ScreenCrush: The Podcast! - Gen V - Season 2 Episode 6 BREAKDOWN - The Boys Easter Eggs You Missed!

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

ScreenCrush The Podcast tackles all the movie and TV hot topics, offering reviews and analysis of Marvel, Star Wars, and everything you care about right now. Hosted by Ryan Arey, and featuring a panel of industry professionals.

Well, it looks like our theories about the burned man might be true, but Cypher is an even worse monster than we ever realized. But this episode showed why he is the only way the boys can beat Homelander. Welcome back Screen Crush, I'm Ryan Airy, and this is all of the Easter eggs references and little things you might have missed in season two, episode six of Gen V cooking lessons. Now, that title has a couple of meanings. It literally refers to Stan Edgar teaching the kids how to cook,

but it's also about how the students are slowly learning more and more about their powers. Marie levels up in a really big way, and Emma continues to struggle with her self-confidence. Wait, say something nice about me. Like what? But even Anderson learns that he is capable of stopping Cyphers control. And we have a theory about that that we're going to go over later on. Now, we keep saying that the theme of this season was real versus fake, but now I don't think that's entirely accurate. So the first arc of the season, when the kids are at school, had this theme of the students trying to be their authentic selves instead of the people that Vought wanted them to pretend to be.

But the real overall theme of this season seems to be control. Vot wants to control the students. Marie learns that she could control people's bodies. And of course, the villain's powers are based on mind control. This episode shows us that the real journey for the students is to learn self-control so then they can master their powers. For instance, Kate and Emma cannot control their abilities while Sam can't control the voices in his head.

So it's fitting that they meet up with Stan Edgar, a man who always seems to be in control. This episode also reintroduced Zoe daughter of Victoria Newman. Now remember in the boys, Newman was a soup orphan who was adopted by Stan Edgar, and he then helped her craft the identity of Victoria Newman, the political opposition to Vot. But when Homelander leaned on her, she helped oust Edgar from power, which essentially placed Vot under Holander's control. And then she gave her daughter Compound V in order to keep her safe from Homelander, which is super messed up because she wouldn't have done that so her daughter could defend against

Homelander, but so Homelander wouldn't regard her as merely human and kill her. So all these plot lines culminated in season four of the boys, when Newman reunited with Stan. You put me and Zoe in terrible danger. My daughter will never have to live like that. Now, Newman died a gruesome death in season four, but Edgar did keep his word. Now, last episode we theorized that Seifer killed Annabeth and he orchestrated Marie's escape. After all, Jordan keeps pointing out how easy all of this is. But you guys got out, ran here, no guards, no alarms?

So this episode, we learned that's definitely not the case. Seifer may have had Annabeth killed to level up Marie, but he did not expect the gang to escape. But that doesn't explain why the escape was so easy. Why were there no guards on duty? Maybe there actually is someone else behind the scenes who helped them to get out. Could be Sister Sage, but if you have any theories, let me know in the comments below. So the guards tried to stop them with these high frequency whistles. We first saw these in the season two finale of the boys when French you built them to delay

homelander. And we've also seen Godalkin employees use this whistle against the kids that are in the woods. And of course we have seen soundstop powerful characters in other media. There's the Hulk. There's Superman. And of course, Chewbacca. Now, beginning the episode with Annabeth covered in blood and disoriented mirrors the very first scene of the show.

When Marie accidentally kills her parents and is covered in their blood while she's disoriented. Now, this is appropriate because that moment was what drove Marie away from her sister. It fractured her family. But now, Marie has finally come full circle. And instead of her powers hurting her family, she can use them to heal. Now in this opening sequence, we discover that Annabeth now has powers. She is a precog. And even though her abilities aren't honed, notice how she says, He's almost here. So I love this sentence because it shows how differently a psychic would see the world.

In her mind, in every possibility, Sam always appears in this moment. And that means that Sam has always appeared in this moment. So she's referring to the future like it's the past. Wait a minute. How did she get powers? Well, that's the new big mystery of the show, Doug. We just don't know. Aunt Pam claims that. that Vot helped Marie's parents conceive her with IVF. But Annabeth was the actual miracle baby. Turns out Annabeth was the real miracle. But this could mean that Vought her parents' DNA in a way

that made them birth soups naturally. And so far in this show, I believe the only other natural-born soup was Homelander and of course, Homelander's son, Ryan. So that could mean that the treatments they use for Project Odessa actually turned human beings into incubators for soups, and they don't have to be injected with compound V later on. So Emacol's son. Sam.

And Kool-Aid Man, referring to the Kool-Aid Man, the popular commercial mascot who is composed of sugar water and has no regard for personal property. Oh yeah! Oh yeah! Yeah! Hey, when does that Kool-Aid movie come out? I'm not going to watch it. I heard they use AI to animate part of it. Eek. Now, during the getaway, Marie describes how her powers work. Connect with every cell like it was a part of my own body and I just fixed it. Which is huge and explains what Seifer actually wants with her.

One, I definitely think Seifer is being puppeted by the burned man. and the burned man wants to use Marie to heal him. But more importantly, Thomas Godalkin wants to control all soups. And if Marie can connect with someone like every cell in their body is also hers, then that means that other people's bodies then become extensions of her own body. It means Marie has the potential to create a network of people all tied to her like a hive mind. And more importantly, this network could be used to control soups. And it could also be used to stop Holander's heart from beating or even worse to mind control

homelander to do her bidding. So Marie can't just heal the burned man, she can actually give him the means to finally control all soups, going back to the main theme of this season, control. Now immediately, Marie slips back into the big sister role with Annabeth. The only thing that I want is for you to be safe. But Annabeth is not a kid anymore. She is old enough to finally understand that her old life is gone. Now, when Seifer finds out, he takes the news out on the burned man. which further makes me think that he is just hitting himself here. He is mad that he let Marie get away, so he is literally beating himself up over the mistake. Then they come to an abandoned library with a homelander poster outside,

spray painting with yellow starlight resist paint. Now the library looks like the kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape you would see in video games like the last of us, except here it represents how VOTS control over the country is actually suppressing knowledge and learning. And this is a good time to remind you. all of you that this show is a political satire, and we are trying to break down this parody and the intent of the showrunners. We are not trying to propagate our own beliefs here. The internet is terrible now, so please be nice to each other in the comments. After all, comments are one thing, but getting

to meet you guys live and in person is way better. And that's why I am so excited to remind you that in two days, we're going to do our final live show of the tour in New York City Winery during New York Comic-Con. It's going to be so much fun. This is a completely new show from what we did in New York last time. We have exclusive breakdowns, stand-up, comedy, special guests, Q&As, but the best thing is to meet you guys face-to-face. Ticket links are below. Now, the gang being trapped in a library immediately calls to mind the John Hughes classic The Breakfast Club, which is about a group of disparate teenagers who are trapped in detention in the school library. And then they're presided over by an authority figure, the principal, who of course is mirrored by Stan Edgar in this episode. And then we see why this

library is abandoned. Pro-Holmander protesters actually burned books. Now, authoritative regimes like the Third Reich held massive book burnings. And also, in the U.S., censorship led to mass book burnings in the 1950s. That's actually when a lot of the Golden Age comic books were destroyed. Now, in America today, we don't get a lot of mass book burnings, but censorship is on the rise. Florida recently banned hundreds of books from their schools, including the anti-fascist novel 1984. And guess what? 1984 appears on this pile. But here's the thing. If you're trying to say that the authoritarian governments in 1984 were right, then you should probably take a long look at yourself and ask,

Are We the Baddies? In 1984, if you haven't read it, and you definitely should, is an important literary example of a political and dystopian government. In the book, most of the world is in perpetual war because of Big Brother and the Thought Police. Similarly, Vot is always using Vought News to rewrite reality into the version that Homelander wants people to see, going back to that fake versus real theme running through this season.

We also see the book Drag Story Time, which looks like a reference to Drag Queen Story Hours, which are children's events started in 2015, where drag queens would read to kids. Now, the book has the word pedophiles written across it, mirroring how radical conspiracy theorists believe that drag queens and LGBTQ people are poisoning their children. We also see the novel Beloved by Tony Morrison about a freed slave who was haunted by her daughter's ghost. Now, Burning Book symbolizes the loss of freedom of thought.

It's how dictatorships censor popular media that could be seen as a threat to their regime. Homelander doesn't want people reading, he wants them listening to every word that he says all the time. and notice that there are no soup posters in the library. Vought had no control here. It's all just nice posters about literacy and community programs. Now, when Emma finds a computer, notice the VOT OS on the screen and her snacks are branded with firecracker and lamplighter logos. But then, she is horrified to learn she does not know a single phone number. Well, I mean, you know, who really does these days?

True, but this is also very 1984. The state encourages people to not retain knowledge, to make them easier to control. Now, in the other room, Jordan, is accepting that Marie is one of the strongest soups in the world. But Marie is still denying it. And not because of a lack of confidence, but because she doesn't want Jordan to see her differently. Marie has basically ascended to a form of godhood. She can resurrect people,

but she is afraid of leaving her normal mortal friends behind. Remember, back in episode two, these two dreamed of whether or not they could one day live normal lives instead of being child soldiers. Hooking up between life and death situations is fun and all, but pain to have someone bring us food could be cool too. So now, Marie is trying to downplay her abilities so they can still have that dream, but Jordan knows better.

Now, when Marie and Annabeth talk notice the framing. Marie still hasn't changed out of the prison clothes, so their outfits demonstrate how these two sisters are worlds apart from each other. It's also clear from this conversation that Annabeth is ashamed of her soup abilities. She's basically a closeted soup, and this, of course, relates to the closeted LGBTQ people who hide who they really are out of shame or form. fear. Have you tried not being a mutant? And her refusing her powers is what we've seen

from many teenage characters in the X-Men comics. Why is this happening to me? I used to be a normal kid. It's not my fault. And of course, the closeted self-hating allegory is even more poignant Annabeth says, I fucking hate being besie. At Polarity's House, we pick up after his episode last season. Now on his mantle, we see the book Eve St. Laurent, Catwalk, which catalogs the entire history of the French fashion house from 1962 to 2002. It's a very cool set dressing detail to show how Anderson lives this life of high fashion and luxury. But the big reveal from this exchange is that Polarity can apparently resist Seifor's mind control. And Seifer seems like he has definitely never seen this happen before. So I think maybe this is because Anderson's brain is so damaged from using his

powers. So when he uses them, it means that Seifer can't manipulate his breaking psyche. And also, noticed that later, when he does make Polarity slap himself, he moves his own hand, which I think is further proof that this human body of Cypher is actually being controlled by a remote source. If he was the real thing, he wouldn't need to move his hand, just like he told Marie. Drop the hand. The hand doesn't do anything. I think it's true, Katara. Back at the library, Marie helps Annabeth with her breathing to calm down, and we learned that she did this for her when they were kids. And this also creates a mirror with Sam. His older brother Luke used to watch Avenue V with them to help him through tough times when they were kids. So we're seeing how these childhood memories

are still bringing comfort to the child soldiers even in the worst of times. Marie promises she'll do everything she can to fix this, but Annabeth's... You can't, Marie. Feels so pointed. In the grand scheme of things, Marie might be this all-powerful chosen one miracle maker, but she can't resell the bottle that was Annabeth's normal life. And to underscore this, Vicar arrives. So he, of course, is the boy's version of Thor that we met earlier this season, who also did play by play by play on Marie's match with Jordan. So then after the non-strong soups go into hiding, Jordan intercepts his hammer mid-air.

It's a hell-hella-hull-a move. Did he just? Yes. Yes, he did. Now, narratively, it's smart that Marie is knocked out of the fight early. Because we just learned about her new powers, we would expect her to beat Vicar immediately. So this way, we get to see Jordan have a rematch with Vicar before it's cut short by little Zoe Newman.

Excuse me. Now, the last time we saw Zoe, she was getting shipped off to Red River, the same orphanage were Victoria and Marie grew up. But obviously, Stan Edgar adopted her at some point to fulfill his daughter's wishes. Now, the first time we saw Zoe's Powers was the season four finale for the boys. She was trying to protect her mom, but Billy Butcher's tentacles were way bigger. But now we see just how much damage she could have done to Billy. And I don't know what's more horrifying here, that this sweet little girl has such a filthy mouth on her,

or that she is nonchalantly completely stained with blood and doesn't seem to mind. Now, Stan Edgar, played by the great Gene Carlo Esposito, has built a refuge from Homelander. He says, 90 feet below layers of zinc reinforced concrete. And remember, Homelander can't see through zinc like Superman can't see through lead. And this is why in season one, the boy's hid translucence remains in a chest that was lined with zinc. Stan even compares his bunker to Mark Zuckerberg's. They tell me that Mark Zuckerberg has a lesser version.

By the way, that's a real thing. The Facebook founder reportedly has a 5,000 square foot underground bunker at his Hawaiian estate. Yeah, I've been there. It's nice. You've been to Mark Zuckerberg's bunker? Yeah, man, I've been all over the place. Oh, okay. And to show off his wealth, he brags. I paid Thomas Keller a high seven figures to teach me to cook.

And Thomas Keller is, of course, a famous chef who actually cameoed in the Bear season three right here. Now, the gang does not trust him, saying, This is about trust. He cooks for us and makes us comfortable and gets us to trust him because he wants something from us. But remember, Esposito's most famous character, Gus Fring, did this exact same thing in the show Breaking Bad. He used cooking to gain Walter White's confidence and even made him a show of trust by handing him a knife, like he does with the students in this scene. Which takes us to the theme of this episode, trust.

Every character is faced with a decision to trust or not trust someone else. Anderson makes a decision to not trust Cypher. The gang has to learn to trust Stan Edgar and Annabeth has to trust Marie, while the entire crew has to trust Annabeth during the escape. And more importantly, Marie, by the end, has to learn to trust herself. Now, did anyone else think this whole scene with Stan Edgar, played like a cutscene from a video game. You know, like the actions died down,

and then you need a character to come in and give you information, so then you can move on to the next level of the game. Find your sister on level four, then proceed to level five. So here's where we learn crucial information. One, the Godalkin was obsessed with the idea of controlling soups, and this would be of particular interest to Stan Edgar. As Vought CEO, he was brilliant at emotional manipulation.

He would lecture Holander, the most powerful man in the world, and his heartbeat would never even accelerate. 80 over 60. Your entire life is imploding and it's as if you're reading fucking John Grisham. Edgar gives Cypher credit for protecting Godalkin's formula. It didn't work first. Until Cypher made it work. Which, I mean, look, you guys know where I stand on that. The guy we think of a Cypher is probably just like a human nurse that was treating the burned man before he seized control of his body.

And maybe Edgar suspects this because after he says this stuff about Cypher, he's very quiet afterwards. He also reveals that Homelander was the only other successful sub-executive. subject from Project Odessa. And we saw a hint of this last season of the boys with Project Odessa on this memo on the bulletin board in the lab where Homelander was raised. Homelander was also conceded with IVF. He had Soldier Boy's DNA into his mother's body. But what happened to his mama? Well... Who can say, really? Which reminds me, we do have this soup baby Nirvana shirt for sale at our merch store, along with other boys parody merch like, Billy Butcher is Punisher shooting

Homelander and Soldier Boy is Captain America number one. And you can also get your very own God Hugh shirt, links are below. So even after the info dump, there are still a few unanswered questions in this series. Homelander was born with his powers, but Marie's powers didn't develop until she hit puberty. Now, while Stan Edgar is spilling secrets, we also get some really great character development elsewhere in the bunker. Zoe is jealous that Annabeth got to have a big sister, and we learned that even when they were little, Marie always looked out for her. Marie, she would go out all night, and then she would come back and give me half for candy. And remember, Marie's only goal for this entire show was to get enough fame and notoriety to earn back her sister's love and trust.

At the end of the day, like Harry Potter, she just wanted a family. Also, Sam's home visit has taught him more about himself and that it's okay for him to feel things instead of constantly pushing his emotions away. But he doesn't like the bunker because it reminds him of the lab where he was held captive in the woods. His main criticism is he says it feels fake. Just like every other student this season, he's searching for something authentic in a world that's artificial. And he gets a little bit jealous of good guy Greg, who I will guarantee is also being mind controlled by Cypher. I also think that Cypher is controlling the resistance at the school, just like Stan Edgar controlled Victoria Newman.

And then Edgar dropped Cypher's real goal, supremacy. What does he want? In a word, soup, supremacy. So this makes total sense. I mean, remember all the Nazi stuff they found in the records hall linking Thomas Godalkin to Votte and his Nazi ties? Maybe they didn't create Marie to heal the world. They wanted to use her to purge the world. Like if Godalkin is able to seize control of her body, he can use them to make powerful soups,

immortal and perfect, while the rest of the world suffers and dies. So he spells out this philosophy to Anderson later on, when he says that they should emulate the way Australians call the kangaroo population. So my mission is to call this herd. All season long, the show has been addressing Marie's Chosen One arc in a meta way by having her directly acknowledge and reject the trope. Nevertheless, the show is leaning very hard into this Chosen One trope, which has certain benchmarks that we see here.

here. The chosen one is an orphan, raised in humble circumstances, and there is always a benevolent, silent benefactor who knows their true heritage and then watches over them. Maria's fit all of those standards, and now we find out the Victoria Newman and Stan Edgar were watching over her as well, and arranged for her release from Red River. And also, it turns out her origin is tied with the very first scene of this season, when Thomas Godalkin was apparently burned alive and then disappeared, but he probably just inhaled the fumes from the fire to gain mega superpowers, which is also the origin of Jay Garrick's Flash and the comics. So both Marie and Godalkin have powers that allow them to control others and they got those powers through accidents. And the final revelation of the monologue is that Stan

Edgar is still vying for control of Vought. He believes that Homelander and his takeover of the country can be stopped if only he has the means to control the soups. Edgar is like John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Even as the system was malfunctioning all around him, he still believed that he could exercise control over his attraction. I think this is setting up Edgar for a crushing realization either this season or probably in season five of the boys. Now, when he shares this file, noticed in 1960s branded Vot logo on the memo, and as we see, Godalkin developed many of the devices we've seen used in this universe. The control collars, the sonic cannons, and the discovery that halethane is useful against soups, which the boys have used several times.

Frenchie used halethane to subdue chemico and her brother. Starlight also used a syringe of halethane to knock out firecracker in season four. It could also be that halethane was a sylkien. was in the grenades that disabled the students when they tried to break into the prison last episode. Now, one notable soup who is resistant to Hallithing, though, is Soldier Boy, because the Russians used it on him throughout the Cold War, so he's built up a resistance to it. Now, in keeping with this episode's theme of trust, the main conflict here is that Marie has to learn to trust in herself. She has spent her life distrusting herself and her powers after they killed her parents. And now

she's being told that her powers will make her the most powerful soup in the world. To her, that just means she's going to further endanger the people she cares about, especially her sister. So she chooses to run away to protect her friends. She does not trust herself to keep them safe. In fact, it's the opposite. She believes that they are not safe as long as she is around. And not for nothing, but this is also a chosen one trope. The hero leaves the safety of their friends in order to unlock a greater understanding of their abilities. We saw this with Luke Skywalker, Neo, hell, even Harry Potter. Now, the song that plays in this final sequence is Zoe Fixing the Rocket Clock's cover of Simple Minds, Don't.

you forget about me. Now famously, this song ended the movie The Breakfast Club, and it was a promise that the kids would not forget the friendships they had formed. But in the context of this woman singing it, the song becomes more melancholy. She is saying goodbye to her friends, like she is parading off to her own death. Now, we pointed out earlier that the students being trapped in a bunker is similar to the structure of the Breakfast Club, with Stan Edgar, fulfilling the role of Principal Vernon, keeping the kids trapped in one place. But many of the students also fit the same archetypes as the characters in that movie. The Brain, The Athlete, A Basketcase,

a Princess, and a Criminal. That movie is about the students rejecting those labels that society has created for them, just like how this season is about the students rejecting those artificial labels created by Vod. It's trans-tastic! Now, you could see this ending as Marie denying the call-to-adventure, but I actually think it's just the opposite.

I think she is embracing her powers, but she does not want to be controlled by Stan Edgar, Cipher, or anyone else. And she allows Kate to come along with her, well, she's useful, and also maybe because she doesn't consider Kate to be one of her friends. So, guys, that's our breakdown of Gen V. Huge shout out to Ethan Ink, who co-wrote this video. You can find his social links below. And let me know what you thought down to the comments on our live chat or on Twitter, Blue Sky Threads or on our free-to-join Discord server. And if it's your first time here, please subscribe, smash that bell for alerts.

For Screencrush, I'm Ryan Erie.