Shadow and Bone’s Ben Barnes Breaks Down the Series Finale

The following contains major spoilers for Season 2 of Shadow and Bone

After almost two years of waiting for the release of the second season, Shadow and Bone finally returned with eight new episodes last week. The series once again took the viewers to a thrilling adventure as the characters embark on their new journey that ultimately ended with a breathtaking season finale. Shadow and Bone actor Ben Barnes, who plays as The Darkling, sat down with Collider to share some details on filming the final scene.

The actor shared the details of filming the final episode for the season. Barnes dishes on the emotional roller-coaster he had to experience in preparation for the episode finale. He shared,

“It was actually my very last few days. And it was interesting because it was almost joyful for me. I’d been so alone for the season, and then I got to be with almost everybody for the last couple of days. In the car on the way into work, I was feeling the pressure of wanting to get out of these scenes, what I was really prioritizing, which was a tenderness between the two of them, that’s exposed in the books as her using his real name, and she’s the only one who knows it.”

Barnes further shares the process of coming up with the idea for the finale. It involved a lot of meetings and a few ideas thrown before finally deciding on what they wanted for the eighth episode of the second season. He said,

“We toyed with names in a different way in the show, so we had to replace it with something else, and there was a lot of discussion about how we could do that. It was this idea of her being the guardian of his realization that he has become this monster that he feared, but also always knew he would become. It’s complicated, where he is in the final throws. He’s feeling love and he’s feeling regret, but he’s also still championing his cause, all the way to the bitter end, which you can respect, but the way he went about it was always wrong.”

While Barnes admits that the final scene was messy, he thought that the ending was great as the finale saw the beauty in chaos. He shared,

“It’s messy, and I think life is messy and relationships are messy. Trying to find the clarity in the messiness, it felt like a lot to try to navigate in that final scene, especially in three leather coats in the desert, covered in black blood. There was a lot to it.”

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Ben Barnes on Being Lit on Fire

As Barnes’ character was set to be lit on fire, he also felt like he’s being set on fire in real life. Although the fire used in the scene wasn’t real, it was scalding hot when they filmed it. He explained,

“It felt like I was on fire because who knew there was Hungarian desert, but we were in the desert and it was summer. The sun was baking us. I was in three coats, one of which was made of leather, and leather boots. I felt like I was on fire, even when the fire wasn’t going.”

Barnes confessed that the feeling was unreal, after he finally got to do the scene. For months, he thought about doing it and when he’s finally about to do it, he felt the excruciating feeling of pressure to say his one line where only got seven minutes of window to deliver. He said,

“It’s surreal. It’s that combination of trying to find the joy in doing it and sharing it with people, but then the pressure and the responsibility of telling the story in an appropriate way. Sometimes, especially when the sun was moving and there were 16 characters, you’d only get a couple of cracks at these moments which you feel are really important. You think about them for hours and hours and hours, and days and days and days, and months and months and months, and then you get there and you’ve really only got seven minutes to do that one line.”