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[This story contains a major spoiler for the ending of The Boys season five, episode six, “Through the Heavens Fall”; and major spoilers from episode seven, “The Frenchman, the Female, and the Man They Call Mother’s Milk.”]

The Boys have lost one of their own.

At the end of the seventh episode of the fifth and final season of Prime Video’s action-comedy hit, Frenchie (Tomer Capone) sacrificed himself to protect his love, Kimiko Miyashiro (Karen Fukuhara) from the wrath of Homelander (Anthony Starr). But Homelander zeroed in on Frenchie instead, who opened a hatch exposing himself to a fatal dose of radiation, and told the evil supe — “I bet you never danced a day in your life.”

We asked creator Eric Kripke about the decision to kill off a character who has been with the show from the very beginning.

“We knew we had to kill off one of The Boys,” Kripke said. “You can’t have a shot at victory unless it costs your heroes something that’s really hard. I always think The Lord of the Rings was so good at that, and Game of Thrones was so good at that. For narrative momentum, your heroes have to pay a steep price — because that’s how it works in the real world.

“So it was going through each character and deciding what was going to be the most heart wrenching,” he continued. “I think we knew early on it was going to be Frenchie. In so many ways, Frenchie and Kimiko are the heart of the show. Despite what killers they are, they’re both so emotionally sweet. We knew this would have real maximum destruction, and I think it had to happen. They would not have a chance of winning if Frenchie doesn’t sacrifice himself.”

The death marks the latest in the show’s fifth and final season, which previously saw the death of A-Train (here’s Kripke’s thoughts on that one) and Firecraker (here is Kripke on that one). The move sets the stage for the final episode of The Boys, which will drop next week. Kripke previously said he’s anxious about fan reactions to the final episode.

“What makes me most … anxious about the final season is really hoping we land the plane,” he said. “It’s super hard to do a finale. Fans will retroactively judge the show based on how they feel about the finale. If we stiff it, they will definitely say, “Well, that show wasn’t as good as we thought it was.” And it’s almost like you’re trying to secure your legacy with these finales. And it’s the first finale I’ve ever done, too — so it’s not like I have any experience with it. So I’m mostly anxious and girding my loins.”