Summary
With the usual gross-out humour and sophomoric social commentary, Gen V Season 2, Episode 4 pits Marie and Jordan against each other.
Cipher, the new dean of God U, immediately became one of the more interesting figures in Season 2 of Gen V. But it somehow took until Episode 4, titled “Bags” for reasons that will eventually and messily become clear, for the Supes to realise an important detail – nobody knows anything about him, including what his powers are. Here, plenty more about Cipher is revealed, and I don’t just mean the crack of his ass and the underside of his sack, although we do get to see both of those, too, if you’re interested. The idea that he’s a human imposter proves to be unfounded. On the contrary, he’s more dangerous than anyone dared consider.
“Bags” devises a fairly simplistic way of exploring this idea. Following Jordan’s unplanned announcement about Andre’s death and their culpability in Cate’s attack, the media is working overtime to write the whole thing off as woke nonsense designed to vilify the Starlighters. Gen V relishes the opportunity to poke fun at our reactionary political climate, but naturally blows it out to extreme proportions. An example must be made. And Cipher decides that the best way of settling the issue is to have Jordan fight Marie in a widely-publicised and live-streamed deathmatch, with Marie cast as the prodigious God U heroine. If they don’t comply, Emma will be sent back to Elmira.
Naturally, the task for the bulk of the episode thus becomes trying to find a way to stop this fight from happening, or at the very least to turn it to an advantage by using it to expose whatever Cipher is hiding, which might be connected to whatever he squirrels away in his house. That turns out to be a badly burned body – Thomas Godolkin, maybe? – but the juicier angle is that he’s potentially a human masquerading as a Supe, and thus all it would take to bring his new empire toppling down would be to expose him publicly. Hence, something resembling a plan.
This plan is largely just an excuse to deepen all the character dynamics. Jordan and Marie’s impending deathmatch – The Gender Bender vs the Blood Bender, it’s dubbed, with a cameoing Firecracker taking deliberate, savage aim at Jordan’s gender fluidity – helps their romantic relationship to calcify, there’s a lot of effort expended to make Cate sympathetic rather than one-note, especially with her powers on the frits, and Emma gets to spend some time with a new friend group with teases of a romance. Everyone gets some due attention, while the social commentary – sophomoric though it may be – provides a depressingly timely subtext.
Marie spends her time in Gen V Season 2, Episode 4 keeping Cipher occupied by pretending to be interested in his private lessons to improve her powers, which in “Bags” involve levitating a goat named Elon Musk using its blood, which results in the goat being splattered all over the place. The episode is so-called because Cipher’s belief that we’re all just fundamentally bags of blood is what he uses to justify the training, to hopefully shape Marie’s approach to the upcoming fight. There’s also another goat called Julia Fox, but we don’t get to see it, which is perhaps for the best.
The plan to “expose” Cipher involves Emma sneaking through the pipes of the fight arena and planting a tiny video camera in the VIP suite so that Cate can compel him to reveal the secret to the world. Despite Emma’s close encounter with Cipher’s moony anus, it all seems to be going quite well. Until it isn’t, of course. Cipher sees through it immediately and decides to counter the human accusations with a display of his powers. And those powers don’t bode well for anyone at God U.
Marie and Jordan think they’ve got away with subverting the terms of the fight by squaring off in the arena in front of a baying crowd and enjoying a romantic kiss. It would have been a nicely subversive moment if it weren’t for Cipher, whose power turns out to be mind control. He pilots Jordan into smacking Marie around and tormenting her, trying to force her into using the powers he has been nurturing during the training sessions. And it works. Marie, fearing for her life, sends Jordan levitating into the air. The goat thing becomes eerie foreshadowing. But just as it looks like Jordan might explode, they fall face-first into the ground, alive but in a bad way.
It’s not a good outcome for the heroes. Their one opportunity to depose Cipher backfired considerably, leading them all to tip their hands. Jordan is badly hurt, Marie is becoming too powerful for her own good, Cate has chosen to side against Cipher, and Emma might be on her way back to Elmira. Things aren’t looking good.
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