‘Gen V’ Season 2 Episode 6 Recap: “Cooking Lessons”

There are only a few episodes left in Season 2 of Gen V, which means we’re growing over closer to next year’s final run for its parent show, Season 5 of The Boys. The nested stories of each series was always a thing, and Boys supes like Firecracker, The Deep, and Sister Sage have been popping up in Gen V this entire season. But Episode 6 (“Cooking Lessons”) really drives it home. After escaping from Elmira for a second time, Marie, Jordan, and Emma get some out-of-nowhere help from Stan Edgar (welcome back to this TV universe Giancarlo Esposito), the ousted Vought bossman, who’s working on a play to retake his power. And he needs Marie to do it, because she was one of only two survivors of Odessa, the secret project to create all-powerful superbeings. We’re talking “god-tier” here. The other survivor? Homelander.     

Marie certainly got her god on at the end of Episode 5, where she met Cipher’s challenge by mentally channeling her blood power to literally raise her sister from the dead. But Annabeth’s Lazarus moment comes with a lot of unaddressed emotions. While Marie apologizes, like she’s yearned to do for the decade they’ve been apart, Annabeth expresses resentment cut with a whole lot of fear. “You are the danger.” Marie’s powers killed their parents, and as the crew’s escape from Elmira continues, she wants nothing to do with their violent supe dramas. In fact, she wants so little to do with that supe life, she has kept her own powers of precognition a secret. “I fucking hate being a supe!” Since Gen V began, we were wondering how it would bring Annabeth and Marie back together. This fantastic reunion scene between Jaz Sinclair and Keeya King, as their characters sort out their shit, made that wait worth it.             

The latest Elmira escape was suddenly too easy. After their reincarceration was supposed to enable more Cipher observation, the human marionette maker just wasn’t around when Sam Riordan pulled a Kool-Aid Man and crashed through the wall of the prison. (Annabeth, the secret precog supe, sensed his arrival.) But Sam’s liberator move does get the crew out of their jail smocks and on the road. Still on the run, but seemingly moving steadily toward definitive answers on Cipher and a wild concluding chapter for Season 2 of Gen V. Because Stan Edgar hasn’t arrived in their lives alone. Speaking of The Boys Season 4, he’s got Zoe Neuman (Olivia Morandin) with him, the young supe daughter of the late Victoria Neuman. Fresh out of Red River Orphanage, a place Marie knows well, Zoe uses her lamprey eel mouth to decapitate Vikor, Cipher’s enforcer.

“I built this long before apocalyptic bunkers became a trend. But with Homelander trying to destroy civilization as we know it, this becomes a necessary safe haven.” We’ve arrived at Edgar’s fortified subterranean lair, and while he’s magnanimous – dude even whips up frittatas for breakfast – his arc in The Boys proved he’d use whoever to get whatever, and usually for himself. So while the crew accepts his material support, it’s probably good they don’t exactly trust him. Edgar says his plan to topple the current Vought power structure includes stopping Cipher, who restarted the Project Odessa research into ultimate-powered people. Cipher, he says, “wants total supe supremacy. Voughtland Über Alles.” And he seems surprised to learn from Jordan and Cate about the gross guy in the dean’s hyperbaric chamber. “Cipher may not have recreated Thomas Godolkin’s work at all, so much as he forced it out of him.” 

It’s a theory that tracks with what we catch Cipher doing at home, where he pauses movement exercises of the ravaged man’s legs to punch him repeatedly and berate him with insults. Cipher does seem to resent the man he’s kept secretly alive all these years. He calls him a “pink-skinned dumpster baby,” and we know he likes having sex with Sage right in front of this guy. Maybe the dean’s hyperbaric chamber contains an unwilling prisoner. 

“Cousin Homelander.” Leave it to Jordan to boil down what they’ve learned to an effective needle. While they’re in bed, Marie rejects the dig. She refuses to believe she’s a lab test relation of the worst person on the planet. To acknowledge it at all would dash her dreams of being a hero, prove Annabeth’s fears that she is the danger. That she’s some kind of fucking monster. But Jordan also put the resurrection bit at Elmira into further context. (“Marie, this makes you one of the most powerful supes in the world now.”) They reaffirm their love for one another, which is fortunate because Marie and Jordan together is one of Gen V’s best features. But with everything that Stan Edgar has revealed – not the least of which is himself, as another powerful man trying to control her and her powers – Marie decides to once again cleave from the crew. She leaves her partner in bed and slips out of Edgar’s bunker alone. If she is a monster, if she is a relative of Homelander, then she’ll protect the people she cares about by seeking answers on her own.

Class Notes for Gen V Season 2 Episode 6 (“Cooking Lessons”):

• Well, not entirely alone. Cate follows Marie out of the compound to tag along. “I think you can fix my powers, and I can help keep Cipher out of your head.”

• The Sam Riordan redemption arc continues. He apologizes to Emma for last year, for how he hurt her and for all those Vought-pilled murders. And while she says they can’t go back to how they were – and maybe she likes Greg, Harper’s big bro, anyway? – her resolve falters as Sam compliments her for inspiring him to change.

• And what about those Cipher powers? We’ve seen him stab himself with a kitchen knife and overtake Jordan’s body from afar, and yet Marie can sense no Compound-V in his system. Here in Ep 6, Cipher not only pulls his human puppetry act on Polarity – he also taunts him with a shocking mission statement. Cipher says his ultimate intention is to cull the supe herd by 75%, to allow space for the strongest to rise up and rule. His own god-tier, we guess. Given how much this guy has gotten away with, it’s extremely satisfying when a debilitated but angry Polarity gathers his metal-pushing powers to counteract Cipher’s control and toss the dean out of a second-story window. 

How To Watch Gen V

New episodes of Gen V drop Wednesdays on Prime Video.

If you aren’t a Prime Video subscriber yet, you can get started with a 30-day Amazon Prime free trial, including Prime perks like the Prime Video streaming service, free two-day shipping, exclusive deals, and more. After the free trial, Amazon Prime costs $14.99/month or $139/year.

All 18- to 24-year-olds, regardless of student status, are eligible for a discounted Prime for Young Adults membership as well, with age verification. After a six-month free trial, you’ll pay 50% off the standard Prime monthly price of $14.99/month — just $7.49/month — for up to six years and get all the perks.

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.