The true Gen V/Boys singularity has arrived. The signs were with us all the way back in Episode 2 (“First Day”), when the terrific Colby Minifie, as current Vought prez Ashley Barret, harangued the God U board of trustees. Next, Gen V became the venue to introduce Derek Wilson as “If it’s got a hole, I can fuck it” Tek Knight, a character from the Boys comics whose anticipated entrance into live action became its own subreddit. Then, and this one is huge, Soldier Boy was inserted into the lives of Marie, Jordan, and Andre when they discovered him peacocking around inside Cate’s tortured mindspace. And now, with the arrival of “Sick,” the penultimate episode of Gen V’s first season, every move our young supe crew makes can be considered Boys universe canon, because with Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) at Godolkin, the shows’ respective areas of influence have collapsed into one frame.

Neuman’s history in The Boys is a winding one, but for our purposes it’s important to note that her identity as the “head popper” supe is still not publicly known, even as she sits on the human-administered Federal Bureau for Superhuman Affairs and angles to become Vice President. When Neuman sweeps into God U for a town hall campaign stop, her appearance does two things: it further radicalizes a faction of supe students, and reveals that she is Marie’s mysterious benefactor. Herself a former resident of the Red River supe orphanage, Neuman also shares Marie’s blood power, which Marie learns when she senses the Comp V coursing through the woman’s veins. Publicly, Neuman remains anti-supe. But privately, she uses her superpowers and regular old fashioned powers of political chicanery to position herself for personal gain. Remember, this is a woman who publicly knifed her adoptive father’s reputation in favor of aligning with Homelander (Antony Starr). Neuman basically gives Marie the “we’re orphans bonded by blood” speech. She encourages her goal of becoming the first Black woman in the Seven. She really wins her over. And then Neuman totally coopts the knowledge Marie has gained about Shetty’s plan.

Speaking of Shetty’s plan…”Can we make it airborne? So it’s more contagious?” Not even Dr. Cardosa could believe the dean’s zeal over the idea of viral supe destruction. But Shetty is no longer hiding her intentions. In another example of Boys lore falling from the Gen V sky, the dean presents the virus to Grace Mallory (Laila Robins), the ex-CIA founder of Billy Butcher’s rascally gang of supe hunters. “You know where to find them,” Shetty says. “Even those not under Vought’s thumb. We’ll be able to neutralize them once and for all.” But Mallory isn’t down with the euphemism. She rightly calls Shetty’s plan a war crime, and says killing every supe won’t bring back her family. That’s right, we’ve also learned that the dean’s years-long crusade against superpeople stems from the deaths of her husband and daughter on Oceanic Flight 37. (That’s the plane that went down when Homelander used his laser eyes to bisect both its hijacker and the aircraft.) Mallory refuses to help Shetty. And when the dean departs, it turns out the cagey ex-spy had an unseen someone listening in on their conversation the whole time.

But Shetty, for all of her long game scheming, doesn’t seem to have anticipated Cate’s true strength. After the group decided to confront the dean and force a public confession regarding The Woods and the virus, Cate took it a step further. Freed from the mental torpor she’d been in since her teens, when Shetty first administered pills to dull her power, Cate used her hands to make Shetty speak. “I want it to spread across the globe, and kill all of you. This school is a front. Thomas Godolkin was a behavioral scientist – he built this place to figure out what makes supes tick. Their weaknesses, how to control them. You’re not here to study, the school is here to study you. Your species. Not human.” And with one command from Cate, Shetty draws a kitchen knife across her own throat. The dean died first in the fight Cate now believes is necessary to preserve supe agency.   

“We’re better than humans!” Separated from Emma and the group, Sam became radicalized over one afternoon. When he joined Rufus (who really seems to have recovered quickly from that whole dick exploding thing) and other supe students at Victoria Neuman’s chaotic town hall, Sam seemed heartened by all of the “Supe Lives Matter” signs and raucous chants against any regulatory action of supes by humans. To put it even more on the nose, Gen V features Rufus in a red-and-white ball cap shouting “You will not control us!” in a moment that mirrors MAGA and the horrors of Charlottesville’s Unite the Right rally in 2017. The town hall sequence, with supes openly claiming their power as a bloc, even aligns Gen V with the storyline in X-Men: Days of Future Past, where mutants attempt a White House takeover in 1973. But for now, it’s also cleaving Cate and Sam from where Marie, Emma, and Jordan are philosophically. The latter group still wants justice for the violence wrought by Shetty, Brink, and the rest with The Woods. But they’re not yet prepared for supes engaging in open conflict against human control.  

“You think they’re gonna believe a Black girl and a bi-gender Asian supe over Vought? No. They’re just gonna twist it like they twist everything else.” Marie might have kept her earlier statement to Jordan more top of mind when she met and was impressed with Victoria Neuman. While there is consistency in her endorsement of Neuman – Marie’s goals have always remained clear, and Neuman smartly played to the younger woman’s hope to make a difference in the culture – her wish to expose Shetty let slip valuable intelligence regarding the new supe-killing virus. In the final moments of “Sick,” Cardosa, still reeling from his boss’s desire for eradication of supes on a global scale, meets secretly with Neuman in a parking garage. Blubbering over his theories of “compassionate control” and assurances that she’ll keep his family safe, Cardosa hands over the virus in its climate-controlled keg. Which is exactly when Victoria Neuman uses her power to explode his head. As usual, Victoria Neuman is in the business of doing what’s good for Victoria Neuman. For Marie, Emma, and Jordan, the question is what side of the singularity they’re standing on.  

 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.