We’ve heard it from the actors, and now Friends creator Marta Kauffman has definitively stated that a reunion series will never happen.

Five years ago, a Friends reboot movie, or reunion season, seemed like an impossible dream. It just wasn’t done. But if any show deserved a reprise, most people agreed it was Friends.

Now, suddenly, it seems you can’t turn your head without bumping into a classic show reboot. There’s The X-Files, Full House, Boy Meets World and Heroes, and the nostalgia wave seems impossible to escape.

Related: Rumor control: Friends reunion “not happening”

A Friends reboot has never seemed more inevitable, simply because someone would surely be able to throw enough money at it, knowing what a profitable hit it would surely be.

Yet the six actors (Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry and Matt LeBlanc) have kept denying the rumors, kept insisting that although we should never say never… well, we should probably start saying never.

And now Marta Kauffman, who co-created the series with David Crane, has finally said that elusive word: never.

“Nope, never gonna happen,” Kauffman outright tells The Wrap.

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“That show was about a time in your life when your friends are your family. Once you begin to have a family of your own, that is no longer the case, and your priorities shift. So the show is over,” Kauffman explains.

Friends was on the air for 10 years (1994-2004), and in that span of time the six characters moved from restless 20-somethings hanging out in a coffee shop and worrying about their uncertain futures, to confident 30-somethings with solid careers, partners and families of their own.

All but Joey (LeBlanc), of course, who tried — and failed, unfortunately — to reboot Friends on his own with the short-lived Joey spin-off.

Related: Celebrating 20 years of Friends

It’s been over 10 years now since Friends ended, and the actors are now nearing middle age. While some fans are still interested in seeing the characters reunite later in life (if only to get reassurance that they’re all still friends, hanging out in that imaginary coffee shop), the actors have always been against it.

“I don’t want to see old Joey. I don’t want to see Chandler and Monica with their kids that are [raising a hand a few feet off the ground] this big now. I’d rather imagine that,” said LeBlanc, when he was asked about a reunion series back in 2012.

And ultimately, Kauffman agrees. “It’s much better that people want it, than that they get it and don’t like it,” she says. “The fear is, well, it’ll never be what it was.”

At this point, we’re ready to accept that a Friends reunion will never happen. Well, other than the ones on Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy Kimmel‘s talk shows, anyway.

And it’s probably for the best. If it was just another reboot among many, it’d feel cheap. Friends is too special for that.

Marta Kauffman’s new series Grace and Frankie debuts on May 8, only on Netflix.