Thomas Doherty Talks ‘Cathartic’ Tell Me Lies Season 2 Finale Fight with Jackson White (Exclusive)

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of Tell Me Lies.

Thomas Doherty was ready for Jackson White to get hit. Well, not White per se — but his Tell Me Lies character, Stephen DeMarco.

In the season 2 finale of the Hulu series, which premiered Oct. 16, Doherty’s character Leo brutally beats up Stephen at a party after Stephen revealed that he hooked up with Lucy (Grace Van Patten) earlier that same day. The reveal shocks Leo, who had just gotten back together with Lucy, and enraged him just as Stephen was hoping it would.

Doherty, 29, tells PEOPLE that Stephen deserved “maybe a slap or two,” for his manipulation. “But maybe not what we did,” he admits, as Stephen’s face was left a bloody pulp.

The fight scene was “so choreographed for safety,” Doherty says, but even still, it was a lot. “You start to get into it and then you can start to introduce the emotion into it, and it was intense. It was very intense.”

It was also “shot over a long period of time” to get it right, and Doherty admits, “My arm was in agony by the end of the day. I could hardly even lift it up the next morning.”

“But it felt quite cathartic,” he says, while also being, obviously, “monstrous and horrible.”

“But [you’re] also kind of hoping that it was coming. It was very weird.”

“That energy — finally being able to release and burst all this energy that he’s had inside — but then that shame of doing it,” he continues. “There was a lot of emotion going on.”

Doherty previously told PEOPLE that joining the show’s cast to play Leo — a new love interest for Lucy — was daunting, given that Van Patten is dating White, who plays Stephen, in real life.

“Obviously, Jackson and Grace are dating in real life, so I was like, ‘Oh,’ but no, [he] was absolutely professional and as was I, and yeah, it was so chill,” he said.

“People always say, they’re always like, ‘It’s your job, you’re an actor.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know, but still, f—ing hell.'”

His real pull to the series was Leo himself. “I really saw a lot of my younger self in Leo, for sure,” Doherty says.

“I mean, I’m 29 now, Leo’s not quite there yet. But I don’t know… I guess that young adult, you leave home and you’re in college for the first time and you’re on your own and you’re trying to establish who you are as a person and create this sense of self, but you’re thrust into this environment with hundreds and thousands of other people doing the same thing.”

“Later on in the series [you see] kind of why Leo is the way that Leo is,” he continues, referring to his character opening up to Lucy in episode 6 about his history of domestic abuse.

“I definitely identified a lot with him in that regard — in that storyline for him and wanting to be his own man and be a better person. And I really, really love the desire for kind of self-improvement.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

The season 2 finale of Tell Me Lies is now streaming on Hulu.