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With The Boys Season 5 finally upon us, we’re already looking at what happens when the plot armor comes off: in the very first episode of the season, one major character was killed in a particularly gory fashion. We’re being obviously cagey with the who (for now), but, according to showrunner Eric Kripke, this death was seen as an important development for this character. It was even set up in the very first episode of The Boys.

Major spoilers for The Boys Season 5 Episode 1 follow.

Killing off a character early in the new season is just The Boys writers and producers showing that no one is truly safe anymore. Homelander starts this season as the most powerful being on the planet, both physically and politically, and he is using that position to exact revenge on anyone who wronged him. And no one was higher on that list than A-Train.

“When I say we, I mean the writers, we had decided a while ago that A-Train should probably be the first to go,” The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke explained in a recent interview. “It felt like Homelander’s anger towards him would be so red-hot that it was difficult to figure out a way to write around.”

Fans will have noticed that A-Train’s death comes after he does something that, if he had done it in Season 1, Hughie might never have gotten mixed up in The Boys. In his final moments, A-Train quickly changes direction to avoid hitting an innocent woman, which causes him to stumble and slow down enough for Homelander to catch him. That is a direct parallel to what happened in the first episode of The Boys, when A-Train runs through Hughie’s girlfriend at superspeed and turns her into a fine mist.

“I think it was really important to us that A-Train go out a hero,” Kripke said in the same interview. “And there’s this lovely moment that Paul Grellong wrote. In the very first time you saw A-Train in the pilot, he carelessly runs through a woman. And the very last time you see A-Train in the series, he very carefully dodges a woman, but that causes him to trip and costs him his life. But he goes out a hero, and it's a really great bookend to show how much he's grown as a character and how much more human and humane he's become."

The Boys Season 5 is currently airing on Prime Video. It’s the final season of the show, so who knows who is going to make it to the final episode? Certainly not A-Train, at least.