It’s been a week since the latest Star Wars live-action series, The Acolyte, wrapped up. The first production to be set in the High Republic era follows a Jedi reuniting with his former Padawan, as they investigate a series of crimes that, in time, show that not all is what it seems. While there’s yet to be word on whether or not it will continue for a second season, the stakes in which have been set up in the end definitely pose for possibilities.

Warning: The following contains spoilers from The Acolyte, including the season finale.

Amandla Stenberg, who portrayed the characters of Mae and Osha, recently spoke with The Nerds of Color about how her relationship with the franchise has changed from being a part of The Acolyte, her approach to playing the two characters, and about the moral dilemmas presented in the story and how they parallel to the real world.

The Nerds of Color: First of all, congratulations on the show. I personally really enjoy it, and I hope you and the rest of the cast and crew are proud of what you’ve created.

Amandla Stenberg: Oh, thank you.

Yeah, you’re welcome. I know that, well before you even got cast in this thing, you were already a fan of Star Wars. How has your relationship with the franchise changed from being part of The Acolyte?

Oh my goodness. In so many ways. I think I’ve learned so much about myself and had so many new challenges, both with endurance when it came to filming and training, and then being catapulted into this really visible place and being a part of something that’s beloved by so many people.

It’s really pushed me to actually understand a lot of the morals of Star Wars even deeper, because I think often about the light and dark side of the Force, and I’ve spent, I guess, years thinking about it at this point and thinking about how that’s embodied by different communities across the universe and what it means and what it means to really be a person, how you navigate your moral compass.

Yeah, definitely. I feel that The Acolyte does a really good job of embodying a lot of those morals that can easily be transmitted into real-life examples when you really think about it.

Oh, thank you so much.

When you got cast in this thing, how early did you know that you were going to be playing twins, and once you did know, how did you approach playing the two respective roles?

Well, I knew from the very beginning before I’d even received a script that I was going to be playing twins and that was like the most — that was one of the coolest elements heading into it to think about. I thought a lot about, because Osha and Mae are twins, but Sol reveals in the finale that they’re actually the same person, and because they were created through a vergence in the Force, I thought a lot about what it would look like for one person to be split into two bodies as opposed to just traditional twins.

So it was like I did a lot of twin research, but then I also did a lot of, what’s a way for me to sort of create two physical manifestations of the same person, but opposite sides of them. And so I always thought of them as influx in relation to each other. So when one of the twins is going through an emotional shift or embodying something new, then the other twin changes as well.

So one of the standout qualities to The Acolyte is the fact that we get to see a lot of hand-to-hand combat, which with the exception of The Clone Wars, we don’t see utilized a lot in Star Wars. As a fan, what was your impression when you learned that that’s what the fight scenes were going to be like, and as an actor, how was it for you training for those fight sequences?

Yeah, I mean, I definitely was exhilarated at the idea that that sort of hand-to-hand combat would be such an integral part of the show because I think it’s one of the coolest parts of Star Wars, particularly in the prequels.

Darth Maul is one of my favorite characters. And so the idea that we would be honoring that part of Star Wars and also honoring some of me and Leslie’s favorite films like Kill Bill was just the coolest thing in the world to me. It was like a dream come true for me.

And then the process of training was so challenging and rewarding. Over the months, I got progressively faster, and by the end, I could learn stunt choreography very quickly and then perform it, which was just not something that I knew myself to be capable of doing. So I gained this whole new skill set; this relationship to endurance and patience and discipline. I was supported so immensely by the stunt team and by my Kung Fu Master, Jun Cheng Lu, and by my stunt girls, Kellina Rutherford and Cassie Jo Craig. They taught me so much and would spend hours with me in the gym going over things with me over and over again, until I felt confident and ready and just really welcomed me and treated me like I was as qualified as them, which I did not feel that way at all at the beginning. But by the end, I just felt like, oh, I’m so grateful that I now have this new part of me that I relate to.

How has being a part of The Acolyte compared to your previous works?

Oh, man. I mean, it’s wildly different, I think, than other work that I’ve done. In recent years. I’ve really been working on indies or dramas, and this, I think, has that element as well. I mean, I think at the end of the day, The Acolyte is really a family drama but there’s so many different elements in terms of physicality and the physical requirements and the kinds of sets that we work on, and just the scale of the set that is so different from anything I’ve ever done. It’s really taught me, I think, to work very quickly and work very hard and try not to, in the midst of all those elements, lose sight of the emotional core of it.

In your professional opinion, what do you find to be the major takeaway from The Acolyte?

Ooh, that’s a great question. I think the takeaway from The Acolyte hopefully is representative of the takeaway of Star Wars in general, which is what happens to us when we do not process and move through our pain? How does it manifest in our lives and how does it shape the choices that we make?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

All episodes of The Acolyte are now streaming on Disney+.