Marie, Homelander, and Supe Powers

[This story contains spoilers from the sixth episode of Gen V season two, “Cooking Lessons.”]

The hierarchy of power (and powers) is seemingly changing in The Boys universe. 

During Gen V’s sixth episode this week, “Cooking Lessons,” Marie (Jaz Sinclair), newly reunited with her sister Annabeth (Keeya King), successfully escaped from Elmira with the help of Sam (Asa Germann), and they are now on the run from Cipher (Hamish Linklater). The group landed at an abandoned community library — the site of a book burning — to sort through not just the implications of Marie “resurrecting” her sister and their unexpected reunion, but how they can get back in touch with Polarity (Sean Patrick Thomas). 

It’s a move Cipher was betting on, with the God U dean paying a visit to Polarity on the heels of him experiencing an explosive episode, the result of his deteriorating control over his powers. While Cipher interrogated and manipulated Polarity to find Marie’s whereabouts, Marie, Jordan (London Thor and Derek Luh), Emma (Lizze Broadway), Sam, Cate (Maddie Phillips) and Annabeth faced the full brunt of Vikor (Tait Fletcher), who was sent by Cipher to retrieve Cipher’s favorite. 

In an unexpected twist, ousted Vought International CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) appeared, along with his supe granddaughter Zoe Neumann (Olivia Morandin), to help the group defeat Vikor before sweeping them all off to Edgar’s Homelander-proof bunker. There, Stan made his pitch to Marie to join him in fighting Homelander, while revealing more of Godolkin’s research and motivations. In return, Cate and Jordan teased the possibility that the body Cipher’s been keeping might actually be Thomas Godolkin (Ethan Slater). 

It’s a turning point for Marie, who has, up until now, largely resisted the narrative that she is the “chosen one” and the only thing stopping Homelander. Armed with new information and determined to protect her friends and loved ones, Marie sets out to take on Cipher and get answers about Godolkin with Cate — desperate to get her powers back — tagging along. 

Heading into the final two episodes of the season, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with showrunner Michele Fazekas about powers and the powerful within the Gen V and The Boys shared universe to make sense of what has happened to Marie and her friends, and what they are up against with two episodes left until the season finale. 

Marie vs. Homelander

Marie and Homelander are revealed as the only surviving babies of The Odessa Project, with Homelander’s powers showing at birth while Marie is deemed “a failure” by Stan Edgar and Vought when hers don’t immediately materialize. Despite that, Edgar and Cipher are both convinced Marie is one the world’s most powerful supes and a formidable opponent to Homelander. So how are Marie and Homelander actually the same, and how are they different? 

“The similarity between Marie and Homelander is they were both basically ‘test tub’ babies, and V was introduced at that stage rather than being injected after the kid is born, so that is part of the difference” in terms of how the duo, who were injected during the blastocyst stage of embryo development, distinguishes themselves from other supes, says Fazekas. 

But how they distinguish themselves from each other also matters. Marie was born to two regular humans, while Homelander was born in part from a supe. An even more significant difference? “She wasn’t raised in a lab,” Fazekas says. “She was raised with a family. Her powers did not show up until she was around 12, so she had a very different life. She obviously had huge tragedies once her power showed up, but was kind of a normal kid for those 12 years. Homelander was raised by scientists in a lab, and that seems to be the way to make a sociopath.”

As for whether there’s something else that’s different between them, the showrunner says fans will have to wait until later to find out. “There is, but I don’t know that it’s anything that would be revealed in this season.”

The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend 

With the appearance of Sister Sage earlier in the season and now Edgar in episode six, the chessboard of the (evil and) powerful has expanded in the lead-up to the Gen V season finale and The Boys season five. With Marie adamant she’s nothing like Homelander and unafraid to work with the enemy of her enemy to take him out, who is the enemy of Marie’s enemy? And can they actually be her friend? 

While the true nature of Sage’s plans with Cipher around Homelander is still unclear, Sage is adamant that Cipher — Godolkin’s abductor, acolyte, or something else — is a key part. Meanwhile, he is sure that Marie is the key, though she’s repeatedly shown her unwillingness to work with him. According to Fazekas, when it comes to Marie and Cipher, “I don’t know that you would ever see Cipher as an ally.”

When it comes to Edgar, one of Vought’s leading architects and another powerful person eager to woo Marie, she shows a hint of interest. “The reason he thought she would [join him] is because you’ve got Homelander running things and we all know how that’s going,” the showrunner explains. “His thing is, ‘I would like to take it back, and I’m better than Homelander,’ which is potentially true. I think he’s offering himself as a way better alternative than what’s currently happening.”

Then there’s Godolkin, whom Jordan and Cate reveal to Edgar could possibly still be alive, kept captive in a hyperbaric chamber by Cipher. Edgar seems to take interest in Godolkin as another potential collaborator, noting the doctor’s research might not just be able to stop Cipher, but Homelander, with Marie equally eager to connect with Godolkin if alive to find out. But Fazekas points to the research Marie holds in Stan’s bunker as a clue to the kind of friend or enemy Godolkin could be. 

“Stan Edgar says Goldkin’s whole bag back in the day was controlling supes, and you see Marie flipping through a file when she’s in Edgar’s house. It’s stuff like the collars, the shock cattle prods. So what Godolkin knew back then was that we can’t create these all-powerful beings and not be able to control them,” she tells THR. “He’s not an ally because he created this school to torture supes, or at least to study and experiment on them. So he does not see supes as a friend, necessarily. He has a very specific idea of how supes are treated.”

That doesn’t seem to align with Homelander’s view on supes, nor necessarily with Marie’s belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Instead, Emma may have been right all along when she said the enemy of my enemy is just extra enemy.  

Bloodbending 2.0

In Edgar’s bunker, Marie shares with Zoe that her mother, Victoria Neumann, trusted her with the knowledge of their similar powers in Gen V season one. But there are notable differences in the way Neumann and Marie’s abilities work. Marie’s eyes don’t go white. She can control blood without looking at her target, and she physically draws on others when saving her sister. So what exactly are Marie’s powers?

While Emma jokingly describes Marie as having the Christ-like power of “resurrection” — another similarity in how people see and talk about Marie and Homelander — Fazekas says that’s not quite how that jail cell moment went down, even though Marie’s save is still impressive. “What happened to Marie’s sister had just happened, so I would not go so far as to say that she can resurrect the dead. She healed this person who maybe didn’t have a heartbeat anymore, but they had not all the way died.”

That’s possible because Marie isn’t just controlling blood. “Marie’s power is — and we see she gets into it with Cipher a little bit — down to the cells, almost down to the molecules of the blood. So that’s why it translates into healing,” the showrunner explains. “She is an evolution of Neumann’s power. She’s deeper than Neumann’s powers. It’s in the same neighborhood, but I think Marie has a deeper, more microscopic control than maybe Neumann did.”

Deciphering Cipher

Marie’s powers aren’t the only ones that need deciphering. Cipher — who Marie discovers has no V in his blood, but is somehow able to puppeteer the bodies and powers of supes — feels reminiscent of Cate, who is able to influence the mind and thus body of people she “pushes.” But how are their equally frightening powers different? 

When it comes to Cate, Fazekas points to an episode of another genre hit to explain the mechanics of her abilities. “I consider her a pusher,” the showrunner tells THR. “There was a very famous episode of The X Files — and I was an assistant The X Files — that Vince Gilligan wrote called ‘Pusher.’ It was a guy who could basically push people to do what he wanted them to do. So I sort of connect her to that. In addition, she can read minds when she’s not broken and the fact that Cate can read minds is huge.”

With Cipher, there’s no getting inside people’s heads, at least not to influence them. Though the experience of being fully conscious as someone else drive your body can be just as terrifying, as Jordan highlights. For understanding the powers of Dr. Gold, Fazekas references the 1990 romance thriller Ghost, and the possession of Whoopi Goldberg’s medium by Patrick Swayze’s spectral lead. 

“Cipher, as you saw in the episode where Marie and Jordan fought, can be in his body and in someone else’s body at the same time. But it’s not just that he’s pushing them,” says Fazekas. “He is actually taking them over. They’re still there sort of in a corner. But he is controlling Cipher and Jordan at the same time. It’s basically like jumping into the body.”

Unraveling the Nature of Supe Powers

The understanding of power in The Boys universe is shifting, but not just with characters like Marie and Cipher. Between Polarity’s ability to push Cipher out of his mind and Marie’s progress in controlling blood this season, there’s potentially more to everyone’s abilities than they realize. So what does that mean for a character like Cate, who could potentially push without touching anyone? Or Jordan, whose bigender identity has historically been intertwined with their gender-locked powers?

According to Fazekas, there is a possibility that Cate could push without touch or that Jordan’s powers aren’t necessarily genderlocked, a reality that was confirmed before Gen V season two. “It’s in The Boys, too, where Starlight can fly and wasn’t able to,” she says. “So the idea that powers can evolve and be pushed beyond what they thought [is planted].”

“There was a scene early on in [season two of] Gen V where Cipher is asking everyone how their powers work, and none of them really know. They just kind of do it. That’s, I think, really interesting that they don’t truly understand the mechanism of their powers. But that’s his focus. If we can understand it, we can grow it,” she continues. “That probably applies across the board to any superhero. If you push yourself, or if you are pushed, you can expand your powers.”

The series’ exploration of powers hasn’t stopped at literal abilities this season either. It has also disentangled for characters like Sam and Emma aspects of their identities with how they use or control those abilities. So is it also possible for a character like Jordan, whose bigender identity was seemingly a result of their powers? According to Fazekas, it’s complicated, but potentially. 

While real people identify as bigender, the showrunner notes Jordan — someone who took V and now has powers linked to two gender presentations — isn’t a one-to-one for real people. “It’s really interesting. We talked about this a lot in the room, and it’s hard to answer that in a way, because the way that their power manifests, it creates a whole new person,” the showrunner says. “This doesn’t exist, which I actually really love. When I first read the script when I came on board for the first season, I was like, ‘Oh, this doesn’t exist anywhere,’ and how often can you say that there’s something in a script that is totally new? I can’t take credit for it, but I love that this existed when I came on board.”

Still, there are aspects of their journey on-screen that for Fazekas point to a character who may have always thought more about their gender, irrespective of whether they had been given V. “I think, in some way, Jordan — even if they weren’t bigender — was always going to be evolving and understanding their gender identity. And the reason I think that is because they don’t reject [their power]. They embrace it. They lean into it,” the showrunner explains. “Would they have recognized it in themselves? I don’t know. Was this like a gift that they didn’t know they wanted? It’s a really interesting question. I don’t know if there’s a neat answer to it, but we talk about it a lot.”

***

The first six episodes of Gen V season two are currently available on Prime Video. New episodes stream Wednesdays.