Warning: there are spoilers for Joker below.

Cinema-goers have been puzzling the fate of the Joker's neighbor Sophie, played by Atlanta's Zazie Beets. Joker left a fair amount of room for speculation, but now the film's director and co-writer Todd Phillips, has set the record straight.

Given that we do not see Sophie alive after her altercation with Joker ( in which is it revealed that their relationship had been a fantasy), it seemed to suggest that the titular character, played by Joaquin Phoenix, had killed her.

Speaking to IndieWire, Phillips confirmed that, Sophie lived after all. Read his full answer below.

“He doesn’t kill her, definitively,” Phillips said. “As the filmmaker and the writer, I am saying he doesn’t kill her. We like the idea that it’s almost like a litmus test for the audience to say, ‘how crazy is he?’ Most people that I’ve spoken to think he didn’t kill her because they understand the idea that he only kills people that did him wrong. She had nothing to do with it. Most people understood that, even as a villain, he was living by a certain code. Of course, he didn’t kill this woman down the hall.”