7 iconic Gen Z characters in series and movies on Showmax

Once upon a time, Gen Z was that sticky kid who wanted to paw at your phone in their endless pursuit for games. Or maybe you knew them as that iPad kid with their headphones on at family events. Born between the mid-1990s and mid-2010s, today they range from just entering high school, to being married with kids and jobs. 

Documentary series The Habits of Gen Z invites guests like Candice Modisele, Maps Maponyane, Siv Ngesi, Penny Siopis, Cassidy Nicholson (aka Constantia Mom), Aletta Francina De Kock (formerly “Tannie Aletta”), and trans model and former Miss South Africa semi-finalist Lehlogonolo Machaba, to chat about our loud, out and proud digital generation. And we find out what our Born Frees are doing now.

Binge The Habits of Gen Z.

Gen Z in a nutshell

While growing up South African is a unique experience, there are many ways our Gen Zs fit in with the larger, global generation. 

They’ve always had the internet, cellphones have always existed, and they came into consciousness at the start of the social media era. They’ve grown up with instant access to not only current music, films and literature, but to most digitised media from recent history. They might never have tried to pirate anything in their lives!

Gen Z has grown up with their primary influencers being digital creators rather than celebrities or athletes, so their career ideas are based on what they see online. In South Africa, they’ve grown up in integrated schools, and their online community is even more diverse than their friend groups. When nobody in their neighbourhood shares their questions, identity or interests, they have been able to find community online – for both good and evil. This increased exposure to a wide range of identities ties into their digital activism in all fields, from environmentalism, to diet, ethics, gender expression, sustainability, social justice and mental health. Their revolution was born online in movements like the School Strike for Climate, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo. 

They have also been bullied and exploited online. And their instant access to goods and entertainment comes with a thorn – consumption means constant anxiety about the ethics of consumption. 

So it’s a lot. But to ease their way, they have been able to see characters confronting the same struggles with them, in these seven series and movies. 

7 iconic Gen Z shows, movies and characters

1. Euphoria: they’re style pioneers

The queens of doing it for the aesthetic, Euphoria’s high school students dress in the sketchiest, skimpiest outfits they can snatch via online shopping, like Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) and Maddy (Alexa Demie), and experimental vamp Kat (Barbie Ferriera). On the other end of the spectrum, we have the thrifting queens like pop punk pastel princess Jules (trans actress Hunter Schafer) and skate punk Rue (Zendaya, who was born in 1996, making her a pioneer Gen Z), who become style icons through creating one-of-a-kind looks. The students’ wardrobe wars represent the push-pull between sustainability and consumption that drives Gen Z style. 

And thanks to the widespread availability of online hair, styling, and makeup tutorials, it’s actually believable that students could come to school in a full beat. When Cassie gets up at 4am to take care of her skincare and makeup routine, you’d better believe it!

As for why Rue speaks for Gen Z, what other character is out there reading smutty One Direction fan fiction to us in one breath, and lecturing us on the etiquette of sending nudes in the next? As Rue points out, “I know your generation relied on flowers and father’s permission, but it’s 2019, and unless you’re Amish, nudes are the currency of love. So stop shaming us. Shame the assholes who create password-protected online directories of naked underage girls.” Well, preach! 

Binge Euphoria Season 1-2 and the two special episodes Part 1 and Part 2. PS: The rumours are true, Euphoria Season 3 went into production in February 2025.

2. Spider-Man: they work on their terms

Tom Holland’s 15-year-old Peter-Parker/Spider-Man is still in school in this 2017 film, which places him squarely in Gen Z. He has to balance his superhero side hustle on missions from the Avengers, with love, friendship, family life, and academic commitments. And even though he’s just a kid, he’s prepared to put his foot down in favour of work-life balance. What could give more Gen Z energy than Peter Parker sending Nick Fury’s (Samuel L Jackson) call to action to voicemail in Spider-Man: Far From Home because he’s “just your friendly, neighbourhood Spider-Man”, and has other things to worry about, like actually living his life and enjoying his trip to Europe? Aren’t there more qualified superheroes to take the job? Where are the grownups? Peter’s dreams of being a superhero are somewhat complicated by the discourse among his peers that brands even goody-two-shoes Captain America (Chris Evans) as an out-of-touch war criminal.

In further Gen Z vibes, unlike previous Spider-Men who just had to dodge a nosy newspaper editor, Peter lives in a world of mobile phones and social media, so every move he makes is in the public eye, and it doesn’t take lot for his besties to uncover his secret identity. And as someone who’s grown up online, he’s also the one taking meme-worthy photos of superhero and supervillain chaos and shenanigans. As he explains, "I just like sketching people in crisis". 

Stream Spider-Man: Homecoming & Spider-Man: Far from Home now. And if you want to compare and contrast, for Gen X, it’s Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Spider-Man 3, while for Millennial Spidey fans, it’s Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. 

3. The Hunger Games: they’re radicalised by the system

As kids growing up in a digital age, Gen Z have seen uncensored deadly violence, from war and beheadings, to police killing unarmed citizens, on repeat thanks to the 24-hour news cycle. It’s not much of a leap from watching genocide in Gaza play out on their phones, to watching children forced to fight to the death for views and likes. It’s the Hunger Games out there and Gen Z is torn between longing to be safely in the Capitol with its fabulous, avant garde fashion and parties, and the reality of being down in the trenches as a serf in the districts. 

Hitting cinemas just as the cutting edge of Gen Z were old enough to see it, the movies and books (published in 2008) resonated with Gen Z’s dawning awareness that they were born into a world on fire thanks to resource hoarding. It also was one of the first pieces of media to show Gen Z that winning a battle created by your exploiters doesn’t give you much of a footing to negotiate from, since they own the war, the platform that you’re using to protest the war, and even your suffering, which they monetise.

The adults in The Hunger Games are not authorities; they are either exploiters, or deeply damaged and ineffectual survivors who have been beaten down by the system. Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is a hero because she finds a way to turn the propaganda machine against itself. But as the films show, striking the first blow doesn’t win the war. There are no simple victories for Katniss or any of the other survivors.

Stream The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2 now. And look out for the prequel movie The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes from Monday, 24 March.

4. Mr Robot: their real enemy is wealth inequality

Elliot (Rami Malek) the hacker should be a Gen Z icon, from his monotone speech, to the fact that he thrives online, while floundering in meatspace. Yes, he’s in therapy, but when we join him for a session in Season 1, we can’t help but wonder if his mental issues are, in fact, a sane response to an insane world – one in which he sees the worst of humanity, and realises how much of his suffering he could end by using his hacking powers to create “the single greatest incident of wealth redistribution in history.” As with The Hunger Games, though, the series shows it’s not that easy for a Lone Ranger to break the system, especially when opportunistic people cash in on the chaos.

Elliot’s series premiere rant to his therapist about why he despises society is just the tip of the iceberg. From the way that people idolise tech finance bros who brand themselves innovators, to performative social justice, everything makes Elliot want to stay indoors: “Maybe it’s that it feels that all of our heroes are counterfeit. The world itself is just one big hoax…we want to be sedated, because it’s painful not to pretend, because we’re cowards,” he admits with self-loathing.

While the show opens with Elliot having a bleak view of life, by the finale he achieves a kind of healing. Having lived through the pandemic at a vital time during their development, Gen Z will relate to Elliot’s alienation, and they will also grasp the series’ journey to making Elliot realise that the most successful form of resistance comes from nurturing real community and building survival outside the system first. 

Binge all four seasons of Mr Robot, starring Rami Malek and Christian Slater in Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning performances respectively, on Showmax now.

5. Joker: they’ll check your privilege

If there’s a template for so many of Gen Z’s confrontations with toxic masculinity, it’s Arthur Fleck/Joker (Joaquin Phoenix in an Oscar-winning performance). While he’s far more sympathetic and complex than Jared Leto’s smug, edgelord “We live in a society,” Joker, Arthur/Joker is still problematic, and his fanboys are a real problem.

Arthur internalises the world’s rejection, whether it’s from audiences who don’t find him funny, the job that fires him when he drops a gun in a children’s hospital, the government that cuts social services and makes both therapy and medication inaccessible to him, or the single mom who lives next door to him, Sophie (Zazie Beetz), having no sexual interest in him, even though he’s stalking her. PS: the fact that Arthur’s imaginary version of Sophie responds to him violating her boundaries with flirtation shows how wilfully blind Arthur is to women’s rights and agency, and to the everyday dangers they have to navigate.

This constant feeling of rejection clashes with Arthur’s need for attention, which we see as he fantasises about earning the admiration of TV talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert DeNiro). And since Arthur/Joker lives in “a society” that gives men access to deadly weapons, he then uses his rage to fuel his attack on his first target. And when the public rejoices, believing that Arthur is targeting the wealth-hoarding class, their reaction feeds Arthur’s hunger for validation, reinforcing a burning conviction that he has the right to kill and punish when he doesn’t get what he wants. 

But here’s the kicker: Arthur only turns to violence after his attempt to get billionaire Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) to acknowledge him as his son is rejected. So Joker is using his white male rage not to achieve equality for everyone, but to protest the fact that he couldn’t secure privilege for himself. That’s why he’s the villain. Meanwhile the men who become Joker’s fanboys in the movie latch onto his actions as a “fun” way to protest their aggrieved sense of entitlement. Before Joker, they could easily have joined any of the pre-existing social justice movements around Gotham. But they would have to educate and decenter themselves in the process – an exercise every bit as offensive to their egos as not being rich.

Stream Joker now.

6. Saved by the Bell: they champion diversity, equity and inclusion

Released in 2020 with 30 Rock writer-producer Tracey Wigfield as the executive producer, this reboot of the early 1990s teen comedy series brings back the original characters. But now they’re the authority figures who have to deal with a new class of bright Gen Z students.  These students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds but are forced to attend Bayside High after Governor Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who played the teen character in the original series) shuts down their struggling ,low-income schools. 

The original series’ predominantly white, heterosexual students have been replaced by a far more diverse student body, reflecting the reality of Gen Z’s school experience. The school’s IT Girl is trans cheerleader Lexi Haddad-DeFabrizio (Josie Totah, a trans performer who started her career playing male roles, like Seymour in Spider-Man: Homecoming) who has her own reality show. The heart of the newcomers’ group is hardworking Daisy Jimenez (Haskiri Velazquez), who often breaks the fourth wall for us. Her best friend Aisha Garcia (Alycia Pascual-Pena) becomes the football team’s star player. And theatre kid Devante Young (Dexter Darden) is also out there bucking stereotypes. 

Think of it as a comforting, comedy, kiddie-wheel version of Euphoria. But it does tackle some important issues in a nuanced way, even while it’s having a laugh at the idea of Governor Zack, who was a slacker and prankster at school, becoming governor and then making the ill-informed and simplistic policy decisions that we see wreck his low income students’ lives. And tellingly, the well-meaning rich parents working to integrate the students take on the acronym PITY. 

The series often takes aim at how money shelters rich students like Zack’s son Mac (Mitchel Hoog) from the impact of inequality, and the consequences of their parents’ political choices. As with Spider-Man and Euphoria, it’s the rich kids rather than the athletes and academics who’re the school’s bullies. So if you’re here for nostalgia, prepare to get a moral wedgie from Gen Z – the only kind of bullying they’ll let slide.

Binge Saved By the Bell Season 1-2 now.

7. Fantasmas: they’ll say the weird thing

You’d need a graduate degree in deep fried meme mutation to decipher Gen Z’s online humour. But if there is a poster boy for Gen Z humour in general, it’s a pink, pastel revolutionary poster, and on it you’ll see the dreamy face of Julio Torres. He’s the writer-creator of surrealist miniseries Fantasmas, co-creator of comedy ghost hunting series Los Espookys, and the mind behind wildly innovative standup comedy set My Favorite Shapes. Gen Z itself might be more familiar with his work from YouTube posts of sketch comedy series SNL, where he wrote the viral toy advertisements, Wells for Boys and My Little Stepchildren. 

You can sum up Julio in a statement from one of his standup performances: “I’m sorry if I seem a little bit out of it. I got my lab results back. And just as every doctor suspected, I’m simply too much.” His comedy is campy and trippy in that it takes you places – from a New York bondage club for hamsters, to the set of a Real Housewives-style reality show, where an evil producer has the Housewives locked in eternal recreations of his psychological battle with his own mother. While it’s fun, sweetly silly and surreal, Fantasmas can be mercilessly and cuttingly observant in the next breath – just like Gen Z –when a theme park superhero’s gender identity is “addressed by a little rainbow flag pin on her jacket, digitally deleted in select foreign markets”.

Julio’s work is so personal that its popularity seems miraculous – a boost for Gen Z’s core belief that authenticity is the new currency in the digital age. It’s proof that saying the weird thing works. Plus, for Gen Zs entering the workforce, what could be more iconic than Julio’s agent Vanesja (Martine Gutierrez), who claims that she’s only doing the job as a multi-year performance art project?

Stream Fantasmas now.

And for more Gen Z standup, try Leo Reich: Literally Who Cares. Stand-up comedian Leo sings and tells stories and jokes as he delves into social and political causes, queer identity and coming-of-age experiences, and modern life.

Also watch: documentary series The 2010s for an overview of the world Gen Z has grown up in.