Andre’s death the emotional backbone of this season.
Across its three-episode premiere, Andre’s sacrifice for his friends—killed by the Gestapo-like forces behind God U—is framed as a galvanizing moment. The show also doesn’t shy away from the racial implications of the character’s death as a Black casualty among the lineup of imprisoned superpowered teens.
The memory of his off-screen sacrifice becomes a rallying cry, pushing both heroes and former allies to keep resisting as they navigate the dystopian nightmare of a Homelander-run America.
New episodes of *Gen V* release every Wednesday on Prime Video.
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https://gizmodo.com/gen-v-had-big-plans-for-chance-perdomo-before-his-untimely-death-2000660859
