This recap will contain spoilers for Prime”s Gen V Season 2, Episode 7, “Hell Week.”

Hello and welcome to this recap of the penultimate episode of Gen V Season 2! I know it’s partially because the first three episodes dropped at once, but this season flew by. It could also be because I’m enjoying it so much. There is hardly time to catch your breath, each episode action-packed and rocketing toward what is sure to be an explosive end. Let’s jump in, shall we?

Previously on Gen V, Cipher was taking care of a burned man he seemed to bully sometimes; Cate bonked her head, and her powers went wonky; Cipher put Marie under so much pressure she used her powers to bring her sister back to life and now she’s borderline unstoppable; Polarity realized he could push Cipher out of his head using his powers, but using his powers gives him metal-flinging seizures; Marie found out her sister Annabeth is a secret supe with pre-cog powers; and Stan Edgar helped the crew realize the burned man might be Godolkin, so they decided to save him so he would help them stop Cipher and maybe even Homelander.

We pick up the night we left off, after Marie and Cate had snuck out of Stan’s bunker, with Annabeth waking up from a horrible nightmare where she saw Marie lying on the floor with blood raining down on her.

If any one of my nightmares were visions, I’d be so fucked.

She rushes to find her sister, but she’s not in bed with Jordan. When Annabeth and Jordan search the bunker, they learn Cate is gone, too, and Jordan is pissed that they got left behind again, just like when Marie snuck out of Elmira. Jordan knows exactly where Marie went, so they ask Zoe to get her grandpa so they can give chase.

Speaking of chase, Cate is doing her best to keep up with a very determined Marie and is confused as to why Marie let her come if she was going to powerwalk away from her. Marie says the truth is, she let her come because she thought Cate would tell everyone else where she was if she left her behind, and this way they have a longer head start.

Cate reminds her that her powers are fucked, and Marie tells her to just be a regular shmegular lookout. Cate doesn’t want that; she wants Marie to heal her. Is desperate, in fact. Practically begging.

There was a brief moment in this episode where I thought maybe Cate was laying it on too thick…but I think, ultimately, I trust her. Maybe.

Cate swears she has changed. She was made to believe — and genuinely did — she was better than Marie, better than all of them. Vought had her in green-colored glasses, but she has seen behind the curtain now and she knows it was all wrong. SHE was wrong. She promises she will never use her powers on Marie or their friends again, and she’s willing to prove it, however she has to. But Marie won’t fix her, because she still doesn’t trust her. And there’s nothing Cate can say in this moment to change her mind. So for now, they just have to change their clothes.

Jordan is driving a very scared Annabeth back to campus, and I don’t know if she’s anxious about the nightmare, anxious in general because she’s lived a pretty sheltered life, scared to be alone with a supe she doesn’t really know, if Jordan is a bad driver, or what.

Me when my dad is getting way too close to the car in front of us since for some godforsaken reason he doesn’t like to roll to a stop, he prefers giving me whiplash and slamming his breaks last minute.

Jordan tries to comfort her and says being around supes isn’t always this action-packed, that sometimes it can even be boring. And right now, Annabeth longs for boring. Jordan calms her down, asking her when she got her powers. She tells Jordan about a nightmare she had when she was little and how, one day, they came true. Jordan confides that they hid their powers for a while too when they first discovered them, but they’ve grown to appreciate them for making them who they are. Annabeth asks if Jordan and Marie are together, and Jordan admits they’re not so sure anymore.

After they change into some non-library-themed clothes, Marie and Cate go to Cipher’s house to discover the guards are gone and the vault door is empty.

“What does one wear that’s apropos for a party that’s also a crime?”

Marie senses a heartbeat, but the burned man is gone. It turns out that heartbeat belongs to Polarity, who isn’t looking so hot after his encounter with Cipher. He updates them on what he learned from it though: Cipher wants to “cull” weak supes from the herd, and Polarity can keep Cipher from controlling him, and maybe controlling others, though it does take its toll.

Elsewhere on campus, Cipher is having a bit of what the TikTok crowd might call a “menty b.” He’s muttering to himself about Polaris, beating up the burned man about it. He works himself up to the point where he considers burning the burned man’s brains in, but a tear in the man’s eye stops him. Also, his phone alerts him to his unwilling protégé and his ex-right hand poking around his house. He smiles with such glee, it’s almost creepy when he realizes Marie came back, which Sage had predicted. He says it’s time for “a big sacrifice” and frankly I don’t think I want to know what the hell he means by that.

Back at the dean’s house, Marie tries to make Polarity comfortable and explains to him their theory about how the burned man is Godolkin. He doesn’t know why she seems excited that the mad Nazi scientist is still alive, but she is convinced that if they save him from Cipher, he’ll help them defeat him, in a sort of enemy-of-my-enemy plot, and she has the confidence only a college-aged person could that it will work.

Ah, the beautiful hubris of youth.

Polarity has one of his power seizures again, maybe his worst yet, so Marie grabs his hand and uses her powers to heal him. I was going to say something snarky like “did she learn that from Amelia Shepherd” but then I realized she’s probably able to do it because she knows a little about his illness from what she learned about Andre.

One interesting point to notice is that once again, when she tries to do something big with her powers, Marie takes something from people around her, too. Both her and Cate’s noses are bleeding by the time Polarity comes to and realizes his hand tremors are gone and Marie had, indeed, healed him.

Big wheel keeps on turning, Proud Marie keeps on burning.

Since Sam’s not-so-mirthful leaps are faster than Jordan’s car, he arrives on campus first, with Tiny Emma in his pocket. While she’s embiggening and putting her clothes back on, Sam runs into his frat brothers who give him a pledge on a leash. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Emma’s new guy friend Greg comes to see her and is so glad she’s not dead that it makes Sam squirrely. Greg also doesn’t seem too fond of Sam and says as much, which almost gives Emma the ick. She defends Sam and decides the three of them should split up to look for Marie.

Polarity, Marie, and Cate storm into Cipher’s office, chests puffed, but he’s not there. Marie tries, but she can’t sense specific heartbeats with this many people on campus. Polarity tells Marie to fix Cate, which pisses Marie off, but Cate swears she didn’t put him up to it, he came to that conclusion all on his own. Why would they go to war with one of their strongest weapons nerfed when they had the power to un-nerf it? Marie still doesn’t trust Cate and says it’s too risky.

I understand she’s tired of being asked this but it drives me bonkers when hero with a slew of willing friends tries to do the rogue solo thing.

Polarity doesn’t understand why she broke Cate out of Elmira if she didn’t trust her, and Marie says just because she broke out a girl who she got thrown into the teen supe experimental prison doesn’t mean she is ready to give her back her mind control powers. Cate starts to brush this off as Marie being dramatic, but Marie reminds her of all she did to them. Using her powers against them, turning them into Vought, getting them thrown in Elmira the first time. Polarity tries to defend Cate, saying that the Vought Machine is a hard one to get untangled from and that he feels more to blame for Andre’s death than Cate, who does have the decency to look ashamed and not defend herself.

🎶 Do I trust her because she’s beautiful, or is she beautiful because I trust her? 🎶

But Marie puts her foot down about it: She will not give Cate her powers back.

Since that option is now officially off the table, they start to go back to the drawing board for Plan B, but then the phone rings.

It’s Cipher, watching Marie on his cameras. He once again offers to let her friends go if she just comes back to training. He has no regrets about what happened, and in fact thinks Marie should be thanking him for leveling up her powers. He knows she’s special, that she can be stronger, better. The best, even.

Marie hangs up and tells her friends she could tell he was in the training room, so off she goes.

When Jordan and Annabeth arrive on campus, Annabeth has the vision of Marie again, but this time she can describe the room better so they know exactly where to find her.

Psychic damage!

Interesting side note: There is a shot of the school rankings, and despite being on the run currently, Marie is holding fast to her #1 spot, with Sam right on her heels. The other four were names I didn’t recognize at a glance, and Jordan isn’t even in the Top 6 anymore.

On the way to meet back up with Emma, Sam tries to ditch his pledge, but he thinks it’s a test and continues to follow Sam around like a puppy even though no one is holding his leash anymore. Before Greg arrives, Sam once again gets squirrely and Emma tells Sam he has no right to be jealous and that Greg is none of his business. Sam agrees and backs down and tells her, by way of explanation not excuse, that jealousy (and all feelings, really) is new to him and he just needs some time to be normal about it. This makes Emma smile a soft smile at him.

I can’t wait for Sam to help her get big in a battle by shouting nice things at her.

When Greg joins them, he tells them which building he saw Marie go into. While the boys fight about who could get her there faster, Emma takes off on her own.

When they get toward the training room, Marie senses people in the building and finds one slow heartbeat. She’s pretty sure that, now outside of his hyperbaric chamber, Godolkin is dying. Before she can make any moves, her friends show up, which surprises but mostly annoys Marie. She was trying to protect their asses and they just strolled right back out into danger.

Annabeth tries to tell Marie about her vision and says she thinks a lot of people will die if she keeps going. Marie points out her secret-pre-cog sister got herself kidnapped and killed just a few days ago, so maybe they can’t exactly rely on her visions. Jordan tries to get her to chill out, surprised to hear such harsh words coming out of her.

Jordan hardly recognizes this Marie, and honestly, same.

Marie’s eyes are darkening (metaphorically; I felt like on this show it would be wise to clarify) as she tells them all to go away, to go back where they were safe. Annabeth tells Marie that she knows this vision is real because she had a similar one when they were little. She saw their parents die before it happened, and she didn’t do anything about it, a guilt she’s been carrying since that day. She can’t let that happen again, she can’t hold any more guilt.

Marie looks at her sister sadly and is sorry she had to live like that all these years, and to her credit, she looks like she genuinely means it. But it doesn’t move her enough to stop her. She says she’s the only one who can wake up Godolkin and stop Cipher and Homelander and begs the only family she has (and I mean all of them, not just Annabeth) to get somewhere safe in case things go sideways.

Marie is firmly in that grey area between hero and villain right now, and that’s what I love about this show.

Jordan makes one last attempt to stop her, and Marie gets fed up. Her eyes darken again, and she lifts her friends (sans Annabeth) up in the air by their blood. While she has them in air jail, she asks Cate if she will help her if she fixes her powers. And for a second, it looks like Cate might say yes, if only to get Marie to drop their friends. But then Marie made a mistake. A mistake she might not even look back on as a mistake when she tries to figure out where things went wrong. She asks Cate “will you make them go away?” Cate, whose whole life was upended the day she grabbed her little brother by the arm and told him to “go away”, only for him to listen, and disappear forever. If Marie hadn’t used that phrasing, maybe this all would have gone differently. But she does, so Cate just reminds Marie of her promise to never mind control their friends ever again and begs her to stop.

I genuinely couldn’t tell if Cate was playing the long game here or what but I’m choosing to believe she’s changed.

And it’s scary, what Marie’s doing here. Not just literally — it doesn’t look fun being aloft by one’s circulatory system — but in the grander scheme of things. She’s doing it for the right reasons, sure, but she’s still taking away her friends’ agency, wielding her power over them. The very thing they’re trying to stop Cipher from doing.

Realizing she’s done all she can do to stop them, Marie drops the people she was floating inelegantly and heads inside. She tells Polarity to keep Cipher busy while she goes to find Godolkin.

Polarity and Cipher face off and, even though Polarity has full control of his powers now and can’t be puppeteered, Cipher is cocky and unafraid. After a few moments, Cipher realizes that if Polarity is back in fighting condition, Marie must have helped him, which means she might be close. He tries to walk out on Polarity, but he’s not done with the dean yet.

When the rest of the Scooby gang shows up, Sam, Greg, and Jordan join Polarity in his fight against Cipher, while Cate, Emma, and Annabeth sneak off to find Marie.

They probably should have taken Jordan too since none of them can fight but I guess they thought they were going to find Marie and an old human man, so.

Marie finds Godolkin before her friends find her, tucked into a boiler room, not looking so hot. (No pun intended.) Marie asks him if he’ll help her if she heals him and accepts his feeble head nod as a binding promise. What’s sad is, if she had healed Cate and taken her with her, they would have known who the man was before Marie healed him. Alas.

Since she has no telepath at her side, Marie closes her eyes and starts to heal him, molecule by molecule, despite the blood pouring from her nose.

I hope Marie is taking stock of her own brain and fixing her molecules whenever she needs to.

The burns on Godolkin’s skin reverse boil until it’s smooth, his wounds heal, his hair grows, and for some reason she decided to age him down a few decades. Maybe because that’s the only photo she’s seen of him.

Marie is drained on the floor when the girls find her. Emma gets down on the floor and holds Marie’s head while Cate begs Godolkin to help them stop Cipher.

Upstairs, the fight takes a turn, and Polarity finds himself holding a sword over Cipher’s neck. He’s about to deal a fatal blow to avenge his son’s death when the man at his feet changes from the cocky son-of-a-bitch they’ve been dealing with for months into a whimpering shell of a man desperately sputtering, “I’m not him.” Insisting his name is Doug Brightbill and he has a cat named Buster.

Downstairs, despite the girls’ pleas, Godolkin is just musing to himself about how smart Sage is. As he starts to talk about how value comes and goes with their powers, Cate has an awful realization: Cipher is Godolkin, Godolkin is Cipher.

Ben is Glory, Glory is Ben. (IYKYK)

Cate gets the girls to sneak away from the mumbling madman, and Goldolkin lets them leave…for now. Instead of following them, he revels in his newfound ability to feel things besides pain. He strolls outside and sees the pledge outside waiting for Sam. Godolkin asks him what his powers are, and he says that he can turn his feet into hands. Which sounds convenient to me, but is not Godolkin’s idea of a supersupe. When he remarks how that sounds like a “bottom 10%” power, the pledge confirms he’s bottom 2%, actually. His suspicions confirmed, Godolkin uses his puppetmaster powers to force the pledge to choke himself with his own leash. He strolls away without a care in the world, ruminating about the world of gods he dreams of. He strolls through dozens of carefree student supes, doing regular super-college things, unaware he’s silently deciding who to kill off next.

That’s all for this week! I liked this episode, though some parts felt over-explained while others felt a little rushed. (For example, they alluded to the fact that Annabeth’s nightmare was about her parents three times before she outright said it. But then the Godolkin reveal seemed to happen quickly.) It makes me wish they had ten episodes this season instead of only eight, to give the story a little more room to breathe. Either way, I’m having a blast. So many of you were spot on with your theories! Kind of terrifying that Godolkin can control other people through another person. If he gets his hands on Homelander, we’re cooked.

Please share any finale theories you have so we can see who is right next week!

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