While The Boys Season 4 has had the heroes fighting Homelander’s crew on the physical front, a lot has been mental warfare as well. Thanks to the arrival of Valorie Curry’s Firecracker, Team Homelander has amped up the culture wars. She is pushing right-wing propaganda, conspiracy theories and fake news on her media program for Vought International.

It has Karl Urban’s Billy Butcher and his allies desperate to break the hold Firecracker has over a vast portion of the American masses. Episode 4, “Wisdom of the Ages,” has them thinking they possess a trump card that could hurt her. However, as they put their plan into play, it backfires terribly, which damages their movement, and leaves a huge dent in Starlight’s public image. Furthermore, viewers witness how impressive Homelander’s new hires are.

The Boys’ Accidentally Makes Firecracker a Saint

Butcher is trying to redeem himself after his drinking got him fired from the Boys. He wants to bring Homelander down and ensure Ryan doesn’t become a tyrannical Superman like Homelander. Butcher eventually uses his contacts and pulls up some old information the alt-right tried to cover up. It turns out, while Firecracker pretends to be a clean-cut, all-American lady, she has a shady past. Firecracker had sex with a minor years ago, which makes her a hypocrite. She constantly paints leftists and the Starlighters as pedophiles, so Butcher thinks threatening her with this will scare her.

He wants her to spill information on the brains behind Homelander’s operation: the genius Sister Sage. Firecracker calls Butcher’s bluff, however. When he shows her he has a tweet loaded to go, she presses send. She marches off and then gets on her show, where she continues to use Christianity as a clarion call for her followers to put “America first” and fight the left. She intends to use this intel to make her religious campaign more propitious.

She confesses her sins even before people read the news online. She admits it was an inexplicable, explicit error, but it was bad judgment from a young lady seeking purpose and guidance. Firecracker gaslights her cult, admitting this crime caused her to repent, find God and then a place leading the flock that worships Homelander. It’s very much a satirical play on reality, where political acolytes of certain parties turn a blind eye and forgive their leaders. They convince their followers they have a higher calling and must unite. Friction won’t achieve the endgame: salvation.

Firecracker’s popularity rises instantaneously, leaving the Boys as stumped as ever. They wanted to weaponize this secret, but they inadvertently galvanized her as a symbol. It proves how adept she is at improvising. Firecracker works the audience like a fiddle, which Sage accepts remotely. Sage has catered for everything, including her minions being slandered. Sage then reacts with her own plan.

The Boys’ Firecracker Outs Starlight’s Dirty Secrets

Thanks to Sage, Firecracker has verbal fire to fight back with. Firecracker confesses that Starlight, back in her younger days as Annie January, who harmed people during one of her superhero rescues. Her incandescent powers blinded a woman, but Annie didn’t care. She moved on, soaked up the publicity, and worked on her celebrity career as a superhero. All that the young and unrefined Starlight wanted was to be a media sensation.

A reticent Annie is crushed when she sees this live on the news. Her peers are stunned, but she admits she was immature back then. To top it off, Firecracker has another “truthbomb.” She spills the beans on Annie’s pregnancy from The Boys Season 3. Annie aborted a child she and Hughie were having. Firecracker rubs salt in the wounds by leaking this, too. This results in Starlight quickly battering her in the air.

The cameras pick it all up. Thankfully, The Boys’ new leader, Mother’s Milk, pulls Annie off. He admits they need to leave this for another place and time. Unfortunately, the entire country has seen the assault. It’s gone viral as well. Hughie is compassionate back at the base, while the others take pity and empathize with her. They get why she’s so hurt and emotional. No one should ever be subjected to an invasion of privacy like that.

This dredges up personal demons that Annie has tried to forget. She hated how she failed the hostage years back. Plus, she constantly feels guilty that she wasn’t ready to be a mother, especially after her own mother emotionally abused her into being a beauty queen and “cape.” It’s a warning sign that if the heroes go low, Team Homelander will go lower. They have mud to sling and no one is safe. However, apart from being hurt internally, the fallout goes far and wide in The Boys Season 4.

The Boys’ Firecracker Gains a Major Political Victory

The Boys showrunner, Eric Kripke, has never hid that this show is a parody of the American political landscape. Optics matter a lot. Thanks to Annie’s meltdown, President Singer loses momentum and support. He stuck by her and used her to push an anti-superhero bill. She claimed people with powers need to be kept in check. It’s ironic, as Annie becomes that which she preached against. Firecracker pivots and spins the narrative that superheroes are victims. The government fears and wants to kill them, nodding to how Marvel’s mutants were painted.

This emboldens Homelander’s stance, because he wants to use “supes” to turn America into his own military state. His movement has deemed them “saviors” who can “save” America. As a result, people turn on Singer and start backing Homelander’s vision even more. Firecracker is a saint in their eyes, while Annie is a monster who keeps creating victims. Singer immediately cuts ties with Starlight, hating how badly her temper and public image has damaged his mission. It’s a headache his advisors and cabinet cannot afford.

This gives his Vice-President, Victoria Neuman, more support. She is angling to kill and replace Singer, and work with Homelander. None of the heroes could have predicted this. Had Annie kept her rage under control and remained calm, things would have been different. But in an age of digital media, wars are won by column margins, likes, shares and retweets. With so many posts clattering Singer and Annie, the Starlighter movement is all but dead. Their vision of progressiveness, liberty, and equality has never taken a hit like this before.

It doubles down on how valuable Sage is. She knew Firecracker would be the perfect patsy. This incident raises Firecracker’s stock and gives Sage more to work with. She is now adapting to concocting more political schemes to discredit Singer, get Neuman in pole position, and to have Firecracker’s congregation increase. The more it grows, the bigger Homelander’s cult gets. The gauntlet has been thrown down, which now leaves Butcher’s posse needing to regroup and salvage things. With Sage opposing them, they need to be inventive, dig deep and truly pull a Hail Mary miracle.