Meet Me at Crafty

In Gen V, every inch of the frame is alive—and even the garbage has a logo. “Anytime there’s an opportunity to brand something, we do it,” set decorator Rosalie Board says. “Even if it’s a crumpled fast-food wrapper on the floor, it’ll say Vought Burger.”

Stream Gen V

Season 2 of Prime Video’s chaotic, hyper-violent college spin-off of The Boys demanded a production design that could contain multitudes: a coming-of-age dramedy, a sci-fi thriller, and a superhero satire—all unfolding in a single hour. Board is basically doing set decoration for five different shows. One minute we’re in a dorm room, the next we’re in a puppet-show nightmare.

Subscribe to Crafty and support anti-Vought journalism!

Because Gen V exists within the universe of The Boys, the worldbuilding comes with rules, enforced by what may be television’s most extraordinary job title: Lore Master. “We go to him for everything,” Board says. “If a new character like the Rememberer appears, we ask, ‘Is he a real archivist? Would he drink coffee or energy drinks?’”

The result is a visual universe so steeped in details that it borders on vertiginous; even background electronics sport tiny V logos. Board’s team designed aisles’ worth of in-world products: Freedom Sticks, Noir Coffee, Vought Burger wraps, and a line of Homelander Sweat candles (“lavender-eucalyptus scented,” Board promises). A fully stocked campus bookstore overflowed with branded swag—pens, mugs, keychains—that never made it onscreen, including a pillow with Homelander’s face on it that Board happily holds up over Zoom. “We had those in the bookstore, and nobody ever saw them! So I’m very sad.”

And yet, amid the bombast, Gen V still finds intimacy in its smallest spaces. Marie’s dorm remains stripped bare because, as Board notes, “She’s been in prison and on the lam all summer. She’s not hauling a suitcase around with her CB2 purchases.” Those stark, claustrophobic rooms echo the oppressive geometry of the prison, The Woods, reinforcing the theme that every Vought building is just another kind of cell.

Elsewhere, Board delights in hidden storytelling: Cipher’s fridge staged like a biochemist’s lab, Polarity’s mansion lined with fake movie posters and gold records, even a row of “V Farms” graphics behind a brutal parking lot fight. You might not notice it consciously, but details like that shore up the world we’re watching, grounding even superhero antics in reality.

And if all that sounds exhausting, well, it is. “Thank goodness I was able to have the team that I had because we were all over creation,” Board says. “And it was really challenging, but we got what we needed. And like I said, the feedback was always so great.”

But on a show filled with Easter eggs, the most surprising one of all might be Board’s crafty go-to. “I often will just get hard-boiled eggs to keep in my pockets for later,” she says. “Which is so boring. Now you know all my secrets!”

Roaslie Board’s set decorator credits include Glamorous, Y: The Last Man, and It.