Hermione Corfield and Jeremy Irvine, Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Starz
[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of Outlander: Blood of My Blood. Read at your own risk!]
Coming out of the Season 2 premiere of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, only one character is technically in an insane asylum. But that doesn’t mean others aren’t living in their own version of hell.
The poor soul in the actual asylum is Henry (Jeremy Irvine), who inadvertently travels through the stones to 1924 without Julia (Hermione Corfield) and their young son after they failed to travel through together. Before you cast too much judgment, the Beauchamps don’t yet know how all this time travel works, so when their first attempt fails it allows Arch Bug (Terence Rae) to catch up and stab Henry in the shoulder, the blade for which has an all-important gemstone on its hilt. He wakes up bewildered, unsure of what happened and ultimately subjected to electroshock therapy to try and regain his sanity after talking nonsense about a wife, a child, and some time-traveling stones.
Given how much of Season 1 he already spent slowly playing out a PTSD-induced nervous breakdown, Irvine admits Henry’s increasingly perilous and bleak storyline in Episode 1 made him worry he had wronged the show’s creative team and showrunner and executive producer Matthew B. Roberts in some way.
Everything you need for fall TV:
“All joking aside, I was a little scared I had upset them because [Henry] does keep ending up in the ringer,” Irvine told TV Guide.
He wasn’t alone. Corfield also questioned if Julia might be weathering the wrath of the show’s creative forces. When Henry passes through, Julia and her son are left behind and forced to pretend like he kidnapped them and, therefore, get shipped back to Castle Leathers, where she reluctantly reunites with her false husband Lord Lovat (Tony Curran), who is even more of a volatile mess than usual. “I thought both of us had done something horrible to someone because, yeah, we seem to be constantly tortured in some capacity,” Corfield said.
But fear not, none of it was vengeance with a script. This is just Outlander after all, and no love story worth its salt is forged in anything less than tragedy. That’s what makes the inevitable reunion so much sweeter, right?
Things aren’t much better for the other lovebirds in the prequel to Diana Gabaldon’s beloved book series. Also back at Castle Leathers is Brian (Jamie Roy), who killed a drunk and heartbroken Malcolm Grant (Jhon Lumsden) on what was supposed to be his wedding day to Ellen (Harriet Slater), before fleeing with the bride to be. The two holed up on their way out of town before becoming handfast and ultimately watching as the fiery crosses were lit, signaling all clansmen must answer the call to war in what will become the 1715 Jacobite Uprising.
After declaring they won’t let war and duty separate them forever, Brian and Ellen go their separate ways in the premiere as well — he went back to enlist with his father Lord Lovat and she goes back to a hostile home at Castle Leoch where her angry and physically violent brothers are cleaning up the disaster that was her wedding.
“It’s frustrating in a way because we spent the whole of Season 1 trying to escape these places and these people, and then at the very beginning of Season 2, they’re right back seemingly where they started,” Slater said. “But they have very clear goals now. They know what they are heading towards. Hopefully, this is all for the greater good, and they can reunite once the war is ended and marry. So they have something real worth fighting for. It makes going back and being slapped by her brother and then locked in a chapel worth it.”
So yes, all four of our lovers are in asylums of a different name, and the actors behind the characters definitely feel the walls closing in as the season begins.
“When I found out that he was going back to Leathers, I was like, ‘We just spent 10 episodes getting out of this hellhole,'” Roy added. “But it’s funny because as much as it is kind of like an asylum, Brian is almost free in a way because he’s no longer subject to everything that Lovat is going to put on him. He no longer feels the need to have to stay in line so much.”
Of the two couples, Brian and Ellen remain the most fortunate, if you can say fortune favors either at the moment. They at least get to choose to part ways for the time being, whereas Julia and Henry are ripped apart yet again. It gives Ellen and Brian the chance to slowly, consciously say goodbye for now. In their humble barn hideaway, they share an intimate morning of passion, one that doesn’t require nudity or bodice ripping. All it needed was some intensely felt eye contact, which is exactly how they first met — searing glances through the slates of a barn.
Jamie Roy and Harriet Slater, Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Starz
“They see each other, without being cliche about it,” Slater said. “They really do see each other in a way that none of the other characters see them. And in terms of intimacy, we discussed at length ways to do that without necessarily involving nudity, and we all said that actually eye contact can be sexier than nudity at times.”
“Any time that Brian and Ellen are together, they are looking at each other as if this could be the last time they ever get to lay eyes on each other,” Roy added. “They’re just savoring everything, all the senses.”
Again, there is significantly less time for Julia and Henry to say their goodbyes. For Julia, she has found a skeptical but supportive ally in Brian’s mother and Lovat’s housekeeper Davina (Sara Vickers). But back at Leathers, she is forced to play the part of a doting wife to a monster, while grasping at any plan to escape once more.
“We find her at rock bottom in Season 2 because she spent the whole first season with the level of hope that they’re going to get back together and they’re going to be with Claire, and I think she’s really run out of ideas,” Corfield said. “But she’s strong. Obviously, when she’s thrust back into Lovat’s home, she has to act quickly, and it’s that old similar path she’s had to tread of stroking his ego and using flattery and whatever else to ensure that she can get away from him physically, but also protect her child. She’s in a pretty desperate spot at the beginning of the season, for sure.”
But Henry is feeling the same pains of longing for his wife and family, whom he just got back before it was all taken away. Similarly though, as the premiere’s final scene reveals, a young Mrs. Graham (Emma Hartley-Miller) believes his story, despite everyone else shouting and pointing and zapping him. “I don’t think I could have imagined a love like that,” he tells the empathetic visitor.
At least electroshock therapy can’t wipe away that.
“His only chance is to find Julia again,” Irvine says. “She’s his anchor really throughout this all. He has to get back to her, and when he hasn’t got her, he’s got Mrs. Graham to believe in him.”
New episodes of Outlander: Blood of My Blood stream Fridays on the Starz app or at 8 p.m. ET on Starz.