![\"\"](\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\")
<\/a>Dean Cipher of Godolkin University, as played by Hamish LinklaterWhat Are Cipher\u2019s Powers On Gen V? Meat Puppet Powers, Baby!<\/p>\nWhile Cate watches, and Marie tries to shut down the fight by kissing Jordan, Cipher essentially takes over Jordan\u2019s body. Cipher makes them wave to the Dean\u2019s box, talks through Jordan\u2019s mouth, and generally controls Jordan \u201clike a meat puppet, with no strings.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s control out of Jordan\u2019s body as well, something he seems surprised about. <\/p>\n
Marie also almost makes Jordan pop like the little blood bag they are; that\u2019s Marie though. Let\u2019s talk about Cipher.<\/p>\n
To put it more plainly, he can puppet people and maybe animals as well (alhough TBD on that last point). That\u2019s 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\u2019s. The reasoning there is that in the first season, we discovered that Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) wasn\u2019t a mere \u201chead popper\u201d as seen on The Boys, but she had powers based in blood manipulation, giving her a bonding point with Marie.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cBags\u201d 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\u2019t much different than thin plastic bags holding blood. \u201cWhat if I kill Elon?\u201d Marie asks, with Cipher answering, \u201cThat\u2019s why we named them for assholes.\u201d While it\u2019s 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 \u2013 manipulate a human body to do whatever he wants, including speaking the words he wants it to speak.<\/p>\n
Is this, perhaps, the ultimate evolution of Marie\u2019s powers? Is this what Cipher has been coaching her towards all along? There\u2019s a fair amount of paternality in the relationship, and we\u2019ve already seen that \u2013 as Dr. Gold \u2013 Cipher wasn\u2019t 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 \u2013 while he\u2019s referred to as \u201cYoda\u201d in this episode \u2013 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, \u201cNo, I am your father.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s one itty-bitty little complication here, though\u2026<\/p>\n
What About The Lack Of Compound V In Cipher\u2019s Blood?<\/p>\n
The fact of the matter is that Marie still didn\u2019t detect any Compound V in Cipher\u2019s 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 \u2013 not getting bitten by a radioactive spider, coming to Earth from an alien planet, or any other comic book-style origin.<\/p>\n
To suddenly introduce naturally occurring superpowers halfway through a spinoff would be a weird swerve.<\/p>\n
There are variations on Compound V, including V24 (also known as Temp V), but there haven\u2019t been any naturally occurring powers in the franchise as of yet. Maybe Cipher is the first, but that isn\u2019t particularly likely, mainly because we\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve got a big clue, though, in that despite being enigmatic \u2013 once again, it\u2019s right in the name \u2013 Cipher hasn\u2019t 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\u2019s human; he doesn\u2019t deny it, or say Cate doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s say Cipher is once again telling the truth, and he is human. How does he also have powers? There\u2019s a big clue to this mystery, but for that we need to talk about another mystery in this episode.<\/p>\n
What About Cipher\u2019s \u201cDad,\u201d aka The Burnt Man In The Hyperbaric Chamber?<\/p>\n
Previously, we were teased about a strange locked room in Cipher\u2019s house. Thanks to intrepid investigators Cate and Jordan, we found out what was behind Door #1: Cipher\u2019s father, horribly burnt, in a hyperbaric chamber\u2026or at least, we\u2019re told that\u2019s Cipher\u2019s father.<\/p>\n
Vought Rising – First Look Images from The Boys Prequel Series<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 possibly a variant of Compound V \u2013 which didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
And\u2026it also might perhaps explain how Marie can\u2019t detect the V in Cipher\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another possibility, though, which is strongly suggested by the whole \u201cmeat puppet\u201d thing, but we don\u2019t want to get too ahead of our skis on that one.<\/p>\n
As of the end of Episode 4, Cipher\u2019s powers are physical and mind manipulation, essentially marionetting other living beings. As to the other parts of the mystery? Well, that\u2019s one cipher we\u2019ll be unraveling over the rest of Season 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article contains spoilers for Gen V Season 2 through Episode 4, \u201cBags.\u201d One of the biggest mysteries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-168927","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\/168927","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=168927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}