‘Gen V’ Episode 6 Recap: “Jumanji”

So, your memories getting wiped like Windex by your supposed ally? That was pretty disorienting. But because Gen V is Gen V, the series next wants to know how it feels to exist inside the wiper’s memories, as if her mind was a three-dimensional space. As Marie, Jordan, and Andre discover in Episode 7 (“Jumanji”), Cate’s mind is a game board built to both cope with trauma and reveal truths. And because they’re superpeople and the new normal is no normal, they assimilate pretty quickly to walking around in there. But what Cate’s memories reveal also challenges them to consider themselves at their core. 

In the immediate aftermath of Cate’s cognitive Clorox confession, the group was still motivated towards exposing what they’d learned. Granted full recall, Emma departed for Stardust to run a wellness check on Sam, while Marie tried to convince an angry Andre that Cate wasn’t working alone, that she was still fixable. Maybe not yet fully trustable, but a faulty component in a giant machine trying with each revolution to fuck them over. And yet, after another seizure stabilized with the help of Marie’s blood power, Cate awakens only to disappear. They all find themselves in a forest clearing. This is the very terrain of her memories. Cate as a little girl, shut out by her parents upon the revelation of her powers. Cate as an adolescent, visited in her bedroom by Indira Shetty, who gains her trust. And they also find that they are not alone inside this memory zone. “Hey! What are you greasy sacks of fucknuts doing in here?” 

Wait, Soldier Boy (Jenson Ackles)? The powerful, totally unstable supe last seen being stuck into cryogenic containment by the CIA at the end of The Boys Season 3? The same. Only this version is Cate’s imaginary friend that lives inside her head. “Imaginary boyfriend, really,” he says, and proceeds to spew out a bunch of kinda desperate humblebrags about his sexual prowess. (Yep, definitely Soldier Boy.) “Cate’s head is unraveling in real time. She wants you in her memories for a reason, but figure it out before you get stuck in here.”

While Marie, Andre, and Jordan are rattling around in Cate’s mind like lost pegs, Emma finds Sam at Stardust. With her own memories returned, they both know how they feel about each other, and pretty soon sex is happening. They’re both super into it, and Sam is euphoric – it’s his first time; that’s what happens when you’re a teenage supe captive – but at one point his bruised mind also makes Emma into a puppet. “I’m messed up, Emma,” he tells her after. “You should be with someone who isn’t.” But she isn’t having that. No more getting separated, she declares. No more running. They’re going to rendezvous with the group.

Inside a holding cell at The Woods, Dr. Cardosa has finally made the viral breakthrough he was searching for. “The virus only affects supes,” he tells Shetty as they observe a young woman in chains, coughing and unable to generate her power. “It attaches to the Compound V in their blood. This is the payoff for all of the work I’ve done with Sam. A way to compassionately control supes.” But if this guy thinks there’s anything compassionate about his research, Shetty’s oversight, or Vought International, he’s an utter fool. And he’s left confused when Shetty orders him to continue dosing the woman with his experimental virus. 

There is much to reveal in the memory zone. How Shetty gave a teenage Cate prescription pills to dull and cloud the constant cacophony of other people’s thoughts. How she planted Cate at Luke’s side in Lamplighter Crimefighting School, so they’d get together. How Andre was sleeping with Cate even while his best friend Luke was alive. And how Luke woke up during some sort of blood transfusion between him and Sam, administered by Shetty and Brink. With a nod from the dean, Cate laid on her hands. “You’re gonna forget this is happening. You’re gonna forget about The Woods. Your brother is dead.”

It’s one thing for the group to be inside Cate’s memories, as traumatic as they are. But then they realize they’re revisiting their own memories inside the same dimensional space. How Jordan encountered Brink arguing with Luke months before their fateful altercation, and how they agreed to help the professor subdue Golden Boy in exchange for preferential treatment and a TA position. Or how the manifestation of Marie’s own powers led to her parents’ violent deaths, which was discovered by her younger sister. “No matter how hard you try to be a hero,” Annabeth Moreau (Maria Nash) says in the past, “you’ll always be a murderer to me. I’ll never forgive you, and you shouldn’t, either.” 

Cate’s memory zone imploding to reveal memories and shame from their own perspective? It’s all too much, and Marie agitates for Cate to wake up and let them out. “The one thing that is really apparent now is that we are all fucked up.” And when they do come around – um, is this actually real? Etc. – Emma and Sam have arrived to help fill in the blanks. A big part of the experiments in The Woods involved using Sam to augment Luke’s powers. But that wasn’t just it, as we know from Cardosa’s virus research. Not only that, but rather than the whole lab being just another Vought outpost, a stem of its evil empire, it’s actually Indira Shetty who’s been running the whole show. Sam offers a cold summation, from his point of view as an escapee. “She hates us,” he says. As in all supes. As in the very individuals she devoted her professional life as a behavioral psychologist to studying. She has a deeper agenda.

Inside The Woods, Cardosa’s latest test subject has died horribly, covered in boils and hacking up blood. The doctor’s in a panic, because he thought she’d just become more sick, and now he’s gotta tell his boss. But Shetty is excited. The virus Cardosa perfected has the ability to kill supes on contact? Her eyes gleam. More please. “Can you make it contagious?”   

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.