"In my defence, he was a puppet at the time, so..."
Gen V has been a consistently excellent television programme throughout, but this penultimate episode- pretty much a finale in itself- is a particular triumph. The worldbuilding, the characters, the political subtext, the masterful switching of tone between dark humour, tragedy and emotion, is all done to perfection.
In terms of the characters, there are two main threads here. One concerns Cate, filled with guilt and knowing she has so much work to do if she is to earn back her friends' trust. Even we doubt her motives as she appears to succumb to Shetty's gaslighting, even realising that Shetty genuinely loves her as an adopted daughter. It's a particularly clever piece of misdirection as Cate eventually forces Shetty to reveal the truth- about the genocide virus, about wanting revenge for Homelander's killing of her family on that plane, about the entire uni just being a front for the Woods.And kills her, in a way that is particularly upsetting for Marie.
As for Marie, the episode gives us another bombshell: Marie's benefactor is none other than Victoria Neuman, whose powers are the same as Marie's and how she makes people'sheads explode. Neuman deals with the whole virus thing, making Dr Cardoza's head explode into the bargain... but what's going on with her? What does she actually want? The plot thickens.
Most powerful of all, though, is the reaction of the protesting students towards Neuman, clearly evoking slogans of the real world MAGA extreme right. And Sam, is seems, is in the process of being radicalised into supe supremacism. This is truly heady stuff. Supe genocide vs. supe supremacism, Nazis vs. Nazis...
