Why Cipher From Gen V Season 2 Looks So Familiar

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Spoilers for "Gen V" season 2, episodes 1-3 ahead.

There's a new dean at Godolkin University in "Gen V" season 2: Cipher (Hamish Linklater, no relation to director Richard Linklater). And like his predecessor Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn), Cipher is shaping up to be this season's main antagonist.

Despite running a school for superheroes, Shetty was a normal human. In fact, she wanted to exterminate all supes after her husband and daughter were casualties of the flight Homelander (Antony Starr) brought down in the fourth episode of "The Boys." Cipher is the opposite, a supe who wants superheroes to reign over normal humans. We don't know what his powers are yet (a "cipher" does mean a secret code), but he's very interested in training the young supes at God U to be their most powerful selves. Shetty thought that humans needed to strike back against the supes, while Cipher thinks the supes need to be prepared for the humans to rise up against them; the supes don't have the numbers advantage, so they need to have the power. To that end, Cipher starts a special "seminar" class where the most powerful supe students have to fight for survival.

Linklater is putting in an unsurprisingly excellent performance as Cipher in the first three episodes of "Gen V" season 2 released thus far. There hasn't been a "Boys" villain this chilling since Homelander himself; Cipher's ruthlessness and detachment could probably make even Stan Edgar's (Giancarlo Esposito) icy blood stop running.

If you're familiar with Linklater, though, you'll know he had this in him. He's been acting since the 1990s, first in theater; he played Tom Sawyer in a 1996 production of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." (Linklater comes from a family of stage actors; his late mother Kristin was a theatre director and professor at Columbia University.) He then leveraged his success in theater to become a TV day player, securing a main role in the Julia Louis-Dreyfus sitcom "The New Adventures of Old Christine." Linklater also had a few small film roles earlier on in his career, including in the financial crisis satire "The Big Short," where he plays one of Mark Baum's (Steve Carrell) traders.

The project that made Linklater an actor to watch, though, was definitely Mike Flanagan's 2021 Stephen King-inspired horror mini-series, "Midnight Mass." He played Father Paul Hill, a wise but sinister priest who arrives on an island community with a curse he thinks is a miracle. Cipher, like Father Hill, is hiding something; he's the kind of villain who knows everyone else's secrets but keeps his close to his chest. In "Midnight Mass," Father Hill's voice always had compassion, even in his darkest moments. Any empathy or care is utterly absent from Cipher, however.

Reviewing "Midnight Mass" back in 2021, /Film's Chris Evangelista praised Linklater's "hypnotic" voice. In "Gen V," Linklater again uses that voice to ensnare us, even though Cipher is much more repellant and odious than Father Paul ever was. It's no surprise that Linklater, with his remarkable voice, has dipped his toes into voiceover acting, too.

Indeed, "Gen V" isn't the first Prime Video superhero show he's been a part of; Linklater also voiced Batman/Bruce Wayne in the first season of the cartoon series "Batman: Caped Crusader," which takes place in the 1940s and plays up the noir side of Batman. Bruce Timm, co-creator of legendary '90s cartoon "Batman: The Animated Series," also developed "Caped Crusader" and uses a similar art style. That meant Linklater was doomed to be compared to late voice actor Kevin Conroy, the best Batman ever. But despite those comparisons, Linklater put in a strong performance, specifically as a younger Batman, who is more cold and aloof than normal.

The previous Linklater role that most resembles Cipher, though, is his supporting part in the 2024 drama "Nickel Boys." Shot entirely in first-person perspective, "Nickel Boys" (adapted from a novel by Colson Whitehead) follows two young Black boys in the 1960s American South. Jim Crow may be dying, but racism is alive and well in the film's setting. Linklater plays Spencer, headmaster of Nickel Academy, a racist "reform" school for African-American youths where they're beaten, forced into boxing matches the faculty gambles on, and sometimes outright murdered.

Though he's no super-villain, Spencer is a scarier character than Cipher since "Nickel Boys" pulls from real history. Cipher still fits into the same character archetype, though, being the evil head of a sinister school. Cipher's first major scene in the "Gen V" season 2 premiere, "New Year, New U," is when Cate (Maddie Phillips) comes to him to ask about her friend Andre's (Chance Perdomo) death while incarcerated. (This was a consequence of Perdomo passing away between seasons.) Cipher couldn't care less about Andre's death (he failed at survival of the fittest), and when Cate presses Cipher for more info, he nearly shoves her hand into the blender where he's making a smoothie lunch.

Much of Cipher's character is currently shrouded in mystery, but "Gen V" couldn't have picked a better actor than Hamish Linklater to play its soulless new villain (no backhanded compliment intended). And while Cipher probably won't make it out of "Gen V" alive, "Caped Crusader" has been renewed for a second season. I can't wait to hear more of what Linklater does as Batman; he's an actor with the range to play both a superhero and super-villain.

"Gen V" is streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes of season 2 out on Wednesdays.