Today, the curtain falls on The Boys, Prime Video’s unapologetic satire of American superhero culture and political polarization. As viewers soar to the blood-spattered finish line, who comes out alive is anyone’s guess. Since its inception, the series has quite often deviated from its comic-book source material, even adding an original character who never appears in the comics: Firecracker, the incendiary far-right, ultra-religious conspiracy theorist, played with a chilling, pageant-girl veneer by Valorie Curry.
After she made her debut in season 4, Firecracker (aka Misty Tucker Gray) quickly became one of the most talked-about villains in a show already overflowing with monsters. Reflecting on her time in the red, white, and blue super-suit, Curry admits that stepping onto the set for the final season came with an intense weight, even if her own character’s journey came to an end before the big finale. Spoiler alert: Firecracker already met her end at the hands of Homelander.
Valorie Curry as Firecracker appears alongside Antony Starr’s Homelander in a scene from The BoysPrime Video
"The stakes felt very high for everybody," Curry says, thinking back to the emotional atmosphere on set. "And they always feel high in a final season. They certainly did for me — just to round out the arc of the character and to want to do that justice."
Curry was acutely aware of the legacy she was stepping into, joining a production that had become a defining chapter for its long-term cast and crew. "I was very aware that I was working with people who'd been on this project for the last eight years of their lives and how incredibly important and special that is. And again, the work's always important. But the stakes just felt higher."
Because of a hectic production schedule, the cast did a significant amount of shooting out of sequence, which left little time for her to get sentimental about her last days on set. "That kept things from getting too emotional for me, you know? I think the last scene I shot for this season was from episode 4 or something like that," she notes. "Luckily, I got to do my final episode sequentially, so that whole arc we shot pretty much in sequence, which was such a gift. But that eased the passage out. There's nothing worse than ending a show with your death."
Firecracker’s demise came in episode 5, a powerhouse installment that forced audiences—and Curry herself—to look past the character’s flawed persona. When she first received the script, Curry was thrilled to find that showrunner Eric Kripke was giving the right-wing pundit a surprisingly deep internal conflict.
Valorie Curry as Firecracker in a scene from the final season of The BoysPrime Video
"What I was most excited about was to have this arc about her spiritual crisis," Curry shares. "That was a surprise to me. Especially looking back, I'm so grateful that it was such a meaningful human story. It was plot, yes, but it could have been very different. It was such a different side of Firecracker to see."
Still, the actress harbored no illusions about her character's ultimate survival. "I always knew she was going to die. She had to die," she says with a laugh. "And I didn't know how. I think it changed a couple of times. It was always going to be the same person who did it. But the act specifically changed. But I was just really, really excited to have such a meaningful storyline to sink my teeth into."
As the layers of the onion peeled back in her final episode, Curry found herself experiencing an emotion with Firecracker she never felt before: sympathy. In past interviews, she had described Firecracker as a ridiculous right-wing clown, so finding the humanity in someone so despicable came as a surprise.
Valorie Curry appears as Firecracker out of costume in a scene from The BoysPrime Video
"It’s our job as actors, especially when we play villains, to never judge our characters," the lesbian actor says of her eventual epiphany. "And it's impossible not to judge this character, especially when there are two facets. With Firecracker, there's the multifaceted human character; but then there's also the satire that she represents. You can't play that without judging what you're satirizing, if you know what I mean."
To embody Firecracker authentically, Curry had to compartmentalize the character's worst atrocities. "I have to, of course, give the caveat: I have to set aside all the things I know about Firecracker in order to just have the empathy to delve into that story, like the fact that she's a rapist and things like, let's just set that aside. Yeah, I was sad for her. But I was glad that, in a way, she’s free."
Part of what made Firecracker so unsettling to watch was how closely she mirrored contemporary American political figures and Fox News pundits. The Boys has earned a reputation for predicting bizarre real-world events, from political rhetoric to the recently erected golden Donald Trump statue at Trump National Doral Golf Club, which Kripke wrote into the show as a golden Homelander statue long before it manifested in reality.
Firecracker and Homelander’s disturbing relationship became one of The Boys’ most shocking storylines.Prime Video
"It's deeply disturbing that things that were written almost two years ago and filmed over a year ago are things that are happening in real time," Curry says. "I know Kripke's definitely spoken of the fact that they tried to write the most outlandish parody of what could happen, thinking they were way overshooting the marks. So the idea that it's so similar is really upsetting."
Surprisingly, Curry avoided channeling specific media figures to build Firecracker's voice and posture, wanting to ensure the supervillain felt like a living, breathing human rather than a cheap impression.
"I actually never intentionally based her on anyone," Curry reveals. "Obviously, she is inspired by certain political figures. But I actually really tried to avoid creating a character that was — in terms of her voice, in terms of her movement — based on anything, because then she is just a parody and I needed her to be a person."
Instead, she looked to a different kind of infamous American figure. "Honestly, the only person that I would think of sometimes was Tonya Harding," she laughs, referring to the controversial former figure skater. "I think there was one line in the first episode that introduced her, where it described her as a Tonya Harding of supes. And I was like, [snaps fingers] 'There it is.'"
A signature part of Firecracker’s identity was her costume — an intentionally hyper-sexualized, patriotism-dipped suit that Curry describes as both an acting tool and a physical challenge. Over her two seasons on the series, her relationship with the outfit evolved dramatically.
"I've been on a journey with the suit. It's transformative," Curry explains. "I've never played a character that is so outside in. It's so informed by appearance, but that's who she is. I think once I keyed into the idea that everything about her is fake, that allowed me to lean into it rather than trying to find a way to make all that real. She is so much the mask. That red lipstick should really get its own credit."
She added, "Those heels are like eight inches. I was so excited to get that off at the end of the first season."
When the time came to leave the set for good, the super-suit remained in the Vought archives, but Curry didn't leave empty-handed. "I have some souvenirs. It's mostly set dressing because they do such an incredible job in creating these Easter eggs, like any detail you look at in the set is full of advertising from Vought. I've got candy bars and things; firecracker space lasers. And I have a Buckstar light mug," she reveals. "They would never let me take my suit. It's worth more than my life."
With today’s series finale bringing a definitive end to The Boys, Curry is realizing just how much she will miss the rare creative freedom the fearless show provided.
"I'm gonna miss being on a show that is just spotlighting everything wrong with the world, with our politics, with society," Curry says thoughtfully. "It's such an incredible satire and it has been from the beginning, that's what drew me in. Like, the way that it cares, or the way that it dramatized the MeToo movement and all the incidents within that. That really made me excited to be on the show. And it has really been a place for a lot of us and certainly myself, to put frustration and even fear and anger and to get to work with writers, to work with Eric Kripke, who's not afraid to comment on things and to poke fun at things. It has been really, really great. I will miss that."
Watch Valorie Curry in The Boys on Prime Video.
Valorie Curry’s Firecracker poses with Vought-branded concessionsPrime Video
