How ‘Gen V’ Created Its Disgusting Supe-Killing Virus (Exclusive)

Warning: The following contains spoilers for Gen V Episode 6, "Jumanji."

Gen V Episode 6, "Jumanji," revealed the reason behind the horrifying experiments in The Woods. Dean Shetty (Shelley Conn) and Dr. Cardosa (Marco Pigossi) have been working on a virus to help control misbehaving supes. At least, that's what Cardosa thought they were doing, but Shetty pushed for Cardosa to create a lethal dose of the disease, and it is disgusting.

The initial dosage gives supes severe flu symptoms, but when its upped just 5 milliliters, it becomes a deadly dosage. Instead of coughing and wheezing, the supes develop oozing pustules and start coughing up blood. According to Gen V's prosthetics master Colin Penman, the show aimed to disgust the audience as much as possible. And they succeeded!

"We started talking about what's going to be the biggest bang for our buck as far as grossing people out. And we thought bumpy pustules is always a good place to start," Penman told The Messenger. "We kind of did some quick test makeups just to sort of see if everybody was on board, and they were. Then it kind of evolved into what you see [in the episode]."

Even Penman was grossed out when he started doing research for the prosthetics. But his team looked at different skin disorders instead of basing the super-killer virus on any airborne disease.

"I did a very quick search for dermatological anomalies, but it really grosses me out. Once we saw that it was a blistering kind of thing, that seemed to get everyone on the same level," he explained. Once the prosthetics team and the executive producers knew the direction they wanted to go in, they pivoted to testing out the different options.

"We covered people with bumpy, blustery, pustule things that would be leaking," Penman elaborated. "We started sculpting and doing little tests, and it just grew. We made a bunch, and then we puzzle-pieced it together on the day and covered as much skin as we could."

The disease stuff sounds like a rough day at work, and Penman agreed that it wasn't his favorite thing that he's gotten to work on this season. That honor would go to the two major penis scenes of the season — Emma's (Lizze Broadway) giant penis ride in the premiere and Rufus' (Alexander Calvert) exploding penis in Episode 4.

"The big penis and then the exploding penis [were my favorites]. We built a rig for [the exploding penis] that blew up to a point before it was treated with CGI after the fact," Penman said. "It’s just one of those things where you’re standing on set and you’re watching this go down like, ‘What do I do for a living? This is unreal.’ ...We’re making something pretty cool here. It’s nice to look around, and even though we are working tons of hours on these things, everyone has a smile on their face."

Keep that in mind as Penman's bloodiest work is yet to come once the supes find out about Shetty's virus.

Gen V continues with new episodes every Friday on Prime Video until the finale on Nov. 3.