It might be about superheroes first and foremost, but The Boys is also clearly a very political show, and one which remains very vocal in its views. For the first three seasons, much of this was kept on the sidelines and the portrayals were often meant as parody, but the show has now evolved and begun outright condemning these views as dangerous. This has been particularly evident through the introduction of Firecracker (Valorie Curry), one of the newest members of The Seven and a new antagonist for The Boys — particularly Starlight (Erin Moriarty).

As society itself begins to unravel and the tentacles of Vought begin to reach the highest level of political power, having politics serve as a main plotline of the season feels like the natural outcome of living in such a chaotic world. Firecracker herself also exists to condemn the culture of online radicalism on an individual level, using her charisma in an attempt to get back at those she believes have slighted her and outright dismissing the goodness of people. Although created specifically for the show, her inspiration by several far-right figures has been explicit, and creator Eric Kripke has made no real attempts to hide it. After watching his cast being slandered by hateful trolls, Kripke has decided to drop all pretenses and outright show the level of danger that such extremist views can cause for the world — one that Firecracker is more than ready to burn.

Firecracker Feels More Relevant Than Stormfront and Soldier Boy on 'The Boys'

Right from the season premiere with its portrayal of political bribery, The Boys has never been subtle about its political views, but each season has portrayed these views very differently. The first season was mostly interested in the corrupt corporate side of superheroes, and the second season explored themes of Nazism. Even in Season 2, though, the fact that Stormfront (Aya Cash) is from the 1920s allows us to feel distant from her, making her a relic of the past used to point out problems of the present. The same is true of Soldier Boy (Jensen Ackles) in Season 3, whose American ideals remain largely deconstructed and out of touch with the times. Only now, with the introduction of Firecracker, do we get a truly modern interpretationof political radicalism. Filtered through internet culture as much as it is through bigoted rhetoric, Firecracker holds a mirror up to our society and forces us to confront the harm that such views can cause.

Nowhere is the purpose of Firecracker and her supporters made more clear than at TruthCon, where her online conspiracies manifest into a gathering place for those with similar political views, ones utterly detached from reality. Unlike Stormfront, who was genuine in her beliefs (no matter how vile they were), Firecracker only views her followers as a means to an end, just as Homelander (Antony Starr) does in the same episode. The Boys has already displayed how much damage such views can cause, even indirectly, with one episode in Season 2 showing the radicalization of one follower translating to real violence. However, the harm inflicted is much more deliberate this season, as the murder of M.M.'s (Laz Alonso) ex-wife's new boyfriend, Todd (Matthew Gorman) can clearly attest to. In Season 4, Episode 5, Firecracker is also shown to have a thirst for violence, which is evident when Homelander deems that The Seven need to start wielding their power more violently. While it might initially be viewed as darkly ironic that Firecracker is played by Valorie Curry, who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community herself, perhaps no one is better equipped to show how much her viewpoints put vulnerable people at risk.

What makes Firecracker more dangerous than Stormfront is primarily the optics of her public persona and the reach of her rhetoric, both of which render her movement more potent. Unlike her predecessor, her status as a deeply conservative Christian makes her beliefs more publicly acceptable to ordinary Americans than a literal Nazi, who even Homelander seeks to distance himself from. By leaking her own information and denying Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) the chance to blackmail her, she understands the nature of her own movement, displaying that the echo chamber in which she operates renders her effectively immune from political scandal among her own followers.

Firecracker Radicalizes Her Followers and Uses Them to Commit Violence

Rather than a literal and physical army of superpowered heroes that Stormfront and her late husband had always wanted, Firecracker is much more terrifying because she knows that radicalizing her viewers enough will lead ordinary people to commit violence. The danger is made explicit when a man tries to breach the Starlight House to "liberate" children supposedly being trafficked there, a reference to the Pizzagate conspiracy that led to a similar incident. She also reveals information about Starlight's previously private abortion to the world, a revelation that causes Starlight great distress, inciting violence from an otherwise level-headed and just character. With Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit) planning to claim the White House under a friendly public persona, Firecracker serves as the darker side of Vought and its corporate face, exploiting her followers without remorse or hesitation using modern communication and internet culture.

Unlike other villains, Firecracker also reflects class differences between other characters, speaking with a distinctive southern drawl and hailing from a rural evangelical church, which leaves her feeling vaguely marginalized and deeply insecure about her background even after joining the Seven. Consequently, she serves as the mirror to Starlight in the story, being born and raised in the same culture and even having similar powers at their disposal, but lacking her idealism and empathy. While Starlight is meant to display superheroes at their best, Firecracker represents a more cynical view, using her rural background to leverage her personal grievances against the people who wronged her. Her vendetta against Starlight, who bullied her during their time in a Supe pageant as teenagers, might be legitimate, but she weaponizes that pain onto everyone around her.

As she later admits to Sister Sage (Susan Heyward) during her first real introduction, she helps others feel powerful but in a much darker sense, highlighting her dangerous sway over the population by provoking bitterness and nihilism. However, the harm she inflicts upon others rarely gives them actual power and serves to benefit her own position, especially because she privately mocks such conspiracies. As an actual victim of child trafficking, Kimiko (Karen Fukuhara) calls out this hypocrisy during her infiltration of TruthCon, even at the potential cost of her own safety.

Like Homelander, Firecracker Has Real-Life Inspiration

For much of The Boys' run, Eric Kripke has not been shy about taking inspiration from real-life events, and often directly in reaction to them. The marketing video released by Vought expressing their patriotic support for Homelander during his trial — just days after his inspiration was indicted in real life — is one clear example. Despite being originally intended as a DC Comics tie-in story, every superhero character from The Boys was created as a parody of another, but Firecracker is an original character created for the series, making her unique. Therefore, Kripke had the chance to mix a variety of real figures for the character, and he made sure to deliver on this premise.

In an interview with Variety, Kripke has listed two inspirations for Firecracker. Perhaps the most prominent of them is Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Congresswoman from Georgia who is often berated by her fellow Republican politicians. More specifically, though, he cited numerous similar examples of politicians who are both inspired by an authoritarian leader and remain loyal to them:

“Firecracker came from like, “Hey, isn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene scary?” And just that type of personality. Like, you had Trump, but now you have these Trump spawn that are trying to outdo each other for how outrageous and sexualized and gun-toting and slavishly obedient they can be. And just that idea — it wouldn’t just start and end with Homelander, he would start to create these spores that would grow into these other characters, and she’s a version of that.”

In addition to political influences, media figures have served as an inspiration for the marketing image of Firecracker. Just as the comics often called out the United States during the War on Terror and the Bush administration, the show does this with its own era, one where bigotry has taken on a whole new life online. In a later interview, Kripke says Firecracker also has traces of media figures likeAlex Jones, and that there's "just so much straight-up, Qanon-style misinformation out there, that was what we wanted Firecracker in 'Truth Bomb' to represent." Similarly, Cameron Coleman (Matthew Edison) of Vought News represents the television side of the same idea that gave birth to online copycats.

'The Boys' Needed To Become More Political in Season 4

There are several arguments one can make for why The Boys has largely abandoned subtlety in its most recent season, some deliberate and others happenstance. For one thing, Season 4 of The Boys was delayed due to the writing strikes, leaving it to air right in the middle of an election year. Another reason has more to do with the response to the show as a whole, since the writers have always been conscious of internet culture. After seeing Homelander being praised unironically by Nazi and white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, Eric Kripke has been extremely vocal about his feelings, and remains vehemently opposed to those groups adopting the characters as their mascots.

Regarding the series itself, focusing on politics feels like an entirely natural conclusion for a show about how much corporations dominate our culture. With themes of identity and supremacy so apparent, the questions raised by the very existence of superheroes also touch on many of the issues other people face today, both within The Boys and beyond it. Through the grievances of Firecracker and the open vanity of Homelander, we're now seeing their flaws projected onto and influencing society at large, to the point where they've now become almost impossible to ignore. Whether or not the show follows the climactic ending of the original comics, they have made their stances clear and the only question that remains is if this world, so similar to our own, can still remain stable when things finally and inevitably explode.

The Boys Season 4 airs every Thursday on Prime Video in the U.S.