“The Kids Are Not All Right” begins with a flashback of Cipher and his sexual relationship with Sister Sage from The Boys. In the present, he forces Marie to keep training under the threat of Elmira, where he is currently keeping Cate. Marie convinces Jordan and Emma to put aside their hatred of Cate to rescue her. Emma is unable to convince Sam to join them, and he goes to reunite with his parents. He discovers that they gave him to Vought because they struggled to control him, and he accidentally injures his father. After an emotional conversation with his mom, Sam accepts that his mental health struggles were not due to Compound V. At Elmira, Marie, Jordan, and Emma are captured. At the school, Polarity confronts Cipher, who reveals that Andre died when Cipher tried to strengthen his powers. It is also revealed that Annabeth is in Elmira. Cate helps the group escape, which seems oddly easy, until they discover that Annabeth is dead. In her grief, Marie uses her powers to revive her. 

This episode fluctuated between stand-out and disappointing moments. For example, while Sister Sage is an interesting character, linking her to Cipher at this point did not seem to do much for either character beyond showing a surprising sex scene. Additionally, the scene in which the group has a surprisingly easy time escaping Elmira creates an interesting atmosphere, building unsettling paranoia in the audience. The reveal that Annabeth was at Elmira was also successful and shocking. Sam’s arc, being built around the conversation with his mother, did not fully work, as the way the conversation played out was not very memorable. In keeping with the rest of the season, every scene of Cipher is gripping, largely due to Linklater’s performance of relatively cookie-cutter villain dialogue scenes. 

The highlight of the episode is the reveal that Marie has the ability to revive people. In many respects, this scene was extremely successful, showing the emotional stress and physical strain she endures in order to bring someone she loves back from the dead. Watching Marie and her friends run uninterrupted through Elmira as Cipher loomed was great, forcing the audience to speculate on how this could be part of some master plan. The master plan being Marie’s ability to revive her sister was exciting, but it accentuates a very prominent issue and worry present in Gen V and The Boys universe. For how brutal this universe is, many characters cheat or avoid death extremely frequently, a choice largely attributed to their usefulness later on. Marie’s ability to revive people is extremely worrisome, as it plays into the fear that Marie and Gen V as a whole solely exist to enhance the next season of The Boys. It was one thing setting her up to combat Homelander, but it’s an entirely different story if she will be used to accentuate this universe’s epidemic of characters cheating death. However, in isolation, this episode struggled in its subplots but shone in the eerie, exciting atmosphere of its climax. 

Rating: 6/10