She used to run into Annie a lot back in their pageant days, when the toxic influence of Annie’s mother made her a bully.

At one pageant, when Firecracker (“Sparkler” at the time) was 13 years old, she and Annie made it to the finals, and Annie made a tossed-off comment to the other girls about how Firecracker could only make it to the finals by having an “ass-fuck gang-bang” with the judges.

That remark mutated into a rumor damaging enough to force Firecracker out of the circuit.

It might be ridiculous for Firecracker to assume that Annie is the same “conniving little mean-girl bitch” as when she was a teenager, but it’s an interesting change of pace to see Annie in the bully role, and to see her apologizing to arguably one of the evilest people in America.

I’m intrigued by the idea of Firecracker working to unearth this darker, crueler side of America’s sweetheart.

It feels possible that there’s something real in Firecracker’s generally unfair characterization of her.

There’s also really solid progress on the A-Train front, with the Boys’ newest informant directly involving himself in a plot to surveil a meeting between Homelander and Neuman during a Vought on Ice rehearsal at Vought Coin Arena.

Mother’s Milk points out that he could blackmail A-Train if he wanted to, continuing this show’s endless exchange of threats.

But I like that his goal isn’t to force A-Train to help them; it’s to appeal to the man during a crisis of conscience and make him want to help the Boys.

Hughie wriggles through the vents to plant a bug when the meeting gets moved up, but there’s not enough time to escape without making a sound, so he sits there and waits, listening to the conversation.

Sage suggests an arrangement: She and Homelander will kill Dakota Bob themselves after certification, protecting Neuman from suspicion, and in return, Neuman will disband the Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, condemn the “defund the supes” movement, remove “critical supe theory” (really?) from schools, put heroes in charge of police departments all over the country, and, most difficult of all, come out publicly as a supe herself.

Before they can set anything in stone, though, Hughie inevitably drips sweat down onto Homelander, exposing his presence and almost getting himself fried to a crisp.

This whole Vought on Ice set piece might not be as flashy and drawn-out as the fight with Splinter last episode, but I think it’s my favorite action climax of the season so far.

Part of that is the Vought on Ice stuff itself: the “Put the ‘Christ’ Back in Christmas” song is perfect, and the deaths of a few ice skaters are amusingly gnarly, from Homelander’s off-balance laser blast to the violent rush across the ice to flee.

(Of course a bunch of ice skaters would end up dead by the end of the episode.

) But I also just always enjoy Hughie in espionage thriller mode, and the whole sequence of Homelander chasing Hughie (and knowing exactly who he’s chasing) is great fun.

Realistically, Hughie doesn’t stand the slightest chance against Homelander, so I appreciate how it ends, with A-Train silently saving his ass.

It makes for a pretty shitty day for Homelander, who has another conversation with the more confident, cold-blooded version of himself he sees in the mirror.

Still smarting from jealousy after hearing that Ryan spent the day with Butcher, he wants to “transcend his humanity” and get over his undignified emotions to become the superior version of himself.

Apparently, his way of doing that will be to confront his past—like Hughie, Annie, Frenchie, and Kimiko have already been doing this season.

Frenchie and Kimiko’s side quest in this episode accomplishes that same goal, with Kimiko encountering a scarred young woman she remembers from her Shining Light days.

The objective here is to completely wipe out everyone involved in this operation, but Kimiko (somewhat annoyingly) lets the scarred woman go, neglecting to explain her significance to Frenchie.

Frenchie also continually refuses to tell Kimiko why he’s so resistant to Colin, preferring to just take hallucinogens and stop thinking about it.

He doesn’t participate in the bloodshed at all this time; instead, he watches Kimiko’s kills in a daze, visualizing blood and guts as bubbles and rubber ducks.

If we weren’t clear already on what’s bugging Frenchie, a slightly unnecessary hallucination reminds us.

An imaginary Colin calls him out for all the other people he murdered on Little Nina’s orders, suddenly crowding the room around him.

Nina herself appears, too, calling him a failure for “fucking the boy he orphaned” and remaining trapped in this cycle of self-flagellation despite Nina herself being gone.

In a nice post-mission venting session at home base later, he bonds with Annie over that constant temptation to abdicate responsibility, to hold anyone other than yourself at fault for your own mistakes.

At least Butcher is sticking with doing things “the right way” for a while; we’ve seen him resort to his usual brutal tactics on missions this season, but he always pulls back before doing something really awful.

In “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here,” we see him contemplate drugging Ryan with an extremely potent opioid so that he and his scary CIA buddy can squirrel him away to a safe house and “deprogram” him.

But after a genuine heart-to-heart with the kid, he decides against it, dumping the spiked cookies in the trash.

That heart-to-heart might be the emotional peak of the season for me so far, maybe because we’ve been following this dynamic for a while now, especially with the promise that Butcher made to Becca back in the season-two finale.

Butcher and Ryan’s foosball game offers a perfect segue to discuss Ryan’s frustration with everyone at Vought Tower letting him win all the time (a parallel irritation to his biological father’s).

And I especially felt for the kid when he opened up about accidentally killing someone, especially with that really vulnerable comment: “I get why you don’t want me.

I wouldn’t want me, neither.

” How gratifying to close the loop on Butcher’s painful rejection of Ryan last season, with Butcher finally offering some important context and a confession: He intentionally pushed Ryan away because he has no business being a father, but now he’s terrified he’ll die before he gets the chance to make things right with Ryan.

Seeing the two of them lower their defenses and just spend some time connecting feels really refreshing—and it makes Kessler’s final warning all the more grim.

Soon, the CIA may need to either train Ryan or kill him.

The country itself might be at stake, but the characters and relationships are what I’m most scared for right now.

- Hughie learns that there’s nothing he can do legally about power of attorney, but he and his mom have a productive heart-to-heart where she tells him about the severe depression she experienced in the years after his birth.

Her choice to abandon the family was “life or death,” and Hughie’s dad didn’t want her to confuse him by continuing to call after she left.

Seems like she and her son are already really starting to heal, so I’m curious where this story goes from here.

- Sage knows that someone stole the surveillance footage of the accused