Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Boys season 5, episode 3.Despite several devastating developments in The Boys season 5, episode 3, Eric Kripke explains how one character gets “a happy ending.”

The episode spends time on Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), Maverick (Nicholas William Hamilton), and Zoe (Olivia Morandin), all of whom have lost at least one parent in the war between the Boys and Homelander (Antony Starr). The Boys season 5, episode 3 ends with Ryan confronting Homelander and being brutally beaten, Maverick learning the truth about his father’s death and then dying himself, and Zoe discovering that her father, Dr. Shameer Shah (Omid Abtahi), is alive.

In an interview with ScreenRant‘s Tatiana Hullender for The Boys season 5, Kripke was asked about the intent behind focusing on these three children who are taking revenge on or for their parents in this episode. The creator and showrunner explains that it was part of exploring the cycle of violence and grappling with the question of how to end it. Out of the three, he feels that only Zoe is able to get a happy ending now that she and her father are reunited and on their way to a fresh start. Check out Kripke’s comments below:

Very specifically in episode 3, we wanted to explore the cycle of violence. How do you possibly end a conflict in a war when your only move is to destroy a group of people, and then their children are inevitably going to want revenge, and then you have to destroy them? The cycle just continues forever.

With so many conflicts in the world right now, you almost want to shake them by the shoulders and say, “All you’re doing is guaranteeing that this is just going to last forever.” And it’s such the wrong way, in my humble opinion, to go about doing it.

We wanted to tell this story about the children of the first generation of the battles that the boys have fought. How are they all intersecting and interacting, and how are they feeling about what they’re going through? We knew from when Maverick was introduced in Gen V season 1 that, sooner or later, that guy’s got to run into Hughie. Can he escape that cycle of violence? Zoe, whose mom was murdered, can she escape that cycle of violence? Can Ryan?

It really was about the youth in this one. Are they able to pull themselves away? One out of the three was able to, and that to us is a happy ending. I think Zoe has the best shot at a future, frankly. I think she and her father, to us, have the strongest, happiest ending in this episode.

By choosing to run away with her father instead of continuing to seek revenge against Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) for killing her mother, Victoria Neuman (Claudia Doumit), Zoe breaks the cycle of violence by choosing to run away with her father. The same is true of Sameer, as he was working on the supe-killing virus after Butcher lied about Homelander killing Victoria and Zoe. Now, both Zoe and Sameer have shown it is possible to break the cycle and choose family and a future over never-ending violent revenge.

Ryan is still caught up in the cycle of violence, though. After the plan to expose himself and Homelander to the lethal virus falls apart, Ryan tries and fails to take out Homelander on his own. Between the brutal beating he took and learning what Homelander did to his mother, Ryan will likely still be consumed by a desire for revenge moving forward. As for Maverick, he finally learns it was Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) and not Homelander who killed his father, Translucent (Alex Hassell), and the cycle of violence has now taken his life too.

As The Boys season 5 continues, the adult characters will have to grapple with the question that Kripke poses about whether the cycle can be broken. The Boys have made difficult choices, with Butcher in particular believing the ends justify the means, but the effect on the children of those they have hurt proves that such thinking is ultimately flawed and limited.

With this being the last season of The Boys, it remains to be seen if any other characters can get a happy ending as Zoe and Sameer did. The death of Reggie Franklin/A-Train (Jessie T. Usher) in the premiere solidified that no one is safe this season, and even for those that do survive, they have to figure out how to live in a world where the cycle of violence never seems to end.

The Boys releases new episodes Wednesdays on Prime Video.