Before Sydney Sweeney rose to stardom with “Euphoria,” she had a small but very memorable role in season 2 of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Her character was Eden, introduced as a young, somewhat-naive girl turned into a child bride. Although originally seeming like a true believer in Gilead, the horrendous patriarchal society that main character June is focused on rebelling against, Eden quickly becomes disillusioned when she realizes her new husband will never love her.

She soon falls in love with a young man called Isaac, and decides to have an affair with him rather than settle in a loveless marriage. The young couple is caught and subsequently executed by the state, in what is perhaps the most depressing sequence in an already bleak second season of the series.

Sweeney gave her thoughts on Eden’s storyline in a 2018 interview with Refinery29. She explained how, because this was the first season that went beyond the original book the show was based on, she didn’t know what would happen to Eden going in:”I knew she was going to have an ending. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to end. There was [the idea of], ‘Oh, she could end up running away.’ They weren’t quite sure what direction they were going in. I just knew there was going to be an ending. When I read episode 12 I was completely shocked. … I was screaming at the page [while] reading.”

Ultimately, Sweeney was thrilled with how Eden’s fate turned out

“I was glad that it went so dark for an ending. Because it’s going to hit a lot of people and have a huge impact,” Sweeney added. When asked how she thought her death would affect the main characters, she replied, “None of them will be able to be the same. It’s definitely going to carry them throughout the next season.”

It’s hard to argue with that claim: the next season was the show at perhaps its angriest and most rebellious. It’s also the beginning of an arc for Serena Waterford, an originally pro-Gilead character who seems to be shaken out of at least some of her beliefs after watching Eden’s death. It especially hurt for Serena given that she’d been close to Eden, and that Eden represented so much of what Serena considered the ideal young woman to be like.

But as dark as the scene was in the show itself, behind-the-scenes it was a surprisingly lighthearted affair for Sweeney: “I was having a blast,” she said about jumping into the pool. “I was having such a great time. I wanted to keep doing it over and over again … My mom was in that day too. I wanted her to see it in person instead of just watching it on TV so it wasn’t as shocking or scary for her.”