Why Did Golden Boy Kill Himself?

The ending of Gen V‘s first episode has a shock twist suicide that fans won’t be expecting. With Marie Moreau, Andrew Anderson, Emma Meyer, Luke Riordan’s Golden Boy, and others only having been introduced, it’s shocking to see a character die so early on. Here’s the reason why a hero would kill themself in Gen V episode 1.

Why did Golden Boy commit suicide in Gen V?

Golden Boy kills himself at the end of Gen V episode 1 due to either wanting to go out on his own terms rather than having Vought deal with him, or perhaps because of overwhelming guilt from being unable to rescue his brother in time.

The first episode of Gen V ended with Luke Riordan, aka Golden Boy, a popular student at Godolkin University, committing suicide by flying into the air and blowing himself up. While we know Golden Boy killed himself, we do not know his exact reason for doing so. However, Golden Boy whispered something into his best friend Andre’s ear before he died, which leads to two theories on why he committed suicide.

The first theory is that Golden Boy was investigating Godolkin University and Vought International’s secret shady project which was known as “The Woods,” which held various Supes captive and tested them in secret. He was trying to expose them, as he learned through strange visions that his younger brother Sam was a victim of said project and was held captive instead of having killed himself like Luke was led to believe for many years.

This likely led to him murdering Coach Brink, only to be caught by Marie in the act. It is possible that he initially did not plan on killing himself and tried to kill Marie to silence her, only to be stopped by his friends. Seeing that he could not cover up Brink’s death without getting into trouble, he killed himself.

Another theory is that Luke felt great guilt and pain over not being able to find and rescue his brother in time after he found out the truth about him, which only contributed to his worsened mental state in the final scenes of the first episode and eventually pushed him to commit suicide.

For more Gen V content, find out if Homelander is in the series. Also, here’s why Michael Mann’s Miami Vice is actually awesome.