The penultimate episode of the season, “Hell Week,” follows the group as they react to Marie repeating her choices at Elmira by leaving everyone behind. This leaves Jordan and Annabeth reflecting on their powers and relationship with Marie. Marie and Cate go to Cipher’s house, finding Polarity after he fought off Cipher. Polarity has a seizure, and Marie fully cures him, making Cate jealous. Cipher offers Marie safety if she continues with her training, which she factors into her plan to beat Cipher. The group from the bunker attempts to stop Marie, and she restrains them with her powers. The group ends up distracting Cipher as Marie finds the burned body of Thomas Godolkin, healing him. Gradually, it is finally revealed that Godolkin has been mind-controlling “Cipher,” a normal, innocent human. The episode concludes with Godolkin wandering onto campus to begin his plan of killing the weaker Supes. 

Overall, this episode was stronger and more engaging than the last, but it still plays out very predictably. For example, Marie’s actions are in perfect keeping with how she’s acted throughout the entire show. In an effort to keep these characters consistent, they wind up becoming cyclical and predictable in their actions and dialogue interactions. At the very least, the show makes a point to draw a parallel between Marie leaving the bunker and Elmira. That said, the rising action scene in which the group confronts lone-wolf Marie leads the viewer to wait for the other shoe to drop. The audience knows these basic characters enough to know that they will do the heroic thing and help Marie no matter what, so when Marie stops them and charges in alone, it’s only a matter of time before they help her anyway. Additionally, it is a shame to see Marie relegated to the lone-wolf archetype, as her relationships with Annabeth, Jordan, and Cate are decently compelling. Additionally, the show does not spend ample time reckoning with her prioritizing her isolation from the group, only providing a predictable yelling match. Instead of being an interesting moral conundrum, it comes across more as Marie just doing whatever the plot demands with some peripheral attention to her lone wolf personality, a trend that will undoubtedly carry over into her inclusion in the fight against Homelander. Still, Cate’s jealousy was interesting and led to their scenes being fairly engaging. 

Finally, the grand reveal of Godolkin’s mind-controlling Cipher was decently predictable but did not detract all that heavily from the episode. In some ways, it made the scene in which Marie goes to save the burned man extremely tense. The real tragedy of the twist is losing Linklater as the villain, but he still adds tangible comedy and fear to his performance once he’s Doug again. Overall, this episode was predictable on both a plot and character level, leaving most of its main characters in simple scenes that do not experiment sufficiently with their overly consistent personalities. Still, various elements stand out, such as Cipher, Polarity, and Cate’s relationship with Marie.

Rating: 5/10