Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Mike Redmond | TV | October 2, 2025
I’m going to put my cards on the table. Gen V Season 2 has been a notable improvement over the first season, and if I’m being honest, more compelling than the last season of The Boys. Although I should probably say “so far” because one element of The Boys Season 4 just came smashing into the spinoff. I’ll get to that in a second.
Episode 5 starts with a cold open that takes place a month ago. Cipher (Hamish Linklater) is tending to the severely burnt man hidden in his house and taking very delicate care of the charred person who is presumably Dr. Godolkin (Ethan Slater). This routine is methodical to the point where Cipher barely even reacts when he’s interrupted by a surprise guest. The new Vought CEO, Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), has dropped by with a house-warming gift: A garden gnome whose fate we know thanks to Kate (Cate Dunlap) and Jordan (London Thor/Derek Luh)’s break-in last episode. Speaking of freaky sex, that’s exactly what Cipher and Sage start doing while she notably stares directly at the burnt man as he sits in a weird futuristic bathtub. Somewhere, James Gunn just took notes.
Back in the present, Marie (Jaz Sinclair) and Jordan are in the locker rooms reeling from their cage match that revealed Cipher’s power just moments ago. Despite Marie thinking he’s human because there’s no Compound V in his blood, Cipher proved them all wrong by taking control of Jordan and working them like a puppet. Naturally, this has Jordan freaked because Cipher was able to make them switch at will, and there’s nothing they could do. Not to mention they nearly killed Marie, who almost did the same thing to her in terrifying fashion.
Of course, the couple doesn’t have long to regroup as Cipher is already in the room to gloat as he does. If the whole fight premise seemed over the top — and jarringly prescient like so much of this franchise — the purpose of the fight was to push Marie to her limits. If the last episode didn’t make it clear that’s Cipher’s obsession, this episode fires up the neon sign.
While Cipher tries his best to convince Marie that training with him is in her best interest, that becomes a hard sell when he drops the bomb that Cate (Kate Dunlap) has been sent to Elmira, the Supes prison where Marie, Jordan, and Emma (Lizzie Broadway) were tortured, and Adrian (Chase Perdomo) died. So Marie can play nice, or Cipher will start sending more of her friends there.
Despite Cate betraying them at the end of Season 1, the gang can’t just leave her at Elmira. They know what that place is like, and she’s being just as manipulated as everyone else. A reluctant escape plan is hatched, but when Emma tries to enlist Sam (Asa Germann) as a much-needed heavy-hitter, he takes a hard pass. He’s got no love for Cate, and he has other things on his plate.
Sam took a trip back to his childhood home, where he didn’t expect to run into his parents. Apparently, he thought he could do a light break-in, which instead turns into a long overdue confrontation and potential reconciliation. It sure seems like Vought put his parents through the wringer by claiming he was dead. However, Sam blames them for being injected with Compound V, causing his brain to break. This results in a touching moment with his mom, who reveals that mental illness runs in the family. Sam would’ve had delusions and hallucinations regardless of whether he was a Supe or not. He’s also still fixated on puppets, which is becoming a pressing theme in this episode.
Would you believe that Cipher expected Marie to free Cate from Elmira? Because, yup, he did. The guy’s always one step ahead, and Sister Sage seems to be the plausible explanation for that. She’s on hand to watch Marie and the gang’s escape plan go to sh*t before they even enter the building. Sage also has another gift, and it’s the one thing that Marie wants more than anything in the world: Her sister Annabeth (Keeya King).
With some more smarmy mustache-twirling that Hamish Linklater always makes enjoyable, Cipher again tells Marie that everything he’s doing is to take her to the next level. He goes even further and says he can make her “a god.” That theory is put to the test when he engineers a chance for the gang to escape, only for Marie to find Annabeth with her throat slit in a cell. In the strongest display of her powers yet, Marie manages to heal her sister, but not without almost killing the whole gang in the process. Cipher wanted a god; he may have just gotten one.
Thought Splatters
— So let’s hit the big theory: Is Godolkin working Cipher like a puppet? There is certainly lots of evidence for that. Most notably, the scene where he stabs himself right in the hand like it was nothing. That would also explain why he has no Compound V in his blood. Of course, there’s also the chance that Sister Sage is pulling all the strings. We saw that Godolkin has a whole racist little museum in the basement of the archives, and here she is having her way with Cipher while looking Godolkin dead in the eye. There’s also the potential irony of Marie being the crowning achievement of Compound V, which you’d think someone like Godolkin would hate.
— Can Marie kill Homelander? That’s definitely being implied. At one point, Cipher even asks Sage if Homelander is still worried about her. Genny floated the idea that Marie might have the ability to rip Compound V out of a Supe’s blood, and that’s probably bad for said Supe.
— Why is this season hitting so hard? It’s clearly working toward an endgame: The Boys series finale. While the first installment felt like this franchise becoming everything it claims to hate by launching a gratuitous spinoff, Season 2 is remarkably clear-eyed. That’s particularly impressive given Chase Perdomo’s character was a key part of the original scripts, and he died right before filming began. That left Lizzie Broadway to do a lot of heavy lifting, and she’s been just the right amount of jaded, yet heroic. There’s a delicate balancing act happening here, and I hope Gen V keeps pulling off.
