Episode 5 of Gen V revealed that Cate was working for Indira Shetty, and she was actively erasing people’s memories to suit the Godolkin narrative. She had to wipe Golden Boy’s memory multiple times, which led to his heightened sense of disorientation and eventual death. Sam associated his schizophrenia with the Compound V coursing through his body. But there’s a good chance that that’s also due to Cate’s brainwashing powers. On top of all that, Cate used her powers on Marie, Emma, Jordan, and Andre because they were too close to figuring out that the institute was experimenting on Sam for their own nefarious purposes. And when they found out the campus creep, Rufus, was not the guilty party and that Cate was behind the whole thing, they were shocked and heartbroken.
Spoiler Alert
Sam and Emma get intimate with each other
Episode 6 of Gen V opens with Cate restoring everyone’s memories and everyone actively hating on her. Marie is, unsurprisingly, the only person who tries to rationalize Cate’s actions by pinning the blame on Godolkin. As Andre and Marie talk about whether they should forgive Cate or hold her accountable, Cate suffers a seizure or a cardiac arrest because she has overstressed her mind by “pushing” so many people at one time. Marie takes a massive risk and uses her blood-manipulating powers to calm Cate’s heart, and miraculously enough, it works—at least for the meantime. Dr. Cardosa and Indira are seen in The Woods visiting an ailing Supe called Betsy. Cardosa reveals that she has been injected with a virus made from Sam’s blood. It apparently neutralizes a superhero’s powers and also makes them extremely sick, i.e., two things that shouldn’t technically happen with a Supe. Cardosa says that he’s ready to share his research with Vought because they are the ones who are funding this experiment. Indira tells him not to act hastily and asks him to increase the dosage of the virus in order to test the extent of the damage it can cause. And the question that arises from this interaction is: Why is Vought pushing for a virus that’ll neutralize or kill Supes?
Vought is in the business of making supes. Does somebody in the company fear that they’ve gone too far with this whole Supe thing? Do they want to kill Homelander now that he’s openly a fascist executioner? If Ashley is the person behind this project at The Woods, is she doing this for the good of humankind? Well, that’ll certainly be a first. Coming back to the kids, Cate wakes up and immediately vanishes into thin air, thereby confusing Andre, Marie, Jordan, and Dusty (yes, he was unfortunately in the room when Cate used her powers). When they step out of the room and find themselves in a forest, they realize that Cate hasn’t vanished; she has sucked all of them into her mind. Hence, we not only get to see her sealing the fate of her brother, but we also get a Soldier Boy cameo because she fantasizes about him (I don’t blame her). Soldier Boy unloads a lot of exposition to basically say that the kids need to exit Cate’s mind because if they don’t, they’ll be trapped there forever or be killed by the lightning strikes caused by Cate’s rupturing brain. Meanwhile, the first thing that Emma does after getting her memories back is visit Sam and get intimate with him. Yes, it’s Sam’s first time, but it’s also Emma’s first time having regular intercourse. We have seen that in the past, Emma was forced to shrink herself to make the men “feel big.” However, Sam loves Emma for who she is, and that’s really sweet.
Cate makes everyone face their demons
Jordan, Marie, and Andre visit a memory of Cate’s first meeting with Indira. It’s quite reminiscent of Professor Xavier’s first meeting with Jean Grey, a character who is clearly the blueprint for Cate. If the memory is factually correct, Indira said everything that Cate actually wanted to hear from her parents, thereby making Indira a mother figure in Cate’s life. Indira also gave Cate some pills to suppress the “voices in her head,” which were a result of her mind manipulation powers. It could’ve been an early-day version of the suppressant that The Woods is currently working on. While the kids process this information, the scene suddenly turns into a classroom at Godolkin. It’s based on Cate’s memory of meeting Luke (the Golden Boy) for the first time. But it quickly becomes an intervention for Andre as Luke (or the memory of Luke) confronts Andre regarding his affair with Cate.
Everyone is appalled, and Andre is uncomfortable. This only angers Luke, and he angrily shoots lasers at them. Dusty gets incinerated, and that means he is dead in real life, too. I think viewers will see this coming from a mile away because Dusty is the most expendable one out of all the characters in Cate’s head. So, that’s not a big surprise. What is really surprising, though, is that Jordan has been feigning ignorance about everything happening underneath Godolkin all this time, and that’s revealed through a memory of Jordan’s, which is being played by Cate. As Andre and Marie reprimand Jordan for their betrayal, Cate’s memory of Jordan confronts Jordan regarding their cowardice. They highlight that it doesn’t take much to stand up for what’s right and protest against what is wrong. The “bigger picture” is always used as a shallow excuse to do all kinds of inhumane activities, and that’s getting old. Instead, we should look at the bigger picture and try to be more humane to counteract all the inhumanity that’s plaguing society. In addition to that, I have to mention that Derek Luh’s performance in this scene is excellent.
Does Indira Shetty Want to Kill or Control Supes?
Emma and Sam share a cute moment that is centered around the emotional undercurrents of sexual intercourse, but they crash into reality when Sam talks about all the havoc he has wreaked. Sam says that they should just go on the run, but Emma says that if they do that, they’ll have to keep running for the rest of their lives, and that’s not a viable option. She suggests that they should go to Marie and the rest of the gang and see how they can work their way through this whole mess created by Indira and Godolkin. Talking about the gang, they exit Cate’s memory of Jordan’s actions and enter Cate’s memory of everything that she had to do in The Woods. Apparently, she was present in the room where experiments were being conducted on Luke and Sam. Every time Luke woke up and saw what was being done to him and Sam, or even vaguely remembered going to The Woods, Cate would wipe his mind. By the way, based on a memory from Indira’s office, Cate actually informed Indira and Richard Brinkerhoff about Luke’s unstable mind, and they completely overlooked it. As Andre, Jordan, and Marie are viewing this memory, Cate’s version of Indira turns against them and orders Cate to erase them. So, the trio goes on the run again.
At the end of Gen V episode 6, Marie, Andre, and Jordan come across a door that leads them into Marie’s memory of the aftermath of her attack on her parents. I want to reiterate that you should take all these memories with a grain of salt because they are being actively distorted by Cate. This is most apparent in Marie’s memory, as Annabeth accuses her of intentionally killing their parents and then abandoning her. And going by Marie’s reaction to that, she knows that’s not how things unfolded between her and Annabeth. So, she asks Cate to stop doing whatever her mind is telling her to do and wake up. Cate refuses to do so because she is too ashamed to exist in the reality that she has shaped with her actions. Andre, albeit angrily, tells Cate that everything that she has done till now is a result of how her parents, Indira, and Brinkerhoff, treated her. However, she has the opportunity to make a choice that’ll be hers, and Andre thinks that she should act wisely. This prompts Cate to end the spell and face reality as it is. Emma and Sam reach the “party house” where Cate, Marie, Jordan, and Andre have been all this time, and Sam attacks Cate because he still sees her as the reason why Luke is dead and why his mind is a mess.
While everyone else fails, Emma manages to calm Sam down. Cate begins earning back her trust by talking about The Woods, and she and Sam reveal that Indira’s hatred for the Supes is fueling all her experiments. They fail to go into the specifics, but it’s apparent that the young Supes are going to target Indira and bring an end to The Woods. Talking about The Woods, we see that Cardosa has done what Indira asked him to do, and the increased dosage has killed Betsy. Instead of being horrified by the results of the virus that they are manufacturing, Indira asks Cardosa if they can turn it into a contagious disease. This is a “what the hell?” moment. Is Indira planning to kill every Supe? Is she going to kill every student at Godolkin? Is she going to use the virus merely as a threat so that she can control the Supes? I think we’ll get the answers in next week’s episode. For now, we can only assume that Indira is motivated by the death of her child, which was probably caused by a Supe, and she is working with Vought in order to gain access to the kind of technology that will allow her to eradicate Supes. That’ll make her a kind of anti-hero because that aligns with Butcher’s motivation. However, if Indira is just a pawn and she’s doing all this because Ashley wants her to, then we have to give the credit to Ashley, too.
