Gen V Adds Midnight Mass Star in Key Role

Meet the new dean of God U.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Hamish Linklater is going from Crockett Island to Godolkin University. 

The Midnight Mass star has been cast as new character Cipher in season 2 of The Boys spinoff Gen V, replacing Shelley Conn's anti-supe Dean Indira Shetty. According to Entertainment Weekly, which reported the news, Linklater's "charismatic and charming" Dean Cipher is described as follows: "Trained as a scientist, he's politically brilliant, and has the trust and admiration of officials at the highest level."

In the first season of the college-set spinoff series, Dean Shetty's manipulations came to an end when the human-hating telepath Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips) used her mind control powers to make Shetty slice her own throat in the first season episode "Sick."

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Linklater joins a cast that includes Phillips, Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau, Lizze Broadway as Emma Meyer, Derek Luh and London Thor as Jordan Li, Asa Germann as Sam Riordan, and Zach McGowan as The Boys crossover character Dogknott. The new season will not recast Chance Perdomo's role as Andre Anderson after the actor's death in March.

Eric Kripke, who developed The Boys and co-developed Gen V, has teased that the two shows will intersect — thanks to a certain supes-killing virus — in their upcoming seasons.

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"I don't think it's a big [Gen V] season 2 spoiler to say that the virus plays a substantial story role moving forward," Kripke told Deadline. "Now, there's this potential disease out there that can potentially kill superheroes. We always knew that it was going to play a part of The Boys next season and we always knew that Butcher [Karl Urban] was going to be aware of it. As they were still shooting, I made my pitch to their room: can we bring Butcher? So, rather than Butcher just talking about it in dialogue in season 4 of The Boys, it'd be good for the audience to actually see it and him."

Kripke added: "I would also say, timeline wise, you go from season 3 of The Boys into Season 1 of Gen V — maybe a little time in between them, but basically a continuous timeline. Season 1 of Gen V hands off to season 4 of The Boys."

The Boys season 4 premieres June 13. Gen V season 2 is currently in the works at Prime Video.

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