Outlander: Blood of My Blood wasted absolutely no time ripping its central couple apart again.
After spending much of the first season watching Ellen and Brian fight for the opportunity to be together, Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2 Episode 1 forces them to make an impossible decision almost immediately.
Meanwhile, Julia and Henry’s long-awaited reunion proves devastatingly short-lived, leaving Julia stranded in the 18th century while Henry returns to his own time and finds himself trapped in an institution where the treatment he’s receiving is beginning to distort his memories.
It’s a brutal way to kick off the season, but the parallels between the two couples are impossible to ignore.
Both relationships are being tested by separation, uncertainty, and the possibility that finding their way back to each other may be far more difficult than either couple anticipated.
For Harriet Slater, who plays Ellen, that made the opening chapter particularly frustrating after everything Ellen and Brian endured to be together in the first place.
“Any scene where there’s that kind of conflict between what the character wants and what they actually need to do is, I find, always the most interesting as an actor,” Slater told TV Fanatic of Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2.
“But yeah, it’s also very frustrating because they spent the entirety of Season 1 trying to escape to be together, and then within about five minutes, they’re torn apart again in true Outlander fashion.”
She’s certainly not wrong about that last part.
Ellen’s decision to return to Castle Leoch may initially seem baffling after everything she did to escape, but the reality of her situation has changed.
Continuing to run with Brian would mean spending the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders, while Brian and Murtagh also face potentially deadly consequences if they ignore Lord Lovat’s call to arms.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood Puts Romance First
Slater admitted that it took some time for her to understand why Ellen would willingly walk back into the world she’d fought so hard to escape.
“I think ultimately she does it because she realizes that if they were to continue on the run, they would be on the run for the rest of their lives,” she explained.
“You know, the MacKenzies aren’t gonna back down. They have a very angry Clan Grant, who want answers about what happened to Malcolm and why Ellen jilted him.”
She continued, “I think she does it to protect both Brian and Murtagh, because she also knows that if they don’t return to Lord Lovat and answer the call to arms, then I think it’s the death penalty for them.”
For Ellen, it’s another example of her head having to overrule her heart.
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“It’s that pull between logically what you know is the right thing to do, but your heart wants the opposite, because they love each other so much, and they just wanna begin their lives together,” Slater said.
“But I think she knows that they have to put that on hold.”
Brian, unsurprisingly, isn’t exactly thrilled by the plan.
Still, Jamie Roy believes Brian’s trust in Ellen outweighs his fear that their separation could become permanent.
“I think he trusts her and he knows how fiercely independent and strong that she is that, you know, they will get together again,” Roy told TV Fanatic.
“I don’t think it’s a question in his mind.”
And Brian now has something very specific waiting for him on the other side of the conflict.
“He’s got something to fight for now,” Roy added. “He’s got no other option but to go to war and to make it through, so they can be reunited again.”
If Ellen and Brian’s separation is painful, Julia and Henry’s situation is even crueler.
Julia knows Henry exists somewhere beyond the stones, but Henry returns to the 20th century only to be told that the extraordinary life he remembers may never have happened.
Jeremy Irvine believes Julia isn’t simply the woman Henry loves. She’s the person who grounds him.
“Henry can’t really function without Julia,” Irvine said. “She’s his, what does he say? North Star.”
“It’s not just love, it’s like she’s his anchor, I guess.”
Hermione Corfield sees their connection similarly, pointing to the life they created together after Henry returned from war.
“They just love each other. They love each other so much,” Corfield said.
“They have the shared bond of their child, you know, and they have this shared goal, which is to get back and recreate that family.”
“They created such a safe unit post-war for Henry. He was in a fragile place, and Julia really made this safe home for them, and then they created this lovely dynamic, and I think they both yearn for that more than anything.”
That makes what is happening to Henry particularly disturbing.
His treatment isn’t simply forcing him to relive the horrors of war. It’s beginning to interfere with his memories of Julia, potentially destroying the one thing that could keep him fighting to find her.
Irvine described it as “added trauma to someone who’s already traumatized.”
Corfield jokingly summed it up even more succinctly: “Trauma on trauma on trauma. Extra side of trauma.” But that trauma has very real consequences for Henry.
“It does break his view on reality,” Irvine said.
Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts revealed that Henry’s deteriorating memories grew out of the writers’ research into the treatment he receives.
“When we started to research the electroshock therapy, we discovered it was something in the research that we discovered that it affects people’s memories,” Roberts told TV Fanatic.
“For Henry, we needed him in some way to manipulate his memory, so to speak.”
Henry’s Journey Is Concerning for Everyone Involved
That provided the writers with a way to make Henry question something viewers know to be true while creating another enormous obstacle between him and Julia.
“As you watch the series, you’ll see how that plays out,” Roberts teased. “We wanted to have something where, you know, what could possibly restore that?”
Thankfully, this is still Outlander.
“And, you know, it’s Outlander, so there’s a pretty good chance it’s gonna be love,” Roberts added.
Executive producer Maril Davis said separating Henry and Julia also lets the series show just how fundamental they are to one another.
“I think it allows us to explore how meaningful they are to each other and how, you know, having that hurdle and having that challenge is always good for storytelling,” Davis explained.
“It gives them a motivation, obviously, to come back and find each other, and that’s certainly their driving force at the beginning of the season.”
Julia’s side of the story isn’t getting any easier, either.
Returning to Castle Leathers leaves her back in the place she spent much of the first season trying to escape, with her hope of returning home seemingly destroyed.
Corfield described Julia as having “hit rock bottom” when she returns.
“I think she spent that whole first season trying to escape, and then that was foiled,” she said.
“So hope is completely dashed at that point, but obviously she has to maintain that facade for Lovat and, you know, she’s a survivor after all, so she has to protect her child first and foremost.”
For Corfield, one challenge was figuring out how successfully Julia could keep hiding what she was actually feeling.
“It was a constant balance of how wonderful is she as an actor, you know, in terms of pretending that she is grateful for being saved, and how much is her inner coming out that she can no longer hide the fact that she’s hurt,” she explained.
“That was a constant balancing act that I was trying to tread.”
Henry, meanwhile, got an unexpected lifeline from a very familiar face from the original Outlander.
The arrival of Mrs. Graham is one of the premiere’s strongest connections yet between Outlander: Blood of My Blood and Outlander, and her willingness to entertain Henry’s implausible story could be exactly what he needs.
“He’s been put in an asylum, and no one believes him,” Irvine said. “He starts to believe that maybe it was all a figment of his imagination.”
For Henry, Mrs. Graham’s importance isn’t simply that she understands what he’s describing.
“It’s more her believing in him and maybe confirming for him that he hasn’t just hallucinated the whole experience,” Irvine explained.
Roberts said bringing Mrs. Graham into Henry’s orbit was never about including a familiar Outlander character simply for the sake of it.
“Because the story’s told in the universe, naturally you’re going to bump into Outlander legacy characters,” Roberts said.
“When we were in the room breaking story, we talked about, you know, when it happens naturally, when it would occur naturally, we wanted to lean into that.”
“We didn’t wanna go out and just find one and plug it in.”
Instead, the producers wanted returning characters to have a genuine purpose in Blood of My Blood’s story.
“When it felt like, oh, wow, this could be a really natural fit for an Outlander character, and they can do something, and they can propel the story forward, that’s when it became very important,” Roberts explained.
Mrs. Graham certainly qualifies.
“If you remember from Outlander, she believes,” Roberts said. “She believes in the stones, she believes in the fair folk, she believes in all this.”
That’s exactly why hearing about the mysterious patient claiming to have traveled through time immediately captures her attention.
“She perks up, and she wants to go and talk to this person, to hear this story, and that moment when she says, ‘I believe,’ you truly believe her,” Roberts said.
“And so once again, very natural fit.”
After the Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2 premiere, those two words might be exactly what Henry needs to hear.
Ellen and Brian are fighting to survive long enough to reunite. Julia is fighting to protect her child while holding onto the hope that she can somehow return home.
Henry’s battle is taking on a new shape. Before he can find his way back to Julia, he may first have to believe that she was ever there at all.
What are your thoughts on Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2 so far? Are you in it with this Starz series for the long haul?
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