This season really wouldn’t work without Hamish Linklater, would it? Cipher is the linchpin of this story, the question mark around which this season revolves. And we’re learning more and more about him every week, though it sometimes feels like not enough.

For example … he’s secretly banging Sister Sage? In an opening flashback to a month ago, we see Cipher feeding and bathing his dad, then letting him watch while they have sex. It seems like puppetry is at play somehow here, like Cipher Junior is just a physical vessel for Cipher Senior to use to get around his own immobility. But Sage also shows up later in the episode to obliquely discuss their plans for Marie. It seems like she’s fully in on this, maybe an equal partner. She and Cipher both want to pressure Marie into training as hard as possible and potentially overtake Homelander as the most powerful supe.

I have to say, as much as I enjoy Sage on The Boys, this crossover feels more random than the usual guest appearances on this show, especially because the flashback does little to explain the origin of the relationship. Sage’s whole thing is that she’s the most intelligent person on earth, but these appearances don’t lean much into that, and the franchise is once again falling back on pairing her off with another male supe to sexually dominate. I’m not opposed to seeing more of this kind of cross-plotting, but it feels a little underexplained, and it doesn’t necessarily need to be Sage in the role.

Cipher is back in complete control in this episode, flexing his endless power over Marie and Jordan. He’s still intent on training Marie and pushing her powers as far as possible, and she’s still drawn to the idea despite her justified distrust. Jordan is in an even worse place, frustrated and violated in the wake of Cipher taking full control of their body during the brawl last week. And there’s really nothing they can do but bend the knee, given the ever-present threat of returning to Elmira.

With the discovery that Cate is already at Elmira, “The Kids Are Not Alright” shifts into prison-break mode. Once again, Emma and Jordan are the ones resisting a dangerous idea, and once again it’s Marie who convinces them to give their old friend another chance. She remembers the horrors of Elmira — she thought about cutting herself irreversibly while she was there — and doesn’t want Cate to go through that. She’s also pretty confident about her powers now after just one private lesson with Cipher. Ideally, they’d have somebody strong like Sam coming with, but she also is that strong supe.

However, the whole crew then falls into the first available trap at Elmira and wakes up in captivity again, slowing the episode’s momentum. If season two was going to spend time in Elmira, it would’ve made sense to do that in the first couple of installments, but of course that wouldn’t work given Chance Perdomo’s death. So it feels like some of those ideas are just shifted later in the season, after several episodes of buildup about the gang’s nightmarish time there. But it’s not a ton of fun to watch the gang suffer more, with Emma returning to her bulimic instincts and Marie returning to self-mutilation.

Cipher shows up to taunt everyone some more, uttering possibly the single creepiest line of the season when he tells Jordan, “It felt wonderful being in your body.” He also corrects Marie about his intentions for her: She’s “salvation,” not just a weapon. Whatever that means. The one really interesting moment here is when Jordan mentions knowing that Cipher is in pain all the time; they felt that during the mind control. Is it Cipher Senior’s pain they’re feeling?

Then Cipher reveals his biggest piece of leverage over Marie yet: her sister Annabeth. This roughly coincides with Cate’s successful attempt to break out of her cell, which she pulls off a little too easily, a fact that triggers everyone’s suspicion. Where are all the guards? When the gang returns to Annabeth’s cell to bust her out, though, they find her in a pool of her own blood, beyond a point of no return. We see here that Marie’s confidence in her own powers isn’t misplaced. In fact, she can do things she didn’t even know she could do — like fully resurrect her sister, a process that seems to literally almost explode her friends’ brains. This was likely Cipher’s plan all along.

It’s a pretty effective and shocking ending to a just-okay story, hopefully setting up an interesting final three episodes. My favorite subplot of this one, though, actually belongs to Sam, who offers some unexpected relief. When he vented to Jordan about his mom a couple of episodes back, I worried that these stories of parental fear and estrangement would start to get same-y, but Sam’s visit to his childhood home brings something new to the table, acknowledging the dark family history while setting him on a more introspective path.

There’s a reason Sam turns Emma down when she asks for his help with the prison break. Sure, he realized that Emma was correct about Cate just as the main Marie-Jordan-Emma trio was starting to change their minds about her, but he’s also just really enjoying his parents’ company. Well, his dad’s company — he’s the one who greets Sam with a hug when he rolls up (read: breaks down their door entirely). They have a sweet scene in Sam’s old bedroom where Sam lashes out a bit, only for his dad to explain what they went through when he (and then his brother) “died.” Sam didn’t know that they tried to see him after they eventually learned he was alive.

But there’s more baggage with Sam’s mom, whom he spots talking on the phone. The paranoia that she’s reporting him to Vought sets him off immediately, and before long, he unintentionally pushes his dad across the yard, knocking the wind out of him. It’s the type of unfortunate incident you’d expect from a story like this, and it could’ve gone much worse. But Sam’s chat with his mom later on ends the story on a touching note, especially when she says she loves him and he reacts incredulously: “You do?”

Sam’s parents sent him to Sage Grove, the psychiatric hospital, because they didn’t know what else to do. But he realizes now that his mental illness isn’t an effect of his powers; it’s part of his genes. In fact, his own uncle once pulled out a gun at a grocery store while hallucinating. “So I’m just like this?” Sam asks wistfully. That realization seems to bring him peace — and there’s not a lot of that to come by these days.

Extra Credit

• Not a ton of progress on Emma and Greg, but he is still flirting heavily.

• Polarity is really going through it this episode. First, Cipher cuts short his revenge mission with another aggressive display of dominance, stabbing himself in the hand with the knife Polarity puts to his neck. Then his powers start going out of control when he returns to drinking and mourning his son. (Sean Patrick Thomas’s delivery of “That’s my baby” almost got me teary.) Is he doomed?

• A little weird that Sam is so open with his parents about sex and/or masturbation, but okay.

• Cipher saying, “Don’t ever think you’re not an inspiration to people, Marie,” after taking her to the spot where Andre killed himself? That is cold, Cipher.

 It’s not particularly enjoyable or interesting to watch the group return to Elmira and suffer further in captivity.