The Boys’ Latest Shocker Puts A Cap On Its Best Character Arc
Turns out The Boys can show nuance when it wants to!
From the beginning of The Boys Season 5, it was abundantly clear that nobody was safe. A-Train, the Supe who brought Hughie into this fight to begin with, finally fell at the hands of Homelander, as he had long suspected. Since then, we’ve seen a number of shocking murders: Rock Hard and Jetstream in Episode 2, Maverick and Cindy in Episode 3, and Quinn in Episode 4.
Warning! Spoilers for The Boys Season 5 Episode 5 ahead!
But Season 5 Episode 5, “One-Shots,” has an all-star cast of casualties, including Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, Will Forte, Craig Robinson, Kumail Nanjiani, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. But that was only one of the multiple parts of this episode — another contained one of the most shocking betrayals in all of The Boys, wrapped up in its best emotional arc yet.
Firecracker has become the new leading lady of the Seven. While Sister Sage is much more happy scheming in the background and eating Crunchwraps, Firecracker is the poster child of this era of Vought, complete with her own TV show, Truthbomb with Firecracker, a show that has only become a more powerful propaganda tool now that Homelander has established his own church, the Democratic Church of America.
Firecracker has lunch with an old friend while in disguise in her vignette in “One-Shots.”
But before Firecracker became Firecracker, she was Misty Tucker Gray from Daytona, Florida. That’s who we see in the first part of this anthology episode. She meets in secret with her former preacher who practically raised her, who now is subject to raids by Homelander’s henchmen. “Homelander is a... he's a great American. He can stop bullets, he can fly, and do amazing things,” the reverend says. “Those aren't miracles. And he is not God. If you're the same Misty Tucker Gray that I taught the Bible to over fish, I think you know it, too.”
Misty considers asking Homelander to go easy on her home parish, even asking Soldier Boy if he thinks it’s a good idea, but when she prepares for her next Truthbomb recording, she gets hit by a curveball: Homelander wants her to discuss the raids on the show. It’s clear that she’s conflicted, but her professionalism wins out over her conscience and she codemnns her former preacher and even implies he preyed on children.
It’s a gorgeously complicated moment in a show that is usually very morally cut-and-dry. This season set out to take down megachurches and the religious-industrial complex, but Firecracker’s faith has always been important to her, and that’s not something she’s willing to throw away immediately, even if she does eventually dispose of the Jesus action figure she carried around with her everywhere. It’s surprising that in between lines of dialogue like “An honest to God faith healing? That's like a nine-point bump with Pentecostals right there,” The Boys found room to acknowledge that faith is a truly foundational virtue for so many people, if it’s practiced responsibly.
In this episode, we finally see Firecracker’s doubts about the Democratic Church of America creep in.
But this is still The Boys, and no good deed goes unpunished. When Homelander returns from LA, he confronts Firecracker aboout the doubts she told Soldier Boy. Firecracker immediately folds, reminding him that she gave everything to serve him, but that’s not enough for him. Without a second thought, he jams her head into a statue of an eagle, fatally wounding her.
Even if it ends in tragedy, this story is one of the best The Boys has ever told, examining how even the faces of abject evil can have doubts sometimes, but there’s no room in Vought for thoughts like that. Even if you do everything you can — including taking medication to induce lactation — to convince Homelander you’re on his side, all it takes is one doubt for him to throw you out into the cold. That’s the true evil, not religion.
