Gen V 2×05 review: “The Kids Are Not All Right”

A major cameo from a The Boys character makes things even weirder, while Marie Moreau’s amazing powers start making sense. The kids definitely are not all right.

Would this even be Gen V if not for freaky weird sex stuff, parent issues, and full-frontal male nudity? “The Kids Are Not All Right” has a little bit of everything in it.

Our cold open makes Sister Sage yet another visit from The Boys characters–and my personal favorite so far (although Deep is always funny and Starlight is a welcome sight). As usual, Sage is being a horny genius dirtbag. She interrupts Cipher taking care of a shriveled raisin-human (the source of his powers?) to bang it out on the toilet while staring down said shriveled raisin-human.

With Sage in play, we’ve got good reason to think everything unfolding in this season has a much bigger role on The Boys, too. Sage is the new CEO of Vought, after all. And Vought has an extremely conflicted relationship with their uncontrollable super-weapon, Homelander.

Marie is obviously the key. Slimy ol’ Cipher hasn’t made this a secret at all.

He’s keeping different secrets–like maneuvering to put Marie back in detention to develop her powers, and using her sister to do it.

But in order to get there, we have to put all the Godolkin Guardians back in Elmira, too. They’re turning into a real team, and they don’t leave anyone behind anymore. Losing Andre has driven them closer together.

Refusing to leave Cate in Elmira, even though she betrayed her friends more than once, does more than prove to Emma, Marie, and Jordan that they’re good people. It also brings Cate back into the fold. Everyone can trust each other again.

I’m inclined to think this is Cipher’s biggest mistake. He only sees Marie as the success of his mysterious Odessa plan, and the others are just tools to manipulate her. As possibly one of the oldest Vought acolytes (or Vought himself?), it makes sense he wouldn’t put much value in a team-up. The Seven are basically just good marketing.

They have no idea the power our Gen V students can pull together when they cooperate.

The least interesting sidebar of the episode falls with Sam, who doesn’t go to Elmira with the others. He hasn’t had a lot to do this season, even though he was one of the most entertaining–and scariest–features of season one.

Instead, he goes back to visit his parents, who claim extreme grief when they believed they lost both of their sons. It’s hard to know if they’re one of the few loving families who produced superheroes, or if they’re lying to survive their son. Sam does injure Daddy Dearest in a sudden fit, which would seem to justify the fear.

Aside from asserting that Sam would always have been crazy, powers or not, there isn’t much going on here. The Boys did a whole “super-strong hero goes home” episode better when Homelander visited the lab where he was raised.

While he’s busy, the rest of the Guardians are trying to escape Elmira all over again. As Jordan notes, it’s too easy: They only need to take out one guard, steal his keys, and make a break for it. Sage and Cipher’s plan obviously wants this to happen.

But since Cipher has shown Marie that her sister Annabeth is locked in a cell–irresistible bait–the team can’t leave without grabbing her first. And they find that she’s dying from a slit throat.

At last we see one of the powers Cipher is trying to pull out of Marie: She brings her sister back to life. It’s not the first time Marie has healed, but it sure looks like she revives Annabeth from death, which is a first.

Does he want her to fix the raisin-guy he’s keeping in his house? Does he want her to explode Homelander? Or is it her control over life and death alike that makes Marie such an important supe? With the stakes rising week by week, we’ll probably know soon enough.

Gen V season 2 is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Author: SM Reine

Half-Tellarite SM Reine is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of fantasy. She’s been publishing since 2011 and a nerd since forever.

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