‘Shadowhunters’: How Katherine McNamara Feels About Clary’s Ending Today

It’s been almost a decade since Clary Fray (Katherine McNamara) first discovered that all the stories are true. Freeform’s Shadowhunters aired its pilot episode in January 2016, kicking off a three-season-long journey of self-discovery, romance, and supernatural drama.

Even though the series ended its run two years later, the adaptation of Cassandra Clare‘s book series still remains in the cultural conversation, whether it be through a viral post on social media or through its many fan conventions. Ahead of Shadowhunters’ 10-year anniversary, McNamara reflected on the show’s legacy, whether or not she’d ever reprise her role for a Shadowhunters reunion, and how she feels about that open ending between Clary and Jace (Dominic Sherwood) all these years later.

It’s crazy to me that the pilot came out that long ago, and I’m sure you feel the same.

Katherine McNamara: I feel so old.

Because you’re still involved in the Shadowhunters world, meeting fans at conventions, what do you think gives the show that staying power?

McNamara: The heart of the fandom, really, is the biggest element of it. I think they’ve gone beyond us and beyond our show and created this beautiful community of people. It’s a space online and in person that is just all about love and acceptance and beauty, and just loving people for who they are. But I think a lot of that comes from the story. These characters are all really broken and struggling and trying to figure themselves out and trying to figure out how to survive in a world where they’re being told that one thing or another does or doesn’t exist, or they suddenly have all this responsibility or whatever it may be. Everyone brought so much heart to the show, and I think that heart and that passion really shone through, and the fact that we still to this day, 10 years later, are still like family… I think that heart and that passion kind of bleeds into everything that the show is.

There’s also been fans hoping for a reunion of some sort, whether it be a movie or another season. You’ve mentioned in the past that you’d be down to return. Do you still have that mindset?

McNamara: One hundred percent. If I ever were given the opportunity to come back to that world and to play Clary Fray again, I would jump at the chance. I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll hunt a demon to do it, but I know there’s a few of us that feel that same way, just because this show, we poured blood, sweat, and tears into these characters. I played this character from the time I was 19 to the time I was 23, so I grew up with Clary, and I learned how to fight with her, and I learned how to love with her, and I learned how to do all these things as she was learning, and she’ll always be a part of who I am.

And now that you’ve sat with the ending for a while, how do you feel about it now? 

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McNamara: I think I’ve come to understand it in a deeper way over the last seven, eight years since the show has been off the air, but I really did love the sentiment that was the ending, and that last, final moment where she actually recognizes that Jace still has runes on his neck, spoiler alert. And to me, it was the testament and the statement that her connection to the Shadow World, her love for this newfound family, and ultimately, her love for Jace, is more powerful than the spite of the angels taking away her power because she overreached, and because she did too much, and she sacrificed everything to save the people she loved.

It is that love that will ultimately preserve that tiny kernel of power that’s left in her and be the seed that regrows, that little ember that regrows into hopefully the new Shadowhunter she’ll become, or maybe she never forgot at all, or maybe she remembered it all in that moment. We don’t know. The whole point is love makes you stronger, and love is the strongest and most powerful force in this world, and I think that’s a really, really beautiful thing.

Shadowhunters, Season 1-3, Streaming Now, Hulu & Disney+