‘The Boys’ Star Valorie Curry on Firecracker’s Fate & Exploring the Human Side of Her Supe

The Boys bid adieu to another major character in the final season as Homelander (Antony Starr) let his emotions out in a violent way for “One-Shots.” Warning: Spoilers for The Boys Season 5 Episode 5 ahead!

As Homelander worked to raise his religious status, Firecracker (Valorie Curry) was forced to put her own beliefs aside and turn her back on loved ones to do so. While viewers have seen her lie plenty of times before, this forced agenda throws Firecracker under a new light as we see her vulnerablities peek through in hardly-held tears during a broadcast of Truthbomb, in which she paints her former pastor in an ugly light to further Homelander’s cause.

While Firecracker attempts to reassure Homelander of her loyalty, a slip of the tongue, referring to him as a “man” instead of a “god” plants just enough doubt to send her down a dark path in that final conversation. As Homelander appears to embrace her, Firecracker has no time to realize he’s driving her head towards the spiky end of his eagle’s statue, impaling the side of her head on the art piece.

Firecracker is just the latest casualty of the final season, so who could be next? Fans will have to tune in as the remaining episodes unfold. In the meantime, Curry breaks down Firecracker’s demise in the Q&A below.

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When Firecracker meets with her former reverend, who begs for her help, is she aware that any kind of assistance she can provide is a losing battle against Homelander’s push to become a god in the public’s eyes?

Valorie Curry: Yeah, I think so. I don’t know if that can be motivation, but that’s a lot of what is behind her choices is a feeling — and probably a truth — that her hands are tied. She doesn’t actually have any choices left. She has worked her way so close to this center of f**ked up power that she’s actually lost all of her agency. She’s this close to power, but she has no agency.

We see that even more when she’s trying to sell that she believes in Homelander as a god figure. Why does she agree to go along with something she clearly doesn’t believe? Is it about not resisting what’s been set in motion or purely about self-preservation?

She’s made her living selling lies. She’s been doing it for years, and I don’t think she’s ever had any moral quandaries about whether or not she really believes what she’s saying because it’s just tools. It’s a performance. It’s a show. It doesn’t matter what she really believes, and she’s finally being asked to sell a lie that actually does betray something in her, and I think she tries to see if she can. And what she finds is that she can do it, but she can’t do it and come out unscathed. She can tell the lie, and I think that is really devastating to realize is that she can do what she did on Truthbomb, to the Reverend, but she can’t do that without losing whatever humanity she had left.

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While watching that Truthbomb sequence, it really does seem like Firecracker is selling herself out. How was it filming such a soul-crushing scene? 

It was soul-crushing to play. This episode had my favorite scene to shoot in the series, and it had the hardest scene to shoot in the series, and that was by far the hardest. I don’t necessarily mean challenging as an actor; it was so hard to do and to feel and to put myself in, it’s very physical. Every time I talk about the scenes in this episode, it’s a very physical response that I get, and when you play any kind of villain, as an actor, your job is never to judge your character, but it’s ridiculous not to judge Firecracker.

She’s a terrible person, but I was really grateful that in the arc leading to her death, we get to see that mask fall, and she’s terrible, sure, but she’s also a human. And one of the things that I love about the show in general is that they never excuse villains, but they always explain them. And I think it would have been really tragic if she had died still the clown, you know?

Speaking of her death, does Firecracker see where that conversation with Homelander is leading during her final moments? 

I don’t think she goes into that room or even through a lot of the course of that argument — because it feels like an argument to me — thinking she’s going to die. I think in the scene where she walks in her apartment, and he’s there and telling her that he’s god, she totally thinks she’s going to die because she has been on the outs at that point. Her existential fear happened earlier. And what I find really interesting about the course of that scene is that she could have walked away. He just fires her, he doesn’t kill her, he doesn’t threaten her, which is kind of rude, you know [Laughs]. He just fires her, and she’s sort of disposable, and she has become so broken by that point and has given him so much, not only in her devotion to him, literally, if she is still a Christian at heart… what she did, denying Christ, like she’s going to hell.

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She means it when she says, “I gave you my soul,” and all he’s ever wanted is for somebody to really love him, and she’s the only person who has ever actually offered that. Not fear, not just being a sycophant — although she’s totally a sycophant — but she genuinely loved him from the beginning, and he’s done nothing but disdain her, and so I think she cannot resist this impulse as he’s walking away.

And I think Antony even said at one point, he was like, “Would you yell at me?” I’m like, “Yes,” and she has to sort of explode with this, “How dare you?” righteous indignation, and then that hooks him in a way she doesn’t expect. She gets his attention, and then has to find a way to land this thing, and at that point, she’s already decided to put on the show. She can really bring it home, and she doesn’t expect it because [she] felt she was winning the argument, that she had convinced him. There was a closeness. At one point, I was like, “Are we gonna kiss?”

The feeling, at least, was that the impulse he has to kill her has nothing to do with what came before. It’s because of how vulnerable he felt in that moment, because she was winning the argument, because she was touching on the humanity that he so desperately wants to distance himself from.

The Boys, Season 5, Wednesdays, Prime Video