What are super-powered beings if not the closest humans have gotten to creating (and becoming) gods? That’s the question The Boys has toyed with for four seasons, channeling it into a dystopian world where supes are at the mercy of a corporate-capitalist power that went off the rails with Homelander. Gen V has mostly been complicating the answer to this question, especially with the way it’s shown Marie Moreau to be a supe whose powers do merit comparisons to the gods: After all, just last episode she was able to use her blood-manipulating powers to bring her sister Annabeth back from the dead. (Emma is the one who puts it most simply: That was a straight-up miracle.)
But it may well take another miracle for them to get out of Elmira (again!). As Cate, Emma, Jordan, Marie, and a very frazzled and bloodied Annabeth begin running around all over the place, with guards on their heels all of a sudden, you worry they won’t be able to escape. Except they have one thing none of them expected: a pre-cog in their midst. Yes, as if channeling some keen intuition, Annabeth is able to guide them to a dead end where she knows help will come. And help does come in the shape of Sam, who crashes through the wall and lets them all know he’s found a van they can escape in.
It’s all a bit too convenient and clearly an instance where Gen V just needed to get them in and out of Elmira quite quickly so the plot could continue to move forward. But that doesn’t make it any less clunky. And it leads to some tension between Marie and Annabeth, who rightly feels lost and aggrieved. Every time Marie comes into her life, she finds it all derailed. That’s hard to hear, especially because it voices the anxieties Marie has carried all her life around how she once quite literally destroyed her family.
But there’s no time for sibling therapy. They’re all runaways (again) and they know it’s only a matter of time until Cipher finds them. So they take refuge in an abandoned library where, a few burned books aside, they find everything they need: clothes, a bathroom, a phone, and even an internet-connected computer where Emma can DM Harper to relay a message back to Polarity as to where they’re all at.
Sadly, while that sounds like a good idea, it ends up being a big mistake. That’s because all-knowing Cipher knows Polarity is bound to be contacted by these rogue teens. And so he’s there when Polarity, still weak from whatever ailment made his powers gone awry the night before, gets a call from Harper. Resistance to Cipher’s demands is futile. All the even-keeled dean has to do is puppeteer Polarity and get all the info that he needs from Harper.
And he wastes no time. Marie and the rest of her ragtag team (now donning hand-me-downs from the library) are attacked by Vikor, the viking-like supe who suffers no fools and, it turns out, has taken Cipher’s orders (“Find Moreau and bring her to me—the rest don’t matter”) quite literally. He flings Jordan, Sam, and everyone else with such carelessness that it’s clear he doesn’t worry about killing any of them.
He’s just after Marie. And just when you think he’ll finally capture her, a little girl shows up. Fans of The Boys know exactly who this innocent-looking teenager is. And if Vikor knew any better, he’d have gotten out of her way pronto. Instead, he gets killed instantly by the many vicious serpents that live inside her. Yes, this is Victoria Neuman’s daughter, Zoe, ready to give us nightmares all over again.
She’s not alone though. Accompanying her is Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito, fresh off his Emmy nomination for this very role), who, it seems, wants to bring Marie to safety. The state of the world rests on her shoulders. And sure, if she must, she can bring her merry band of friends to come along to the former Vought CEO’s evil-villain bunker. (He boasts he’d built it before it was in vogue for billionaires like him to do so.)
The bunker is quite nice (“Feels like a fancy trap,” per Sam)m but Stan doesn’t just offer them safety. He offers them intel. They learn that Cipher picked up on Godolkin’s research so as to create “Supe Supremacy”—namely, a way to control supes and also perfect them. But his research had only bore two “god-tier” super-powered beings: Marie (duh) and Homelander. It explains why Cipher so wants Marie to train and master her powers: There’s no one as powerful as her. Through their conversations (while Stan makes them a frittata, no less) they learn Godolkin was presumably killed in a fire, though his body was never found. Which is the confirmation we needed to identify the burn victim Cipher is keeping in his house.
If only Marie could get a hold of Godolkin and learn more about his research, they may be able to stop Homelander (and Cipher, in turn). That also explains why Cipher may finally be cracking under pressure: We’ve never seen him as ruffled as when he hears Marie and co. escaped Vikor’s attack.
He’s losing the plot, even if it gives him an excuse to go full-blown evil villain and explain to Polarity his master plan: “My mission is to cull this herd,” Cipher intones with the grandiosity you know he thinks is rather muted. His plan includes getting rid of 75 percent of the students at God U and ending up with only the strongest of the bunch. He’s a Darwinist at heart, believing those that survive will be the stronger for it. The others? Well, they’ll likely die a death like Andre’s—a throwaway comment that pushes Polarity to his limit. He may be weak and in pain, but he won’t let Cipher speak like that about Andre. When Cipher tries to have Polarity hit himself (he does love puppeteering such self-harm), Polarity stops him and blasts him out of the window, showing that there may be faults in the dean’s wily superpower.
Meanwhile, Marie has never been one to stay safe—nor to sit still. And so it’s no surprise to find that she’s decided to leave the bunker and…well, who knows where she’s headed. But Cate is not about to let her go, not when she’s realized that Marie’s god-like superpower may be the thing that helps her regain her powers. And if Marie does help her, Cate may be able to be the secret weapon they need to keep Cipher at bay.
Marie, as ever, is stoic and inscrutable. She just walks away leaving Cate to do the only thing she knows is right: follow her along. With only two episodes to go in the season, it’s clear Gen V is setting up quite a face-off between Marie and Cipher, a battle that may redraw the very reality Godolkin, Vought, Homelander, Neuman, Cipher, et al. have had a hand in creating. And yes, no matter how Joseph Campbell it all feels, it will rest on Marie’s shoulders.
Stray observations
- • “You fucking Kool-Aid Man-ed that wall!” “Oh, yeah!” is the kind of stupid dialogue exchange that I absolutely adore. And between this and The Studio, we should be readying ourselves for an even bigger media blitz from this beverage guy, no? What streaming show might he hit next?
- • There is nothing more relatable/believable in this entire episode than Emma recognizing she knows no phone numbers by heart. None. (Less relatable/believable? The fact that she was able to sign into Instagram on a library computer without two-factor identification.)
- • What kind of sisterly bond will Marie and Annabeth nurture? What kind of relationship can Sam and Emma rekindle? What kind of friendship will Marie and Cate reignite? It seems everyone is working through intimacy issues, even if they’re all being relegated to minor subplot scenes here and there.
- • But perhaps most importantly, how will Annabeth’s precog abilities (still quite underdeveloped) help her sister? And is it possible they have a third sister they could recruit for an unofficial Charmed reboot? I kid, I kid, but the more Gen V evolves, I don’t think such comparisons to early-2000s WB series are all that uncalled for.
