The Boys Boss, Stars on Firecracker’s Gift for Homelander: ‘The Most Insane and Deranged Season 4 Moment’
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Boys Season 4, Episode 6. Proceed at your own risk!
The Boys has done its fair share of crazy things this season — suped-up, flying sheep! a lobotomy-fueled hookup! everything related to Splinter! — but Firecracker’s unique gift for Homelander in this week’s episode takes the cake, according to showrunner Eric Kripke.
After being given the cold shoulder by Homelander and Sister Sage at Tek Knight’s party, Firecracker (played by Valorie Curry) later approached The Seven’s leader to prove her loyalty to him. She started to unzip her top, and Homelander replied that he’s not sexually attracted to her. But this wasn’t about sex: Firecracker had taken a long regimen of drugs that gave her the ability to produce breast milk (while also slightly enlarging her heart). After Firecracker squirted a stunned Homelander with the milk, she explained that she’d do anything for him.
“That’s my boy. That’s my good, little boy,” Firecracker cooed as she cradled Homelander in her arms while he drank from her bosom.
Homelander’s penchant for breast milk is a storied one, with former Vought exec Madelyn Stillwell previously providing the supe with the goods. And yet, the interaction between Firecracker and Homelander is still shocking and twisted in its own way.
“We knew she wanted to jockey for position ahead of Sage and try to become Homelander’s number two, and she’s really good at reading people’s emotional needs,” Kripke tells TVLine. “And so then the [writers’] room starts asking, ‘Well, what is Homelander’s deepest, darkest emotional need that he would be afraid to ask anyone and that no one else could give to him?’ and it’s a short hop, skip and a jump to his most secret desire is to actually breastfeed.”
“I remember [staff writer] Ellie Monahan, in the room, saying, ‘Well, if we do this, this is the craziest thing we’ve ever done,'” Kripke continues. “I mean, it’s not the biggest thing we’ve ever done… But asking, like, Ant [Starr] to simulate suckling on Val’s breast is just wild.”
Kripke singles out the precise moment when Firecracker squirts Homelander in the face with her breast milk as “hilarious and bizarre,” and any other show in its right mind probably wouldn’t have shown what comes next, he notes.
“Like, you know what’s going to happen. It’s time to cut away. But the fact that we show the actual breastfeeding and him being cradled in her lap and everything, it’s just so unhinged, like even for me,” Kripke says. “I don’t know why. Look, insanity is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. But for me, that moment could win the award for the most insane and deranged Season 4 moment.”
Antony Starr, who plays Homelander, was also taken aback by the odd scene, which he “found the strangest out of everything [we’ve done], because it was just so psychologically weird,” the actor shares in the above video. “It was played like a love scene almost. It was like this beautiful, intimate scene. The absurdity of what we’re doing, it’s bonkers. I love it!”
Even though Curry is new to the Prime Video series, the actress was aware of Homelander’s unusual dairy preference before joining the show this season as the ultra conservative, conspiracist supe.
“Everybody’s aware of Homelander’s love for breast milk,” Curry says with a laugh. “It felt inevitable to me when Kripke told me that that was coming up. Like, of course that was going to happen eventually, and it totally makes sense that it’s Firecracker. I loved that scene. I love the way that it played. I love how vulnerable, intimate, and, like, totally sincere it is, which just makes it so much weirder. It’s perfect. I love that it’s such a sort of superficially sexualized character that does something really explicit that is not at all sexual. It’s just, like, the perfect [gift] that nobody else could give him.”
And now Firecracker finally has her way in with Homelander, which is “pretty effective, at least for a while,” Curry says.
“One of the things about Firecracker, especially at that point, is that she really isn’t afraid of him,” Curry continues. “That’s part of why I think she’s willing to go out on that limb and to be vulnerable in that way and to also, like, call out his vulnerability, because that’s a bold move. She really thinks he is the ideal in her mind. So it requires a kind of fearlessness to do it.”
But getting closer to Homelander may turn out to be a be-careful-what-you-wish-for situation for Firecracker. “Once she’s really in with him, she finds out who he is and why everybody’s so scared of him, and at that point, it’s like she’s caught in a trap of her own making,” Curry previews.
Press PLAY above to watch our interview with Starr and Curry, then hit the comments with your thoughts on Firecracker’s gift.
Shocking, but then you’re like, “Yup. Of course they would go there.” Classic Boys.
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Small detail: I love that Antony Starr just casually refers to Homelander as “Homey.”
I still don’t understand how Firecracker knew about Homelander’s fetish for breast milk. It wasn’t as of he showed signs of it in public. Can someone explain this?
Perhaps there is more to Firecracker than meets the eye?
Wondered that myself but 2 options I can think of. One is that Firecracker has been searching Homelander’s room for info, we saw the empty baby milk bottles a couple of eps back when A-Train stole the Compound V for Hughie. The other is that historically the supes don’t seem to bother or care about each other knowing their vices, even though the general public don’t.
Yeah, I think it’s believably a combination of the two.
Supes are a lot less guarded among their own kind, and prone to gossip about each other’s dirty secrets. Homelander has been famous for a long time, so it’s totally plausible that he slipped up at some point and somebody blabbed.
And Firecracker seems especially savvy about collecting and exploiting all the gossip (and perhaps engaging in a bit of stalking, if needed.)
They didn’t lay it all out, but likely its in the files Vought keeps on him. If you’re sneaky, crafty, smart and / or paranoid enough to go looking for the dirt (and she definitely is enough of at least some of those things), it’s not much of a stretch that she managed to get ahold of his Vought file.
Great performance from Susan Heyward this week. I wondered how they were going to justify the smartest person in the world joining Homelander’s entirely self-serving goals, but her speech about how no one would listen to her so essentially “f them all” was another sad commentary on today’s society, and her change from smartest person in the world to child-like at the end of the episode was really impressive.
So I guess we’re just gonna ignore the rumors about Starr’s on set behavior and why McElligott left, not hold him accountable or do any type of journalism and keep enabling him like Kripke does? Cool. Cool.
Has this actually been substantiated anywhere besides “anonymous sources on Reddit?” Not saying it can’t be true, but there is a difference between an internet rumor and a newsworthy allegation.
Weird how we’ve never heard a peep about this until now, right after MAGA world realized that the show has been parodying them all this time. Now suddenly some rando on Reddit “heard it from an actor whose name he doesn’t want to reveal without his permission”. So convenient. Without some sort of proof, in your owns words, it’s a rumor.
Yes it’s Trump’s fault.
No, this is all on his supporters.
I’m not sure what’s worse Trump or those that support him….
I haven’t heard any of those rumors. If they were ttue, I think we would have heard a lot more about this. I also think in this day and age with so many examples of high-profile people who have fired for such behavior, there is no way Starr would have kept his job. In the absence of any proof that he did anything or any accusations from McElligott, we should all just ignore such unsubstantiated claims.
Turning people inside on “camera” is just fine, but a squirt of milk is too much?
You americans have weird limits.
I think the writers were saying that it was pushing boundaries in terms of what was actually being asked of the actors. A lot of the gnarliest stuff on the show is entirely CG, so the actors are just reacting to nothing and getting splashed with some fake gore. Having one actor actually simulate breastfeeding from another is an entirely different type of challenge.
It came from a breast, and they’re icky to too many Americans. More than comfortable without outrageous scenes of violence onscreen, but anything to do with a nipple will cause them to decry their evil effects on children.
Boring.
I’ve been more disturbed by different moments of this show this season, more than usual and I keep thinking I’ve just softened or something, but the breast milk thing was really sorta tame, especially compared to the rest of the episode. Homelander really is just a psychotic murderous big baby.