In the latest episode of “The Boys,” titled “”Beware the Jabberwock, My Son,” we finally have the anticipated crossover between the main show and last year’s spin-off “Gen V,” and it is a spectacular way to connect the two series. At a time when the Marvel Cinematic Universe is struggling with connectivity going from a feature to a bug, “The Boys” makes “Gen V” feel not like a chore but a complement to the main show. Butcher just gives us a brief exposition scene recapping how he went over to Godolkin University and found out about the virus. That’s it. We get a brief cameo from two characters in “Gen V,” too, but you wouldn’t know them to be any different than any of the many one-off supes that appear in the show unless you watched “Gen V.” If you want to know more, the series is there waiting for you. If you don’t, then you don’t have to watch it and already have all the important information.

That’s because what matters is the virus — the last hope for Butcher and The Boys to neutralize Homelander — and that’s an easy concept to introduce without much context. To find it, The Boys head to a farm where a scientist, played by Omid Abtahi, is trying to replicate the virus for Victoria Neuman. The only problem is that the lab is in ruins, the staff is dead, and now the characters are being chased by monsters. Not just any kind of monsters, either, but cute farm animals injected with Compound V, which has turned them as violent and bloody as Cartman’s Woodland Critters from one of the best episodes of “South Park” (just with fewer orgies).