Gen V<\/a> is just happy to drop its characters into increasingly absurd situations that make for great set pieces.\u00a0<\/p>\nIn that respect, having \u201cThe Gender Bender\u201d fight \u201cThe Blood Bender\u201d (nicknames courtesy of Vought\u2019s marketing geniuses) makes for a thrilling gamble. After all, Cipher doesn\u2019t just want them to fight. He wants to create the kind of event that\u2019ll help further their roles as budding supes on a campus happy to crucify one and celebrate the other. What are these kids if not gladiators in the making, serving a higher power while offering entertainment for the masses?<\/p>\n
And so begrudgingly they both agree, though they soon begin hatching a plan: If they could only get dirt on Cipher, maybe they could find some helpful leverage. That\u2019s what leads them to start working with Cate again, even as Emma and Jordan remain cautiously suspicious about what their former friend and ally is getting out of this new arrangement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They soon hatch a plan: Cate and Jordan will head to Cipher\u2019s house, suspecting it\u2019s highly guarded for a reason, while Marie trains with Cipher and keeps him occupied. That training scene, where Cipher is equal parts Yoda and Professor X (though closer to Magneto, really) to the bumbling Marie is Gen V at its best: Watching Hamish Linklater and Jaz Sinclair trade barbs as we learn more about why Cipher is so invested in Marie and how he really is perfectly aware of everything that\u2019s going on around campus is very entertaining. If these students really want to face him, they\u2019ll have to up their game\u2014and their powers. Which is, ironically, what Cipher wants to do with Marie. After letting her know he\u2019s aware she\u2019s seeking answers about Odessa (nothing gets by him, and he seems hilariously bemused by their attempts at stealth), he insists she was all but designed to be the most powerful supe\u2026ever. Yes, even more powerful than Homelander.<\/p>\n
That makes sense when you realize her ability to control blood gives her an enviable advantage over every other \u201cwalking, talking blood bag\u201d around her. Soon enough, as she\u2019s egged on to feel her powers rather than think about them, she\u2019s able to move an actual plastic bag with blood from one table to another. Sure, she eventually explodes it but it\u2019s progress; by the end of the session, she\u2019s handily controlling a real-life goat and having it levitate from the ground (though she does eventually blow it up as well).\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other end of campus, Emma is doing her own kind of training. Harper is coaching her on controlling her own powers without needing to resort to binge-eating and\/or crushing and intrusive self-esteem thoughts. Like Cipher, Harper stresses that Emma should feel her powers rather than to overthink how to use them. Soon enough, they\u2019ll all be leveling up their powers even if it\u2019s obvious there\u2019s one among them who is in desperate need of such a glow-up: Cate.<\/p>\n
Since her injuries her powers have been extra wonky. When she approaches the security guard outside of Cipher\u2019s house to get him to \u201cfuck right off\u201d and forget he ever saw them, he immediately walks away, unzips his pants, and begins fucking a nearby garden gnome. It\u2019s all quite worrisome but it gains them enough time to enter the house and see a hyperbaric chamber in one room with what looks like an old burn victim who wakes up upon being gawked at.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, that\u2019s not really the smoking gun they all need. But Marie\u2019s intel is. While in close proximity to Cipher, she realized he has no V in his blood. Maybe there\u2019s a reason why no one\u2019s seen his powers. He may not have any. That\u2019s enough to convince Cate to try and entrap him at the Vought VIP box during Jordan and Marie\u2019s fight (all with the help of small Emma, who carries a tiny camera into the room through the pipes leading into the VIP bathroom which, as you\u2019d imagine, does not go without a hitch and gives us a big WTF-are-we-watching moment staged in a toilet).\u00a0<\/p>\n
But back to their incredibly naive plan. You\u2019d think they\u2019d all have learned their lesson by now: Cipher is way ahead of them all. Always. And he\u2019s deliciously vicious about their utter incompetence. (Truly, is this Hamish Linklater\u2019s greatest role since Midnight Mass? It might be!) Cipher easily catches on that he\u2019s being recorded, and when Cate accuses him of being a \u201chuman,\u201d he does the only thing that makes sense: He shows her exactly what his powers are.<\/p>\n
Down below in the fighting cage he sees Jordan and Marie refusing to fight. They\u2019re kissing instead after sharing a lovely heart to heart in the locker rooms right before. Cipher will have none of that: He possesses Jordan (like a meat puppet, really, as he puts it) and begins attacking Marie. The ensuing fight is as legendary as the Vought ads had promised it would be and ends with Marie (who\u2019d been told the fight would be rigged in her favor) triumphing over her boy\/girlfriend by keeping Jordan levitating above her. And just when you feared she\u2019d explode it like the goat and the plastic bag before, Jordan collapses on top of her, ensuring she\u2019s crowned the winner of the match and all but terrified about what Cipher can truly accomplish when push comes to shove.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So he does have a superpower. But has no V in his blood. Oh, and that guy in the hyperbaric chamber is his father. So what does it all add up to?<\/p>\n
Stray observations<\/p>\n
\u2022 Gen V\u2019s anal fixation continues unabated. But even I was surprised we got a full close-up of Cipher sitting on the toilet, showing us, as Emma put it, balls the size of the sun. (We also got a security guard fucking a garden gnome so I guess it\u2019s just another day at God U.)
\n\u2022 What is there to make of the joke about how Cipher only names the goats he\u2019s ready to sacrifice for \u201cassholes\u201d with the first one being named Elon Musk? Is this really a world where Vought and God U would be aligned against that X CEO?\u00a0
\n\u2022 Honestly, \u201cHalf man, half woman, all deceiver\u201d is just a killer tagline for Jordan.
\n\u2022 I do feel for some of these young God U kids because, while hilarious, I would also be rather embarrassed if I got saddled with \u201cprehensile pubes is your superpower\u201d as Bushmaster (Harper\u2019s fellow Starlighter\/resister) is.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Uh, where\u2019s Sam?\u00a0
\n\u2022 And are we really getting a new Emma love interest in the shape of Bushmaster\u2019s hunky brother?
\n\u2022 So Cipher has to be Godolkin\u2019s son, yes?
\n\u2022 And speaking of family, are we just going to ignore the way Marie\u2019s sister subplot sort of disappeared?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The opening moments of \u201cBags\u201d is as efficient a summation of today\u2019s fractured media ecosystem: Following Jordan\u2019s speech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-166978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}