Well, GenV finally revealed the truth behind Cipher and set up the endgame for the season. And a little bit later, we are going to talk about every clue about that big Cipher reveal. Welcome back, Screen Crush. I'm Ryan Ary, and this is all of the Easter eggs, references, and little things you might have missed in the seventh episode of season 2 of GenV.
Now, the title of this episode is Hell Week, which has a couple of different meanings. One, Thomas Gdulkan is of course about to unleash hell on campus. But two, hell week is when fraternities take in new pledges by tormenting them. Like Rufus says to Sam, "We're giving you a pledge and it's your job to put through hell this week." Put another way, hell week is when young people suffer through hardship in order to gain a sense of belonging. And that's exactly what the heroes have been doing all through this show. They have all suffered hardships that have brought them closer together. And their sense of community has been built on one word, and that's the theme of this episode, forgiveness.
At the start of this season, Sam and Kate were villains who had done terrible things in the service of Homelander. "Remember that woman that you grabbed? She was screaming for her boyfriend, but you just dragged her away." Sam then had to learn how to forgive himself, and Kate tried to earn forgiveness by getting everybody released from Elmyra. But also, Jordan starts off the season by resenting Marie, and she forgives both her and Kate. Emma has to recognize Sam's inner journey, and in this episode, she finally cuts him some slack. But most importantly, we see that the characters in this episode have to learn to forgive themselves, which we will talk about as we go along.
So, we start with the nightmare that Annabeth is having about Marie's death. And I actually think these nightmares were created by Sister Sage to manipulate Marie. But I'll talk about that a little later in the video. Notice that right after the nightmare, when she storms into Jordan's room, they're dreaming in their female body, but then shifts to their male form when they're startled. Now, this could be like a turtle response that we mentioned last week where when they're threatened, Jordan switches to their defensive form. Or remember, Jordan was also born male and then had to hide their identity from their parents. So, this might be a force of habit, having to swap to male when their parents barged into the room.
Now, when they figure out that Marie has left, Jordan says, "Oh, god damn it, Marie. I know you leave me behind again." And they're referring to how Marie left them all behind when they escaped Elmyra. And also, here's a small detail. Notice that Stan Edgar decorates his bunker with this painting that's mostly sky. It's a way to create the illusion of outdoors when they're in a basement. And maybe they couldn't afford Giancarlo Esposito for two episodes because Zoe is there so they can ask her if they can borrow her granddad's car.
Kate and Marie have a conversation that in a stealthy way teases exactly how Sister Sage is manipulating her in this episode. When Kate asks Marie to heal her, she says, "Kate, I tried to heal you when your skull was broken. I couldn't." But we know that she's actually making excuses because she doesn't want to heal Kate because well, you know, she went on a murder rampage last season. Now, if she had learned to forgive Kate, then Kate would have read Gdulkan's mind at the end of the episode and she would have known that he was actually Cipher. So, what we see here is that Marie and the whole campus are going to pay the price for Marie not learning to forgive others.
But more importantly, Kate explains how VA controlled her by building her up and making her believe that she's better than everyone else. So until this episode, Marie denied that she was the all-powerful chosen one. But now she's believing her own hype. And Kate tells her, "I thought I knew what was best. I was so sure I was better than all of you and stronger. I believed all the [__] they told me. That's how they get you." So this is the trap that Cipher has set for her. She has become stronger by feeding her this chosen one narrative like Valentina did in the Thunderbolts. Exactly.
So elsewhere, Jordan explains to Annabeth that Sam "big jumps faster than we can drive," and this of course is like the Hulk who can jump three miles at a time or the Super Boy Con who can't fly, just jumps a lot. Now narratively, it's a smart way to separate the cast members so they can have their own story lines and conflicts. So Annabeth tells Jordan that she doesn't like having powers. In fact, she says, "I love Boring," and this goes back to Annabeth's closeted allegory. She's a closeted self-hating soup, so equating boring to normalize a way of saying that her powers make her strange, and this feeds into that same self-loathing. Jordan also grew up keeping their powers a secret but has found a way to be content by celebrating their uniqueness.
Speaking of self-loathing, maybe you should see Cipher in his secure location trying to work out how polarity blocks his powers. And then he does something interesting. He decides to kill himself. "Yeah, should probably just end it." But he does this because now that somebody can counter his powers, he is no longer strong. He is weak, and in his eyes, he does not deserve to live. But he also hates himself because he is not the mastermind behind everything. He says, "Marie came back just like Sage said that she would."
Now over the season, I have pointed out how he is similar to X-Men leaders. Like Xavier, he is disabled and has mind control powers and he teaches the soups to understand their powers and where they come from. And like Magneto, he's rallying the kids to go to war. But it turns out that he's way more like Apocalypse, who believes that only the strong survive. "So my mission is to cull this herd." But the reveal that Sage was actually the one who was a step ahead of everyone else is very interesting because it tells us that this whole season was not orchestrated by Cipher. Sage is the mastermind pulling the strings.
Here's Sage again. Well, she's the new member of the Seven that orchestrated Homelander's rise to power in the boy season 4. Now, we don't know what her ultimate plan is, but I doubt that it's to have Gdulkan going crazy and calling the herd. Maybe this was also so she could get Marie to reach her highest power level so she could kill Homelander. Let me know what you think Sage's plan is down in the comments. And speaking of Sage, if she orchestrated Marie to be in this exact time and place, then it's even possible that she sent Annabeth her visions. But how? Well, it's like Vader torturing Han Solo in the Empire Strikes Back. Vader hurt Han and then planned to kill him. And that planning then sent visions to Luke Skywalker showing that his friends were going to die. Sage could have done the same thing here, planning on killing Marie so that Annabeth would see her die, which only drives Marie to separate herself from her friends.
So Anderson then arrives and they all compare notes. And then Marie as this Christlike figure heals his mental wound. Now, of all the soups, she is the only one we have seen that has like traditional godlike powers to heal the sick and raise the dead. And did you notice that when she's healing Anderson and he's having his seizures, it affects everyone in the room and disrupts their own electromagnetic brain waves. Similar to Xavier having seizures in the movie Logan, you know, the ones that ultimately killed the entire X-Men team. And you guys know that we love to compare this show to its Marvel counterparts, which is why we made these boys parody shirts. Billy Butcher as the first appearance of Punisher, Soldier Boys, Captain America issue 1, and then we have this Godu College shirt, and my personal favorite, Super Baby as the Nirvana baby. Shopping in our merch store helps out our channel so much. Links are below. Thank you guys for your support.
So on campus, Rufus approaches Sam with the butt guy from a few episodes ago. And he tells them that it's his responsibility to look after a pledge. So in frat culture, this is how they incorporate new members by humiliating them for a week to prove that they really want to be in the club. Like Tyler on his porch yelling at Meatloaf, "you're too old, fat man." Exactly.
But there's a symbolic meaning here. Sam is being forced to control someone. And Cipher's powers are taking control of people and then forcing them to act against their will. And then good guy Greg shows up. Turns out he is not a mind-controlled villain like I thought, but he is a romantic rival for Sam. And it's funny that in the previous scene, Annabeth and Jordan talk about how Sam jumps really far, but he can't fly. And in this scene, his rival can fly. And later, this kind of turns into a dick-measuring contest between the two. "No, I can jump way faster than you can fly," so "I doubt that. Pretty sure flying is faster than jumping." And for the record, flying is way better.
In Cipher's office, Anderson tries to get Marie to trust Kate, continuing last episode's theme of trust. And this makes sense because the first step of forgiveness, the theme of this episode, is learning to trust someone. Anderson is able to forgive Kate because he also has been manipulated by VA all of his life. Kate tells Marie that they control you by telling you that you're so strong. And Anderson has also been led into this life of a celebrity. VA has told him that he is special. He's a movie star. And that quest for fame and power made him keep his condition a secret from his son. "If you want to blame someone for Andre, blame me. I didn't protect him the way I should. I knew my powers were killing me and I didn't tell him. I didn't tell him this thing could happen to him."
So, it turns out that all season long Anderson was also filled with self-loathing and blamed himself for his son's death. So, he too has to practice a little bit of self-forgiveness. And here again, we see the theme of trust with Greg distrusting Sam. Now, all throughout this season, each character has had to use empathy to relate to other people. Jordan forgave Kate and Sam because they were able to see things from their points of view. The character growth that we have seen all season long is what now allows them to work together. But Marie's character growth has not been outward. It's completely been inward. Instead of learning to trust in others, she's been learning to trust in herself. Or she's been convincing Jordan and Emma to trust her at the start of the season. And even though she doesn't trust Cipher, she falls into his trap. For instance, when he calls, his language is exactly how Kate described the vot machine earlier. "You're stronger than the others. Embrace it. It's the only road out for all of you."
He is controlling her simply by telling her that she is strong. He even admits to killing Annabeth to get her to level up, which is like another X-Men villain, Sebastian Shaw, in X-Men First Class, who killed Magneto's mother to get him to use his powers. "But everything I did, I did for you to unlock your power to make you embrace it." In the cafeteria, we see the newest student ranking behind Emma. And this is where Sam tells Emma, "this is all new to me, okay? Like feeling, I guess. And this is a side effect of what Kate was doing to him at the start of the season, which is a metaphor for heavy drug use. Now he's saying, "Yeah, I think I need some time. I need I need some time to to work on it to try to normal." And this echoes what Annabth and Jordan were talking about. These characters are all trying to feel normal when they really just need to be more themselves. Emma drives home that point when she says, "Same, you're not. You're just being you."
In other words, she can accept him for who he really is. Now, when Annabth finds Marie, she admits the truth that she had a vision of their parents' deaths and she didn't tell anyone. She says, "It's been easier for me to hate you all this time instead of hate myself, but I hate myself anyway." Which is just like how Jordan felt in episode 2 this season. "I think it's easier for me to be angry with you than to be terrified of losing you." Again, this is rooted in this episode's theme of forgiveness. You have to forgive yourself before you can forgive others. Because ultimately when you hate someone else, you are the person who carries that burden and not them.
But instead of empathizing with her sister and accepting help, Marie takes the bait and falls into a machine. Similar to the characters bringing up the vault machine, she empathized with Annabth, but says, "I am the only one who can wake up Gdulkan," believing that she is the strongest there is. But then she does some real messed up [__] She floats Jordan, Emma, Sam, and Greg into the air just by concentrating on their blood. And notice the heartbeat sound effect when she does this. It's disgusting because you can actually see them as big bags of blood that she's holding in the air. Now remember, this is the same thing she did to Jordan during their fight. Notice Marie is not even using her hands at all, showing that now she's really taking on Cipher's tutelage.
"Don't raise your your hand if that doesn't do anything. But the most screwed up part was when she tells Kate, make them go away from here, will you do that? So Marie is now a giant hypocrite and Cipher's perfect soldier. But her keeping her friends away is also rooted in her own self-loathing and her lack of self-forgiveness. She does not want them to die because she watched her parents die. She is letting her own self-loathing control her actions. "I hate to protect them, make them go away." So Marie has now come full circle. She has become Kate. This is exactly what Kate thought she was doing in season 1, using her powers to protect her friends from themselves. But Kate has shown that she can change. "Marie, I said I would never use my powers against any of you."
In the danger room, Cipher looks at a rack of weapons, which is symbolic of how he views the soups. To him, each new super body is a new tool/weapon that he can jump into. But, I mean, this whack-a-mole fight was fun. Why didn't the other guys just leave Cipher and Polarity alone? I feel like it would have taken Anderson a few seconds to kill the Dean with the rack of metal weapons behind him. Now, this fight is actually being waged on two fronts. There is the physical fight where Cipher is using his powers to control others in a fistfight. But then there's also the mental fight where Cipher doesn't have to use his powers at all. He is controlling Marie simply by manipulating her.
And when Gdulkan gets his body back, he no longer has any use for his vessel. And it turns out this guy's name is Doug. "Yes. No, Doug on the show." "I'm always on the show." "You're in the show?" "I am." "Doug is." "I am Doug. Well, Doug in the show, like our Doug, says he worked at a video store, showing us just how long he's been held captive by Gdulkan. And when he's healed, he says, "The pain is gone," which is exactly what Polarity said when he was healed. "I've been sick for so long. I forgot what it's like to feel healthy." So, I'm wondering if Cipher ever wanted Marie for any other reason, or if the only reason she was even created was so he would have a soup who was powerful enough to heal his wounds. And by the way, he is played by Ethan Slater, who also played Bach and Wicked. Oh yeah, thank you. Jeez.
And out on the quad, he meets the Pledge, who is also in a diaper. And this is a brilliant little bit of storytelling. You have the guy who is weak and submits to being a slave, and then the guy who despises the weak and creates slaves. But in this exact moment, we find them at a crossroads. They're both in diapers, but one is on his way up, and the other is on his way down. Now, the song playing here is Young at Heart, which is fitting because Marie not only healed Gdulkan, but now he's free to roam around a college campus like he's a young person. He can now implement his Nazi ideology and create a blood bath far worse than what we saw at the end of season 1.
Hell, this guy's probably powerful enough to control Homelander, which means that he could theoretically control the whole world. And I got to say, we were right about Gdulkan secretly controlling Cipher, but we were very, very wrong about him being a secret good guy. But there were lots of clues along the way that the Burned Man was controlling Cipher. First, the show is a parody of the X-Men, so it makes sense that the school would have a disabled telepathic leader like Charles Xavier, but there's also the smoothies. He was having Doug eat tons of protein, like chicken and peanut butter, so he would have a strong vessel. Protein also keeps the brain healthy and functioning and easier to control. Cipher's fake name was Dr. Gold, which is similar to Gdulkan.
And we also saw that Gold worked at Project Odessa, where we first met Gdulkan back in episode 1. And also, there's the fact that we see Thomas Gdulkan in a fire, and we see an old man covered in burns. That one was pretty easy to put together. We also find out that Gdulkan was a friend of Frederick Vaude and also believed in his Nazi ideals. And Cipher is constantly spouting Nazi ideology all through the series. "Humans and race traitors. You are not students. You're soldiers, and you will fight for the cause. So my mission is to cull this herd."
And the biggest clue I thought was that he didn't have compound V in his blood. At first, I thought that might mean that he was a natural-born soup. And maybe he was also a product of Project Odessa. But after Cipher's powers are revealed to be mind control, it made way more sense that the puppeteer was actually being puppeted. After all, his name is Cipher, which literally means a symbol that secretly means something else. So Doug's body was actually a cipher the entire time. Also, he has no pain response. Whenever Cipher was taking damage, whether it be self-inflicted or someone attacking him, it was actually Doug feeling the pain since Gdulkan was piloting him from miles away.
Also, Cipher is always massaging and caring for the burned body because Gdulkan wanted to keep his body functional after he was healed. And remember that creepy sister sage sex scene? Well, remember just before that when she comes in the room, they turn their heads at the exact same time. That's because they are the same person. And the reason the two of them do it in front of the burned man is because Doug is the burned man. And in episode 6, Stan Edgar said that Gdulkan was obsessed with controlling soups, which is of course Cipher's power, foreshadowing Gdulkan's soup power to be mind controlling soups. Hey, big shout out to Ethan Inc. who co-wrote this video. You can find his links below, or you can talk to either of us on our free-to-join Discord server or on literally all of our socials. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe. Smash that bell for alerts. For Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Ary.