Hamish Linklater (Gen V, Midnight Mass) Wants Michael Flanagan to Call Him Back

The Boys teems with memorable antagonists. Jensen Ackles’ warped take on Soldier Boy and the unsettling rise of Stormfront cemented the series’ appetite for provocative villains — so much so that the universe is expanding with a planned prequel. At the center of the original show, Anthony Starr’s Homelander remains a chilling focal point, even when viewers disagree about the show’s tone. When Gen V debuted as a college-set spinoff, the obvious question was whether it could produce a villain as potent and unsettling as those on its parent series.

Season 1 largely avoided that pitfall by framing Godolkin University’s Dean Indira Shetty (Shelley Conn) as a complex antagonist driven by personal loss — a figure who often read more like an antihero than a pure malefactor. For season 2, co-showrunner Michele Fazekas opted for a different energy: she cast Hamish Linklater — known for unnerving turns in projects like Midnight Mass and Legion — to inhabit a successor role, Dean Cipher.

Fazekas told Polygon that Linklater brought the precise unpredictability they wanted: a presence who keeps everyone off balance. The showrunner said they sought someone who would constantly unsettle the students and the audience — an actor who makes you feel certain he’s dangerous, but never reveals exactly why.

Cipher lives up to that billing. His origins and abilities are opaque: he baffles both characters and viewers. In one unsettling moment, he prepares a grotesque protein drink while chatting with Godolkin student Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips), then nearly places her hand into a blender after she attempts to read his mind — a scene that underlines how disquietingly unmoored he is.

As dean, Cipher engineers division among the students, convincing many they are defined solely by their powers. He cajoles some with rewards, threatens others with public humiliation or confinement, and buttons all of it with a superior, sardonic calm. He slices through deception and redirects would-be heroes toward his undisclosed ends with surgical manipulation.

In his inaugural sessions of the “Hero Optimization Seminar,” Cipher pushes students to confront violent tests — including a staged brawl with Vikor (Tait Fletcher), a hammer-wielding supe whose brutality evokes mythic, Asgardian-style combat. Cipher’s philosophy is ruthlessly Darwinian: either you rise when tested, or you never had what it takes.

Like Homelander, Cipher advances a supremacist view of supes over ordinary people. In the season premiere he delivers a rousing address to Godolkin’s students, insisting they cannot rely on humans or “race traitors” such as Starlight (Erin Moriarty), who has become a symbol of resistance. That strain of identity politics threads through Gen V season 2, and Linklater hopes viewers engage with its topical implications.

“I hope it’s received topically,” Linklater says. “The idea that one group of people is superior to another group of people should be in comic books and history books. It should not be in our newspapers.”

Long, persuasive monologues have been a hallmark of Linklater’s villain work since his interrogation scenes in Noah Hawley’s Legion, and he brings that same authoritative cadence to Gen V. He dominates the moments he occupies, delivering condemnations of his students’ flaws while deftly deflecting inquiries about his own past.

Linklater jokes that he’s repeatedly cast as villains because “the hero parts were already spoken for,” but he relishes roles that let him articulate a show’s central concerns. He also admits to struggling with line memorization, quipping that casting directors hire him despite his difficulties because he can deliver a persuasive presence.

He fondly recalls his turn as Father Paul Hill in Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass, praising Flanagan’s writing and the ensemble he assembled — and expressing a desire to work with him again.

“You want to be in shows which use genre for the greater good,” Linklater observes. “I think Midnight Mass did that in terms of talking about religion and addiction and so many other crimes of the human heart. Gen V is just grabbing the news by the throat and saying ‘We’re a part of this story too, especially for young people,’ and I think that’s thrilling.”

Gen V is streaming on Prime Video, with new episodes premiering every Wednesday through Oct. 25, 2025.

Source: Polygon