The Boys has finally pulled off its grotesque Firecracker twist, but it may be the beginning of the end for the character.
Season 4 of The Boys introduced Firecracker and Sister Sage, two new supes recruited to replace Starlight and Queen Maeve on The Seven. While Sister Sage proved herself by helping Homelander prepare his coup, Firecracker has had to be a little more manipulative.
Fans got their first hint of what Firecracker was up to with Season 4 Episode 4, where she’s revealed to be taking drugs meant to increase breast milk production. Firecracker finally made her move in Episode 6. After thanking Homelander for her role in The Seven, she revealed she had undergone a long medical treatment to produce breast milk for him.
While it makes sense for the manipulative Firecracker to take advantage of Homelander’s proclivities, it’s also a move that has almost certainly sealed her fate. The few we’ve seen try to manipulate Homelander have all wound up dying horrible deaths.
Madelyn Stillwell was the show’s original source of Homelander’s fetishization. As fans were getting to know the character, they watched him leer at her through walls and obsess over her as she tried to produce breast milk for her son.
For her part, Madelyn had fostered the relationship to keep Homelander in line. She’s shown to be using sex appeal to manipulate Homelander upon his debut in The Boys Presents Diabolical and allows him to suckle on her breasts as a reward, making sure he is always willing to fall in line for her.
However, it ends poorly for her once Homelander learns she lied to him about Ryan’s existence. It leads to him killing Madelyn by melting her face with his laser vision. Later seasons show Homelander destroyed by the loss, to the point that he forces a shape-changing supe to take on her appearance.
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There’s also Homelander’s ill-fated relationship with Stormfront. Though she wasn’t able to satisfy his breast milk fetish, she did meet a dreadful end, incinerated by Ryan’s heat vision in a moment of panic. It left her severely burnt and paralyzed.
The site of the disfigured Stormfront shatters Homelander. But we find out in Season 3 that he kept her alive, which may have been the cruelest thing he could have done. When Homelander refuses to help her raise an army of superpowered Nazis, Stormfront kills herself.
Homelander has proven wildly unstable, and Firecracker has put herself in his crosshairs. While she may have ingratiated herself after Sister Sage’s injuries nearly jeopardized Homelander’s plans for a coup, we’ve seen from his past relationships that he’ll turn on anyone he views as beneath him in a heartbeat.
Homelander almost certainly has other problems to concern himself with, considering Billy Butcher’s efforts to make a supe-killing virus and the presence of a leak inside The Seven. But for Firecracker, it’s only a matter of time before she faces his wrath.
If you’re looking for more The Boys, check out our list of the most shocking moments in The Boys Season 4 so far, and make sure you know all the new supes joining The Boys. You can also keep up with the Season 4 release schedule and find other new TV shows to stream this month.
