The Boys season five’s fifth episode is quite the doozy. We get a wild and bloody scene in Hollywood and some seriously weird behavior from Terror the bulldog. But, the episode also focused a fair amount of attention on Firecracker, Homelander’s confidante and media guru who spreads whatever messages he wants her to. Firecracker continues to battle some serious inner conflict with Homelander’s “revelation” that he’s God and her own belief system she’s held since childhood. And, in the end, her devotion to the snake of a supe ended with her demise. We spoke to Valorie Curry about her character’s final bow and if she thinks Firecracker got the ending she deserved.
Nerdist: When did you find out that Firecracker was going to die this season and what was your initial reaction to that news?
Valorie Curry: To be honest, [Showrunner Eric] Kripke was pretty clear from the beginning that she was going to die at some point. I think I knew it was going to be season five. And that’s because he wanted to explore the idea, the meme that “the leopards won’t eat my face.” And it was going around a lot at the time. Yes, the leopards are going to eat your face eventually! So she was always going to end in some way and probably by [Homelander’s] hand.
I was surprised she lasted until episode five because she was looking pretty rough by the end of season four. But it was really great to get to end her story based on this arc that was really about her conflict and her personal convictions rather than it being poisoning through the medication she’s taking or something. Do you know what I mean? It came out of character and I think it was really apt for her and I was grateful for that.
It was kind of a full circle moment. Earlier this season, when Homelander first started introducing this concept of being this Messiah-like figure, you see that very deep discomfort in her. Yet she still sticks with what he’s doing and commits to it. What do you think that Firecracker went along with this outside of not wanting to die, which still happened anyway?
Curry: I think her reaction to his revelation is twofold. The first level is panic because she realizes he’s absolutely insane. Her vision of him has fallen apart…She really did believe that he was the embodiment of everything she idealized, everything good. And she has come to know that he’s dangerous, he is violent, he is mercurial, he’s stupid, and now he’s insane. And she has hitched her wagon to somebody who is all of those things, but now crazy is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. She is being asked to, in many ways, do what she’s always done, which is just say what people want to hear. She’s become so much of a performance rather than a person because she will say anything to appeal to the people in the room.
It’s hard to even know who she is anymore. And it just pushes her to her limit in terms of that. It’s sort of a test for herself like, “Can I say this and have it not actually touch who I am?” And she finds out she can’t. Also she has no choice at this point. She’s dying either way. Or maybe she’s not dying, but it’s like she’s too inside of it. There’s no getting out. She has to do this, or at least she feels that way, but she’s not going to get out unscathed on a personal level. When it comes to that scene with him, that final scene, she’s so broken. She’s given up whatever humanity she has left.
It was a really tense stand-off. I think it gives a little bit more conflicting emotion than most people would think because anyone with the Seven is not good overall. But then you think about this loss of agency and how she’s used to being in spaces where you have deep devotion and dedication to something, and if that isn’t what you wanted it to be, then it is hard to walk away.
Curry: Yes, to be devoted to someone who then asks you to betray yourself in order to show your devotion. I mean, I think you’ve kind of hit that on the head.
So I’ll ask this question and I think it’s probably going to have a complicated answer. Do you think that Firecracker ultimately got the ending that she earned and deserved?
Curry: Well, you know what? I’m going to answer for Firecracker because I don’t know that I can answer from my perspective. It’s my job as an actor not to judge my character, but obviously this one, you have to judge. Firecracker is terrible! But one of the things that I was really staying grounded in with this arc is that it’s not just this sort of personal betrayal. It’s not just that she’s being asked to betray her father figure.
It’s that if her belief in Christianity and Jesus is truly a deeply held belief, asking her to do this is asking her to deny Christ, and that is Hell. And if you still have any glimmer of that religion, that doctrine inside of you, that fear of Hell is there and it’s not going away. And so I think there is perhaps an argument that she’s a martyr to her cause, you know what I mean? In the end, she does deny him and she dies anyway. But I think she could probably spin that as she was a martyr to the cause.
She would totally do that. I would want to know how she’d spin and report on her own death. If Firecracker had lived and we had more time in the series, do you think that she would’ve ever gotten to the point where she could come into an alliance with Annie and find some kind of compromise? They’ve always had such a deeply contentious relationship.
Curry: I wish that that was something that we could have touched back on, that Annie relationship. I don’t know. I think maybe if there had been more time. One of the things that is so stressful for these characters is there’s so much urgency. You’ve got to make the choice and figure out who you’re with quickly. Everything is happening very quickly and the stakes are so high. I think there is a world in which, given more time, she might have, but ultimately she was just trying to survive.
Where we see her by her end in season five, she would very happily be out of Vought. I think she would live underground and maybe she’s changing her name and she’s giving alligator tours on a swamp. I think she would very happily get as far away from this as possible and live very quietly and never endanger herself in this way again.