As the latest episode sets the show on a new course, Balfe reflects on four seasons with Claire and looks to the future.
On December 30, 1996, Delacorte Press released Drums of Autumn, the fourth book in Diana Gabaldon’s stealth blockbuster Outlander series. Tonight, 22 years to the day of publication, the most anticipated, beloved, compelling, and frustrating scenes in that book come to life on the series’ wildly popular TV adaptation. Though the episode revolves around the shaky dynamic between a young woman and the father she’s never met, it’s the mother, Claire Fraser, and the woman who plays her, Caitriona Balfe—the series’ linchpin, the gravitational force keeping the Outlander world on track and viewers coming back for 51 episodes and counting—who quietly shapes the hour.
Titled “The Birds and the Bees,” the episode focuses on 20th century-born Brianna Randall Fraser (Sophie Skelton) tracking down her mother Claire (Balfe) and father Jamie (Sam Heughan) in 1769 North Carolina. A thorny communion plays out between the stubborn, 1970s-shaped American and the Scottish Highlander father she’s meeting for the first time. Confused? Welcome to the world of Outlander, in which a certain subset of the population can travel through time with the help of specific prehistoric monuments. More on that in a bit.
This is what fans who devour Gabaldon’s books and track cast members’ every move (a fandom the New York Times describes as “one of television’s most passionate fan bases”) have waited more than two decades for: Claire and Jamie, the textbook “perfect couple,” reunited with their long-lost daughter to complete the Fraser family unit. “When Brianna comes back, you see Claire look around the table like, Oh my God. I’ve finally been able to have it all,” Balfe explains over the phone from LA after a dizzying month spent promoting Outlander’s fourth season.
It’s an image Claire never allowed herself to imagine, and the road to this moment is paved with three-and-a-half seasons’ worth of timeline-hopping and tangled family trees. To quickly recap: In 1946, Claire, an English World War II nurse, accidentally travels to 1743 through a group of mystical standing stones in the Scottish Highlands. Though married in her own time, Claire weds a Highlander, Jamie Fraser, for protection, and they fall in love. Two years and a half-dozen life-threatening adventures later, Claire returns to the 20th century pregnant with Brianna. She’s fleeing the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, the Scottish conflict with the British that spells the end of Highland culture—and where Jamie plans to die alongside his comrades. Continue reading »
