This article contains spoilers for Gen V Season 2 through Episode 4, “Bags.”
One of the biggest mysteries of Gen V Season 2 on Prime Video isn’t a thing, it’s a person. Who is Cipher, the new Dean of Godolkin University, played by Hamish Linklater? Heck, “mystery” is almost literally his name, as a cipher is defined as “a message in code.” As of the season’s fourth episode, we have some answers, at least in terms of one aspect of that particular mystery: Cipher’s powers. But there’s more to come, so let’s get into it.
In the episode, while Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair) and Jordan Li (London Thor/Derek Luh) are forced into a mixed martial arts-style cage match, the rest of the gang – now reunited with previous “villain” Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips) – investigates Cipher in order to shut the fight down. One key ingredient to the plan? Marie, who has blood-based powers, is able to tell that Cipher doesn’t have any Compound V in his system. That means, according to our scrappy Guardians of Godolkin, that he is not a Supe, so what is a regular ol’ human doing running a Supe supremacist school like God U?
Complicating plans a bit is that they volunteer Cate to use her “push” powers to force Cipher to confess his humanity. The only problem with that is that Cate’s powers are messed up since Marie, Jordan, and Emma (Lizze Broadway) cracked her head open in the season premiere. So without actually being able to do what she’s being asked to do, Cate is sent to push Cipher into confessing he has no powers on a camera that Emma sneaks in via her shrinking powers through the toilet in a private suite over the “Hostility at the University” fight night between Marie and Jordan. Follow all that?
With this particular comedy of errors already flawed at the start, things only get worse once Cipher reveals he knows every aspect of their plan and seems completely tickled by the gang’s fumbling in the dark.
“Okay, you figured it out,” Cipher says. “I’m human. And I bet you’re wondering how I got away with it for so long.”
He then reveals he knows about the camera and that Cate can’t use her push powers properly, and when Cate blurts out that there’s no V in his blood, he figures out that Marie provided that info as well.
“Here, watch this,” Cipher says, and that’s when we get the big reveal.
What Are Cipher’s Powers On Gen V? Meat Puppet Powers, Baby!
While Cate watches, and Marie tries to shut down the fight by kissing Jordan, Cipher essentially takes over Jordan’s body. Cipher makes them wave to the Dean’s box, talks through Jordan’s mouth, and generally controls Jordan “like a meat puppet, with no strings.”
While Jordan beats the crap out of her, Cipher is clearly using the opportunity to coach Marie. He pushes her until Marie uses her blood powers to make Jordan float in the air, but a side effect is that Marie manages to push Cipher’s control out of Jordan’s body as well, something he seems surprised about.
Marie also almost makes Jordan pop like the little blood bag they are; that’s Marie though. Let’s talk about Cipher.
To put it more plainly, he can puppet people and maybe animals as well (alhough TBD on that last point). That’s pretty non-specific, and clearly more needs to be explored here, but it seems entirely possible based on a careful study of the source material (meaning: watching every episode of Gen V) that his powers are blood-based just like Marie’s. The reasoning there is that in the first season, we discovered that Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) wasn’t a mere “head popper” as seen on The Boys, but she had powers based in blood manipulation, giving her a bonding point with Marie.
If Cipher also has blood-based powers, that would go a long way to explaining a lot of his general interest in Marie, as well as how he coaches her in this very episode. The title “Bags” takes its name from a sequence where Cipher lays a few blood bags on a table and asks Marie to move them from one table to another. After a false start, she does move them, so they upgrade the exercise to a goat named Elon Musk, with Cipher explaining that living beings aren’t much different than thin plastic bags holding blood. “What if I kill Elon?” Marie asks, with Cipher answering, “That’s why we named them for assholes.” While it’s more complicated than merely making Jordan (or Elon Musk the goat) float in the air, that sure seems to be what Cipher is able to do as well – manipulate a human body to do whatever he wants, including speaking the words he wants it to speak.
Is this, perhaps, the ultimate evolution of Marie’s powers? Is this what Cipher has been coaching her towards all along? There’s a fair amount of paternality in the relationship, and we’ve already seen that – as Dr. Gold – Cipher wasn’t just in the Elmira prison that held Marie and friends between seasons of Gen V, but was also there at Project Odessa, which helped create her. Maybe Cipher looks at Marie as his heir, or – while he’s referred to as “Yoda” in this episode – perhaps a more accurate comparison point is Darth Vader. After all, thanks to genetically creating her through Project Odessa, Cipher is one step away from telling Marie, “No, I am your father.”
There’s one itty-bitty little complication here, though…
What About The Lack Of Compound V In Cipher’s Blood?
The fact of the matter is that Marie still didn’t detect any Compound V in Cipher’s blood, which throws a big wrench into this whole power reveal. Everything in the world of The Boys and Gen V is based on Compound V being the source of superpowers – not getting bitten by a radioactive spider, coming to Earth from an alien planet, or any other comic book-style origin.
There are variations on Compound V, including V24 (also known as Temp V), but there haven’t been any naturally occurring powers in the franchise as of yet. Maybe Cipher is the first, but that isn’t particularly likely, mainly because we’re heading towards the final season of The Boys; to suddenly introduce naturally occurring superpowers halfway through a spinoff would be a weird swerve that would change the game in unpredictable ways.
We’ve got a big clue, though, in that despite being enigmatic – once again, it’s right in the name – Cipher hasn’t lied about anything all season long as far as we know. Take a look again at the quote above, in which he tells Cate that he’s human; he doesn’t deny it, or say Cate doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
To crib a line from I Think You Should Leave: Oh my god, he admit it! What that admission means is a good question. Let’s say Cipher is once again telling the truth, and he is human. How does he also have powers? There’s a big clue to this mystery, but for that we need to talk about another mystery in this episode.
What About Cipher’s “Dad,” aka The Burnt Man In The Hyperbaric Chamber?
Previously, we were teased about a strange locked room in Cipher’s house. Thanks to intrepid investigators Cate and Jordan, we found out what was behind Door #1: Cipher’s father, horribly burnt, in a hyperbaric chamber…or at least, we’re told that’s Cipher’s father.
Vought Rising - First Look Images from The Boys Prequel Series
Putting together some pieces that Jordan and Cate do not have, back at the beginning of the season premiere, we met Thomas Godolkin, played by Wicked star Ethan Slater. Godolkin was working on Project Odessa, which seemed to be developing some unstable serum – possibly a variant of Compound V – which didn’t work. It killed most of the scientists who used it in horrible ways, and the last we saw of Tommy, he was being burned to death in an out-of-control lab fire.
It’s not too much of a stretch to think the horribly burned man we see in Episode 4 is, indeed, Thomas Godolkin, as opposed to an entirely different, unrelated horribly burned man. How he survived, if that is him, is an open-ended question, but Godolkin being Cipher’s father would certainly explain how Cipher came to be Dean of the school. It would also explain why Cipher immediately brought back Thomas Godolkin Day in the previous episode.
And…it also might perhaps explain how Marie can’t detect the V in Cipher’s blood. Perhaps whatever Project Odessa was developing was not exactly Compound V, but something else. If Cipher gets his powers from that, it might not be detectable by Marie, at least not in the same way.
There’s another possibility, though, which is strongly suggested by the whole “meat puppet” thing, but we don’t want to get too ahead of our skis on that one.
As of the end of Episode 4, Cipher’s powers are physical and mind manipulation, essentially marionetting other living beings. As to the other parts of the mystery? Well, that’s one cipher we’ll be unraveling over the rest of Season 2.
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