HollywoodLife chatted EXCLUSIVELY with Katherine McNamara about how Clary and Jace will be dealing with what happened and how they’re going to handle the unexpected effects of Jace being resurrected. The actress revealed Clary’s perspective on the world has changed forever, and there’s “definitely a maturity” we haven’t seen before. Oh, and Lilith? Katherine said we should all be very worried. “She’s out to make us pay,” Katherine teased. Check out our full Q&A below:

In the premiere, we start to see the effects of Clary bringing Jace back from the dead. Is she going to learn what’s going on with him early on? Or will he keep what he’s experiencing from her?
Katherine McNamara: It’s sort of a slow burn, if you will. Jace ultimately wants to protect Clary from what’s going on because he sees the guilt that she feels after what happened. Ultimately, in trying to bring him back, she was trying to save his life and to undo this tragedy that happened, but not realizing in doing so there would be so many aftereffects and Jace would struggle so much. She sees Jace as this wonderful, amazing, angelic warrior, and to see him broken in a sense is really heartbreaking. To know that it’s because of something she did, it’s a really deadly blow for her emotionally. Jace knows this, and as much as he can, he’s going to try and protect her from it. Jace is a very self-sufficient character as well and doesn’t like to ask for help, so that’s also part of it. He’s going to try and fight it as much as he can and keep from her, but ultimately, they’re going to have to rely on each other because they’re in this together and they don’t have anyone else. They both know that nothing stays secret in the Shadow World for long, so someone’s going to find out and they’re going to suffer those consequences together. So if they don’t stand by each other, they have no one. As much as they want to tell Alec and as much as Clary wants to turn to someone, she knows that she can’t because that would make them culpable. She can’t stand to hurt anyone else that she loves.

Jace started to have these horrific hallucinations in the premiere. Are we going to see more aftereffects?
Katherine McNamara: Yes, so this season delves into those aftereffects, what they really mean, what’s the cause of them, how much they really effect Jace and his relationship with Clary, and what they have to do to deal with them in the long run. It becomes a huge obstacle, not only for them as characters, but also for their relationship. Because if you think about it, this is the first time that the two of them have had a chance to give their relationship the life they always wanted to give it, and they have this chance to finally be together and to love each other the way they’ve always wanted, and yet there’s something else that gets in the way. But occasionally you do have moments to see them as a couple and sort of behave in that way when the world isn’t ending. We do see those flashes of romance, which is beautiful, but most of the time they’re just trying to sort this out. It’s interesting what it does for Clary because she can’t turn to anyone. It gives her an opportunity to really take some initiative,trust her instincts, trust everything that she’s learned about the Shadow World, take action of her own accord, and try to figure this out for herself and really atone for everything that she’s caused in this world.

This is a lot for anyone to handle. Could this pressure eventually send Clary down a dark path or will see a stronger, more determined version of her?
Katherine McNamara: There’s definitely a maturity to her this season. That was sort of my goal with Clary moving forward into season 3 because she has been through so much. If you think about the timeline of the show, it’s only been a few months since found out about the Shadow World. But to be thrown into this new world, to have her best friend go through his own transformation, to losing her mother, to having to kill her father, and then lose the love of her life and bring him back, it’s a lot of very weighty things that have happened to her. She’s sort of gone from this little girl who sees this world with wide-eyed wonder to now seeing it as this cold-blooded world that is very deadly and has no forgiveness. She knows the value of the people that she loves, and she knows the nature of the consequences that are possible. She moves foward with that perspective, and it’s definitely changes the way she thinks about things and the thought she puts into things before she takes action.

In the episode, Alec is suspicious about what happened with Clary and Jacy. What can you say about Clary and Alec’s relationship in season 3?
Katherine McNamara: This is sort of the unfortunate thing about Clary and Alec’s relationship. It started off as tempestuous, and right when they started to work as a team and finally got on the same page and Alec accepted her as one of the Shadowhutners and started giving her responsibilities as a team member, this whole thing happens. He’s beginning to doubt whether he can trust Clary and it puts a block in their friendship. It’s really unfortunate because I feel like the two of them want the same thing. They both love Jace so much, but ultimately she can’t lie to him very well because he knows Jace better than Jace knows himself. They’re parabatai. They feel everything the same. So of course he’s going to be able to tell that someone’s wrong with Jace. He knows that Clary was the only other person at that lake, so he knows Clary’s hiding something. As much as Clary wants to tell him, she knows that if she does he’s also culpable. There’s absolutely no way she could live with hurting Alec and Jace. She won’t let anyone else be brought into this because she knows when it goes down, it’s going to come down hard.

Clary surprised Lilith in the premiere with her power. Does Clary have a target on her back now?
Katherine McNamara: I think Clary has had a target on her back with Lilith from the beginning. Jace in particular, but Clary as well. The two of them were responsible for hurting the closest thing that Lilith has to a child, which is Clary’s brother. Moving forward in that, she’s out for blood and out for vengeance. She’s out to make us pay. If there’s a villain to be afraid of in the Shadow World, it’s Lilith. She’s literally the mother of all demons. She’s the queen of hell. She’s got power beyond what anyone can imagine. Forgiveness and mercy are not high on her priority list.

Should fans be worried about Lilith?
Katherine McNamara: Fans should be very worried about her. Everyone should be worried about her. I’m worried about her.

What about Simon and Clary throughout the rest of season 3? Will their storyline stay separate or will something inevitably bring them together?
Katherine McNamara: This is kind of the challenge for both of their characters this season. Clary is so engrossed in trying to help Jace and dealing with all of that, and Simon is so engrossed in dealing with aftereffects of the deal he made with the Seelie Queen, they’re sort of stranded and separated from each other for a good bit. Until they can find a way back to each other, neither one really has anyone to turn to or anyone to lean on.

SOURCE:Hollywoodlife

If you thought Jonathan’s death was going to be the big cliffhanger of Shadowhunters‘ second season, you could not have been more wrong. Not only is Jonathan still alive, but he has summoned some sort of demon he calls “mother.” Oh, and then there’s the little fact that Valentine killed Jace, which sent Clary into a rage spiral and resulted in Clary killing Valentine and using his “one wish” with the angel to resurrect the man she loves. (Yes, they love each other again — or at least according to that kiss they do.)

EW spoke with star Katherine McNamara about the biggest moments of the finale, starting with Jace’s death and that moment being the very thing that spurred Clary to kill Valentine. “Clary losing Jace was a breaking point for her,” McNamara says. “It’s the last thing that Valentine can take from her and it’s the one thing that she was holding onto. That is the final straw for Clary and you see it, you see her break. You see Clary for the first time quit caring about her own life and you see her go into almost a blind rage.”

That blind rage is what leads Clary to kill Valentine by stabbing him repeatedly, something McNamara reveals was exaggerated when they edited the episode. “I didn’t actually stab him that many times consecutively on the day, but I’m glad they edited it the way they did because it really drives home the point that she’s made her choice, she has taken that step, she is a Shadowhunter now and she will do what’s right. I think she surprises herself even in that moment, the brutality that she shows toward Valentine, but it’s such a great step for her character because finally, we get to see that fire and that warrior within her.”

McNamara points out the irony that it’s the Morgenstern within her that is the very thing that ultimately kills Valentine. “It’s that fierceness and that feral nature that Valentine and Jonathan both have that comes out of her for the first time, and I think it even scares Valentine a little bit,” she says.

But Clary isn’t the only person who made a big decision in the finale. The show’s final minutes revealed that Simon did, in fact, make a deal with the Seelie Queen, and it’s one that, odds are, Clary’s not going to like. “Here’s the thing: The Seelies are very good at hiding things, so it kind of leaves an open door to see what’s going to happen, what they want with Simon,” she says. “The Seelie Queen is very good at collecting powerful beings and Simon is one of those powerful beings and so moving forward, we’ll see what happens. But honestly, Clary has a bone to pick with the Seelie Queen. This child or woman or whatever form she takes is the one person in the Shadow World that Clary cannot give the benefit of the doubt to, and I have a feeling — or at least I hope in the future — that there will be a confrontation between the two.”

Unrelated to the action happening in the Shadow World, the finale was also a big moment in McNamara’s personal life when her first original single played over the party scene at the bar. “It’s called ‘Ember’ and it’s one that I wrote a while ago, but it’s really special to me and I’m glad it found its way into the show,” she says. “I wrote it right after we shot season 1 and it’s partially inspired by the characters but also by some things that happened in my life — we all have moments in life when we doubt who we are because of someone or something that’s happened to us, but despite all of that, there’s a little ember of hope that always is within each one of us — there’s a spark in the ashes that’s ready to reignite at any moment and that moment is what the song is about. I thought that was so perfectly placed in the finale that I was so grateful that they included it.”

SOURCE:EW

Kat will be doing a #Buildseries interview via livestream today at 1:00 pm ET, you can check it out on the Buildseries app or the site Buildseries.com

Monday is a great kick-off to a busy week @BUILDseriesNYC – tune in to hear us chat with two amazing women #Shadowhunters #Atypical pic.twitter.com/P2KFpMVuor

— BUILD Series (@BUILDseriesNYC) August 13, 2017