[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 Episode 9 “Terrarium.”]

“I don’t think she would’ve accepted a universe in which she loses her best friend,” Celia Rose Gooding says of Uhura in the latest Strange New Worlds episode.

The penultimate episode of Season 3 saw Ortegas (Melissa Navia) stranded on a planet — with a Gorn, of all beings — after leaving the Enterprise for a mission. And to ensure the rescue mission carried on, Uhura lied to Captain Pike (Anson Mount) about the scan capability; he told her later he knew she had and understood. And once Ortegas was rescued, the best friends reunited in the pilot’s quarters.

Below, Celia Rose Gooding breaks down Uhura’s major decision and shares why that last Uhura-Ortegas scene was so meaningful.

Uhura really leads the charge in finding and rescuing Ortegas and she refuses to give up. But did she start losing hope?

Celia Rose Gooding: I don’t think so. I don’t think she ever did. I think whether she outwardly admits it or even admits it to herself, in this season, she’s so much more confident in the person that she is and more confident in her ability, and she’s already lost so much. I don’t think she would’ve accepted a universe in which she loses her best friend, too. She just would not give herself an opportunity to even think about what it would be like to not have Ortegas around. And so when her captain tells her that it’s out of her hands and out of her control, I think that’s when she begins to take in the fact that she is out of control again, she’s losing more people again, this is out of her hands, and that triggers a real PTSD type of thought and anxiety spiral. And before it can really land and sink into it, we find her and that makes her feel much better. But yeah, I don’t think she ever gives up. Uhura is not the type to do that, especially when it comes to the people she loves.

But she does fudge the data to get Pike to agree to the rescue mission. How much did she consider the potential consequences of doing so in that moment, and how much was she simply driven by the need to find her?

It tore her up to make that decision, to lie to her commanding officer, to make up things. She’s someone who needs a foundation to believe and build her belief upon. And so when she is forced to take that big leap of faith, she is relying on herself in a way that I don’t think she’s ever needed to. She’s always had at least someone else in her corner backing her up and cheering her on. She’s had Hemmer [Bruce Horak], she’s had Spock [Ethan Peck], she’s had Sam Kirk [Dan Jeannotte], she’s even had Erica herself in her corner most of the time. And so when she’s forced to really stand on her own two feet and lie in a really big way, it’s hard for her. But she knows that it’s not without reason.

And I think — I’m saying I think as if I’m not her, and we don’t exist in the same brain all the time — but I remember feeling this blind, ravenous commitment to the idea of getting it done. And sometimes when your back is up against the wall, you can either fight, freeze or flee, and she can’t flee and she cannot freeze. So she has to fight. And she just fully attacks the idea and goes about it in a way that goes against who we’ve understood Uhura to be up until this point. But I think it will remind fans of the version of herself that she’s growing into, which I think was a really, really awesome way for the writers to reintroduce this side of her and really grounding it in the fact that she does it for the people she loves.

But then we get that nice moment of Pike telling her he knew what she did and it didn’t matter, he would’ve searched for Ortega anyway and that blurring the rules isn’t bad for the right reasons, and she needed to hear that, right?

Yeah, of course. I think hearing that from Pike, the person who she was so nervous to lie, to hear that reaffirmation of her decision making, it felt like being able to finally take an exhale after a really, really tough blow to the gut. And I think it was important for her to hear that. And I think when we see Uhura in the future fudging the rules or playing with the boundary of what’s okay and what isn’t in Starfleet, I think now it’s really nice for fans to know that she’s thinking back to that moment when her first captain let her know that, “Hey, not only is it sometimes okay, sometimes it’s necessary and follow your gut,” it’s just inspiring her to believe in herself even more, which she deserves.

And I have to say, I love the moment at the end of the episode of Uhura and Ortegas reuniting.

There are many moments, because I’ve been working in Trek for so long, there’s so many moments where I find the lines blurring between two characters having a conversation and two friends just talking with a bunch of cameras around. And I love Melissa so much, that’s my New York sister. And so to be able to have that really soft moment talking about grief and mourning, and we both have very specific and intimate relationships with grief as human beings. And so it was really nice to sort of put Nyota and Erica away and have Celia and Melissa have a really quick conversation about what it means to love and lose and keep going. And yes, it is informed by our character stories, the characters never truly leave us. But I remember walking off set and feeling like I just had a really beautiful, sticky conversation with someone who I love and respect so much. And it was both Celia and Uhura sort of moving through that feeling. And it’s always really satisfying as an actor when things like that can happen.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 3 Finale, Thursday, September 11, Paramount+