The Boys is chock-full of compelling villains. Jensen Ackles’ twisted tackle Captain America Soldier Boy and the literal Nazi-turned-superhero Stormfront proved so well-liked they’re getting a prequel present. In the meantime, Anthony Starr’s portrayal of the fascist Superman-parallel Homelander is persistently the most effective a part of the present (even when not everyone seems to be in on the joke). So when Gen V arrived as The Boys’ college-focused spinoff, the large query was whether or not it might conjure a villain on par with the flagship present.
Season 1 successfully sidestepped the problem. Godolkin College Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn) and her quest to eradicate everybody with superpowers — impressed by a private tragedy brought on by Homelander — made her appear extra like certainly one of The Boys’ titular antiheroes than a very wicked villain. However for season 2, Gen V co-showrunner Michele Fazekas turned to an actor with plenty of expertise portraying unsettling characters: Midnight Mass and Legion star Hamish Linklater, who performs Shetty’s substitute, Dean Cipher.
“We have been so comfortable to have him. We knew we needed any individual who felt completely different than Dean Shetty,” Fazekas informed Polygon over Zoom. “We needed any individual who stored our characters guessing and all the time unsure, and is all the time unpredictable. Hamish is so good at that. It’s like, I do know you’re a nasty man. I don’t know why you’re a nasty man. I don’t know what your agenda is. You’re simply bizarre.”
Linklater’s character lives as much as his identify. Nobody is aware of what Dean Cipher’s powers are or the place he comes from. In a single significantly weird scene from Gen V season 2, he makes a disgusting-looking protein smoothie whereas chatting with Godolkin pupil Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips) after which comes near placing Cate’s hand in a blender after she tries to make use of her mind-reading powers on him.
Cipher turns the scholars towards one another, persuading them that their self-worth depends upon their powers, bribing them in the event that they go together with his plans, and threatening them with humiliation and imprisonment in the event that they defy him. He does all of it with relentless smugness, rapidly chopping by any makes an attempt to deceive him at the same time as he expertly manipulates the would-be heroes to serve his hidden agenda.
As Godolkin’s dean, Cipher focuses on pushing essentially the most promising college students to higher perceive their talents and unleash their full potential. Within the first session of his “Hero Optimization Seminar,” he makes the category battle Vikor (Tait Fletcher), a brutal hammer-wielding supe paying homage to Skurge, the Asgardian warrior The Boys star Karl City performed in Thor: Ragnarok. Simply as Homelander threw his personal son off a roof to see if his powers would manifest, Cipher’s philosophy is that the scholars will both rise to the problem or they have been by no means price his time to start with.
Like Homelander, Cipher believes supes are inherently superior to common people. He’s very specific about his beliefs when he offers his first speech to the Godolkin college students within the season 2 premiere, telling a cheering crowd they will’t belief people and “race traitors” like Starlight (Erin Moriarty), who has change into the face of resistance towards Homelander’s rule. This tackle identification politics is a core a part of Gen V season 2, and Linklater is optimistic that followers will take it to coronary heart.
“I hope it’s obtained topically,” he says. “The concept one group of individuals is superior to a different group of individuals needs to be in comedian books and historical past books. It shouldn’t be in our newspapers.”
Ever since he interrogated mutants in Noah Hawley’s 2017 edgy Marvel collection Legion, villainous monologues have change into certainly one of Linklater’s signatures, and Gen V is not any exception. He instructions each scene he’s in as he lectures college students on their shortcomings and dodges their questions on his personal background.
“I feel I get employed as a result of folks suppose that I’m good at studying strains and I’m actually not. I wrestle lots and my profession has change into torture,” he says. “Why don’t they offer me the sturdy, silent kind as a substitute of the slippery chat-chat man?”
Linklater obtained loads of observe giving lengthy sermons as Father Paul Hill in Mike Flanagan’s 2021 horror miniseries Midnight Mass. Whereas he complains concerning the memorization, the actor would like to work with Flanagan once more.
“I’ve solely labored with him as soon as. It’s bizarre that he’s damaged his rule of all the time utilizing the identical folks again and again only for me,” Linklater stated. “His writing is improbable. That firm of actors is spectacular. Why received’t he name me again?”
Linklater jokes that he retains getting solid because the villain as a result of “the hero elements have been already spoken for,” however he says he loves the chance to be the voice for a collection’ message.
“You wish to be in exhibits which use style for the better good,” he says. “I feel Midnight Mass did that by way of speaking about faith and dependancy and so many different crimes of the human coronary heart. [Gen V] is simply grabbing the information by the throat and saying ‘We’re part of this story too, particularly for younger folks’ and I feel that’s simply thrilling.”
Gen V is streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes premiering each Wednesday by Oct. 25.
