Eric Kripke, the mastermind behind The Boys franchise and its spinoffs Gen V and Vought Rising, has offered viewers some hope when it comes to our beloved college-aged Supes.

Gen V was recently canceled by Prime Video amid The Boys‘ record-breaking fifth and final season, which featured cameos from the series stars Jaz Sinclair, London Thor and Lizze Broadway, and set up some promising plans for Sinclair’s Marie Moreau. The cancelation came as a disappointment to many fans, some of whom expected Marie to play a major part in taking Homelander down thanks to her ability to control blood and, quite literally, kill or bring people back to life.

Kripke told DECIDER that The Boys team hasn’t completely abandoned the plans they had for the spinoff series.

“We’re hoping to fold it maybe into some other stories that we’re starting to talk about,” he revealed during our recent chat with the series creator.

However, he stood by Marie’s storyline in Season 5, adding that the touching moment she shares with Annie in the finale is an “important” lesson for her character.

“The main thing of what they do is save people,” Kripke said, adding that Annie is “encouraging them to focus on what it means to be a hero.” That final scene together was meant to illustrate the torch “being passed from Annie to Marie as the next truly good superhero.”

Marie, at first, refuses to heed Annie’s request of driving the Homelander victims to Canada where they can be safe. She insists on joining Annie on what she described to be a “suicide mission” to take Homelander down. But Annie reminds her that saving the lives of people like this is also a major part of being a superhero.

During their conversation, Annie admits that meeting her hero Queen Maeve when she joined The Seven was not what she expected it to be. “Never meet your heroes,” Annie tells Marie ruefully. But, years later, Annie now understands why Maeve was so jaded from her experience of being in The Seven. Except she now understands a key part of being a superhero that she can pass on to Marie: “It’s not about winning. It’s about keeping the light burning as long as we fucking can.” 

That brief Gen V cameo in the series finale ends with Marie, Jordan and Emma taking off for Canada with the survivors. According to Kripke, the Gen V kids “were going to go up and have challenges and adventures.”

“Hopefully we get a chance to still tell that story,” he said.

Speaking to Variety, Kripke again confirmed they are in “very embryonic stage of seeing if there are any ideas that we’re really loving” of how to continue the Gen V story. He noted the Gen V kids find themselves in uncharted territory after a lifetime of being “coddled and protected.”

“Who tries to be Jessica Jones, and who tries to be a super villain?” he said. “It leads to some really fascinating places that I would love to see, and the hope was we were going to put the Gen V kids in the middle of all that. But hopefully we still will, and we can bring some of those characters into some of these stories that we’re talking about.”

Gen V and The Boys are streaming now on Prime Video.