Gen V Episode 6 review: The best episode yet

Gen V Episode 6 may come with a scene-stealing, potty-mouthed cameo – but it’s also the show’s most ambitious and best installment yet, adding exciting depth to our heroes and the conspiracy threatening to eat them alive.

In the first five episodes of Gen V, we’ve had supes turning themselves into blood-hailing supernovas, shrunken-down women hugging not-so-giant penises, doors being smothered in projectile ejaculate from bizarre orifices, and a psychic’s penis blowing up like a balloon after “mind-raping” someone.

While some fans partake in the futile pastime of arguing which show is best, it’s been abundantly clear from the beginning that Gen V has the nasty, hilarious chops to rival The Boys, not to mention its increasingly eyebrow-raising plot; last week we were introduced to the “Virus”, but it’s unclear what purpose it’ll serve.

Even considering the baffling, now-remedied ending to the fourth episode, Episode 6’s ending is the sorest so far – because we are already dying to find out what happens next.

Cate is at the heart of Gen V Episode 6

When Marie and co. came to after a days-long blackout, Rufus was the number one suspect; Cate made bash his own nuts with a baseball bat, and he was rendered dickless by Marie. But they were wrong: it’s been Cate the whole time, somehow entangled in Dean Shetty’s plans with the Woods.

In the opening scene, Cate restores everyone’s memories; Andre remembers Luke’s grisly death, and Emma’s affection and pain over Sam come rushing back. “Wow, thanks, glad I had to relive that f*cking nightmare again… also, you’re a c*nt,” she tells her. All this ‘pushing’ starts to wear on Cate, especially as she hears everyone’s voices saying they’ll never forgive her. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” she whimpers.

Elsewhere, Andre is stewing in his anger towards Cate – but he can’t face talking to her, because he knows he won’t be able to resist forgiveness. Still, he has his theories about her involvement with Shetty. “I think she made Luke kill Brink then himself,” he hastily claims, but Marie isn’t convinced. “She makes you fall in love with her, then she fucks you over,” he adds.

Suddenly, Jordan calls out for help. Cate is having a fit from over-extending her powers, and her pulse rate is slowing – thankfully, they have a blood-bender on hand who’s capable of quickening her heart rate. This leaves her in a comatose state – but crucially, she’s alive.

Over in the Woods, Doctor Cardosa has tried out his first dose of the Virus on Betsy, a supe with lightning crackling out of her fingertips – but she can’t muster the strength to go beyond the mere flicker of a plug socket, not to mention her pained coughing. This is her two days after it was administered, and the best part: there is absolutely zero risk to humans as it attaches to Compound V alone.

The doctor is keen to take his findings to Vought, but Shetty has other plans. “Concentrate the dose… let’s see how sick we can make her,” she says.

Cate traps everyone in her head with Soldier Boy

Andre carries Cate through to the living area and lies her down on the couch. She’s breathing, but totally unresponsive. “This is what she gets when she mind-rapes her friends,” he says, but in a quick blur, she awakes, sits up, and vanishes almost instantaneously. As they try to figure out what’s going on, the bricks in the wall start to break away, leaving them stranded in the middle of a forest.

They’ve been transported somewhere, but nowhere truly tangible: they’re stuck in the horrid, traumatic labyrinth of Cate’s inner psyche, complete with the memory of her mother hunting for her brother after she told him to walk away and never come back. “It was an accident,” a young Cate pleads, but her mom tells a police officer she doesn’t feel safe around her own daughter, and he ushers her away.

From the bushes, a familiarly smooth voice emerges. it’s Soldier Boy. “Hey, what are you breezy sack of f*ck-nuts doing in here?” he asks. However, he’s not managed to penetrate Cate’s mind in some sort of bizarro, pre-Season 4 tease – he’s been her imaginary friend (and boyfriend) for decades. He takes great pride in having taught her to masturbate (“She came like a faucet,” he says, in a line that only Jensen Ackles’ hilarious charisma can carry).

He catches sight of Andre. “You’re Cate’s new f*ckboy… she really loves you,” he says, in a rare moment of concession, before returning to his burly arrogance. “Boys come and go, but she always comes back to a little pillow talk,” he says with a wicked smirk, at which point he’s branded a Russian agent. “I’m no godless, dickless commie,” he stresses, urging that his blood is “red, white, and blue red… not commie red.”

Lightning and thunder quake the skies above them. Soldier Boy explains that her brain is unraveling in real time, and they could all be stuck there if they don’t figure out a way to wake her up. Just as he’s about to give them some sage advice, he’s struck by lightning and killed (well, at least inside her head).

Emma reunites with Sam

Over at the drive-in theater, Emma has a proper reunion with Sam. She remembers everything “for real real”, and their sexual tension finally leads to them getting together. Sam worries about being a virgin (and, you know, the fact he could crumple pretty much anyone), but despite briefly seeing Emma riding him in puppet form, he keeps his cool. We even get the sweaty hand slapping a glass panel à la Titanic.

“I think I saw God 14 times,” Emma tells him in an exhausted state, but he struggles to echo the euphoria. It’s not that he didn’t enjoy it, but he’s already paranoid about hurting her. “I don’t think I can do that 24/7… maybe 23/7,” he jokes, before saying she should be with someone who isn’t “messed up” like him. “Let’s run away together,” he then suggests, but Emma says no. “No more running away, Sam,” she says.

Back in Cate’s head, the group learn how Cate first met Shetty: Cate had been locked in her room for nine years, separated from her mother by a three-feet-thick metal door, but when Shetty arrives, she immediately puts her at ease. “I’m not afraid of you, Cate,” she says, even allowing her to remove her gloves to show they can trust each other.

Shetty tells Cate she’s “exceptionally powerful” and need someone and somewhere that’ll allow her to hone her abilities, and she gives her pills to help quieten the voices in her head (it’s unclear what these are, but the best guess who’d be more Compound V – in theory, it would make her even more powerful and give her more control over her mind).

We then see Luke and Cate’s first meeting in crimefighting class. “You seem really smart,” he tells her, and asks if he can copy her work. Their flirty affection for one another gets the better of Andre, who tries to walk out… until Luke says: “I miss you, man.” It turns out this memory is more interactive than they thought, but it isn’t a wholesome catch-up between the two pals – Luke reveals he knew all along that Andre and Cate had been sleeping together even when he was alive. “She didn’t make you, did she,” he says, before replaying their first time for everyone to see.

A haunting trip down memory lane

Golden Boy starts to hunt them down, with Andre, Marie, and Jordan unable to use their powers in Cate’s head. They end up at Brink’s office, where they quickly realize they’re inside one of Jordan’s memories; Cate clearly absorbs what she makes people forget, and that volume of experience is likely what causes her to shut down.

What appears to be the moment before Luke murdered Brink reveals itself to be something worse: Luke confronted Brink over the Woods months prior, but Jordan helped immobilize him when he threatened the professor, which got them their promotion. Jordan’s female form then confronts him. “He wasn’t good… he was nice… you’re a coward and you always will be,” she says.

Jordan admits to “buying into Brink’s bullsh*t”, but before they can reckon with their own choices any further, they end up in a memory of the Woods; more specifically, Luke waking up in the middle of an experiment which appears to be attempting to transfer Sam’s powers to him. He panics and begs for help, but Cate forces him to forget and go to sleep. “She knew everything from the f*cking jump,” Andre says.

There’s one last twist of the knife in their little expedition into Cate’s mind: they walk through a door into the scene of Marie’s parents’ gruesome deaths, with her little sister sitting in a puddle of blood on the floor. “You’ll always be a murderer to me, I’ll never forgive you,” she’s told, but Marie fights back. “I didn’t understand my powers… like you, Cate! You told me it wasn’t my fault,” she screams, and they’re moved to Cate’s bedroom.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says, but Marie tells her they’re trying to wake her up. “You’re f*cked up, I’m f*cked up, the one thing that’s really apparent now is that we are all f*cked up,” she says, but Cate doesn’t want to wake up. Andre won’t have it. “Sorry doesn’t cut it… you want to forget your problems and not wake up, f*ck you,” he tells her. “You manipilated us, you manipulated me… I love you, I don’t want to f*cking love you because I’ll never trust you again – but right now you finally have a choice, so wake the f*ck up.”

Cate makes the right choice, and they all wake up in the real world just in time for Sam and Emma to arrive. It quickly goes haywire when he catches sight of Cate, and he chucks her across the room like a school rucksack before making light work of all the supes around him. He grabs Cate’s arm and is poised to break it off – until Emma stops him. “She hurt you, she hurt Luke,” he says, but she responds: “But you don’t have to hurt him back.” This is the defining modus operandi of supes in The Boys: violence begets violence, because they can inflict it like nobody else, until the cycle is broken.

We cut to the Woods, where Betsy is lying dead on the floor and riddled with a horrific rash. “I didn’t mean to, I was only following orders,” the doctor says, urging that he only upped the dosage by 5mm more. Shetty takes a breath and asks him a jaw-dropping question: “Now can you make it contagious?”

Gen V Episode 6 review score: 4/5

The strongest acting showcase for Gen V’s supes yet, with a thoroughly gripping, ambitious throughline that conjures must-have-it-now excitement for the closing episodes.

Gen V Episodes 1-6 are on Prime Video now, which you can sign up for here. You can check out our other coverage below:

Gen V review | Episode 1 | Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4 | Episode 5 | When does Gen V take place in The Boys timeline? | Gen V cast and characters | The Boys cameos | Gen V runtimes explained | Tek Knight powers explained | What is the Virus?

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