Warning: Spoilers for ‘Gen V’ episode five are below.
Muppets, mind-wipes, and mindblowing betrayals. Gen V’s fifth episode, “Welcome to The Monster Club” turns the show on its head, making us question everything we thought we knew and how deep the conspiracy of The Woods really goes.
After waking up in a dirty frat house, buried under cans of beer and alcohol-fueled acts of embarrassment, the crew tries to detective their way out of a memory-sucking black hole. They’ve lost days, they can’t remember who Sam is and why Luke was so suspicious of Professor Brink, and they most definitely don’t understand why the school has placed tracking devices in their collarbones. As the threads unravel, they lead to an unlikely suspect who has been fracturing everyone’s psyche for a long, long time.
Here is where our f*cked up leaderboard sits after episode three.
The Human Vibrator
While not essential to the episode’s storyline in any way, it wouldn’t be a true ranking without mention of at least one depraved sex act. We’re not sure what’s more nauseating, watching a man, whose power seems to be transforming his hand into a vibrator, get a girl off whose vagina seems to be located on her spine … or the knowledge that the clear fluid oozing through the floorboards and onto Andre’s face is actually a byproduct of their extracurricular sex-tivities. How do Eric Kripke’s writers sleep at night?
Emma’s Big Secret
Emma’s been purging herself her entire life in order to please her controlling mother and earn some views on her Youtube channel but she’s finally embracing her Big Supe Energy and revealing some awful truths. Like how her mom called her a monster the first time she accidentally grew to the size of the giant Jack plagued with his beanstalk? Yeah, that’s the kind of childhood trauma that explains so much when it comes to why she rode that man’s penis like it was a Space X rocket in episode one.
The Human Period Tracker
A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it interaction between Emma and Marie after the house party from hell gave us some pretty surprising insight into how her blood powers actually work. Not only could she sense the blood under Sam’s fingernails (and tell it wasn’t his) but she could also predict with shocking accuracy just when her bestie was going to be menstruating. If she could somehow channel this gift into app form, the woman would be a billionaire in six months or less.
The Purpose Of The Woods
We’ve known Dean Shetty and her band of human Dr. Frankensteins have been using troubled supe kids as lab rats for mysterious experiments but in episode five, we finally find out why. Dr. Cardoza believes he can create a virus that controls them — for what purpose we can only guess. Whether this Trojan Horse would work on heroes in The Boys or just hormonal young adults, we’re still not sure.
Marie’s Benefactor
While negotiating with Shetty on his terms of employment, Cardosa demands access to Marie, whose powers are practically limitless — though she doesn’t know that just yet. Shetty denies him, alluding to the fact that Marie has some mysterious benefactor who’s been protecting her at Godolkin. Is she talking about herself, or someone else? The mindf*ckery just won’t cease.
Sam’s Muppet Massacre
Speaking of f*cked up minds, Sam is on his own now that Emma and the group can’t remember who he is or why he matters to them. He holes up in some underground tunnel only to be discovered by Shetty’s paramilitary thugs, which turns out to be quite unlucky for them. For us though? Well, we’re treated to a montage of muppets being massacred as Sam’s brain tries to protect him from the carnage by turning his human hunters into doll-like commandos with blood that spurts out as confetti. The perspective switch really makes it easier to ignore the pleas of that one muppet man who sobbed that he was a father of two before Sam flattened his face like a pancake.
Cait’s Clean Slate
A fight scene translated through Sesame Street characters is a hard act to follow but somehow, the quiet reveal that Cait is the one who’s been toying with her friend’s minds over the past few days feels like the most outrageous storyline of the episode. Not only has she been working for Shetty for years — forcing Luke to forget he had a brother, which is what likely led him to commit suicide — but she tries to justify her actions by claiming they’re in service of protecting the people she cares about. It’s a terrible situation all around but we can’t see how Cait doesn’t come out of this as clean as the minds she’s wiped.
Amazon’s ‘Gen V’ streams new episodes on Fridays.
