On ‘Outlander’ season 7, love still saves the day
The latest season of the hit drama “Outlander” begins with typically grave peril: the time-traveling heroine, Claire Fraser, has a hangman’s noose around her neck, seemingly about to be executed for a crime she didn’t commit.
We won’t spoil the details of how Claire – who fell through a stone circle portal seven seasons ago from the 20th century to a life of endless high-stakes drama in the 18th century – survives this particular pickle, but it doesn’t feel unfair to overlook the general mechanisms of her rescue.
In this, as in every other gripping yet ultimately emotionally satisfying episode of this beloved show, love – albeit a complicated, tested, flawed kind – saves the day.
“I think this show is about the enduring importance of love,” said Caitriona Balfe, the Irish actor who plays Claire on the Starz show, which returned to Canada’s W Network on Sunday. “Ultimately that’s the most important thing.”
And while the compelling “I’m leaving modern plumbing to be with you” love her character shares with a reckless Highlander is the swoon hook that stuck most of us on the series all the way back in Season 1, Balfe is quick to point out that the show, based on a series of books by Diana Gabaldon, has now grown into an entire universe of other loves.
“It’s not just our relationship,” she said. “It’s Brianna and Roger, it’s Young Ian and whoever he’s with this year…” Here she’s referring to her on-screen daughter and son-in-law, and her husband’s cousin.
“And it’s paternal love, unrequited love, there are so many of them,” added her co-star, Scottish actor Sam Heughan, who plays Jamie Fraser, aka the 18th-century Scottish laird turned outlaw and soldier become. changed – whatever the approaching American Revolution brings. (This is a couple who certainly have a knack for showing up at major historical events just when they’re about to get spicy.)
When it comes to that central love story, both Balfe and Heughan find satisfaction in the way it’s matured and evolved over their decades-long on-screen marriage, built over 10 years working together on the show.
“What’s great is that these characters are growing,” said Balfe. “There’s always a worry at the start of every season, like ‘Will there be something in this that will feel challenging and new?’ And it is always there.”
“Jamie was quite cocky, fiery and passionate at first,” said Heughan. “As he’s gotten older, he’s become more stable, more calculated. He still has that fire in him, but he’s learned to control it.”
Balfe, who similarly feels her character has mellowed with age, charted the impact adulthood has had on this central bond.
“When we first met Claire and Jamie, they were very young and hot-headed and rambunctious,” she said. “There was a confidence to always be right, that’s why they butted heads.”
But life—or, in their case, death and unfathomable tragedy on three continents—has a tendency to wear you down, she continued. “That also makes you more open to the possibility of other things. They have grown up.”
Heughan agreed. “They are much more honest with each other,” he said. “They always have been, but somehow this is the season where they are much more open and also more aware of what they have to lose.”
One couple who have never struggled with candor – perhaps through a mistake – are Brianna and Roger, the Frasers’ daughter and son-in-law.
This season, thanks to a series of events we wouldn’t dare spoil, they find themselves in the 20th century and deal with a thoroughly modern problem: Brianna, an engineer, has become the breadwinner of the family, much to the chagrin from Roger.
“This show doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects,” says Sophie Skelton, the British actor who plays Brianna. “Even the last series we had the subject of Roger and Brianna struggling to conceive. It’s not often talked about so candidly and it’s such a lonely experience.”
However, it’s overcoming such hurdles that Skelton says makes this particular love story so special, especially for a couple who haven’t always been rock solid when the going gets tough.
“They’re really struggling together now about these things, which is different for them and so beautiful,” she said.
Her on-screen co-star and husband, Scottish actor Richard Rankin, equally relishes the chance to explore these shifting gender dynamics.
“People are often just subject to their environment,” he said of the discomfort Roger initially feels when his wife goes to work while he stays home aimlessly, pining for the life they left behind in the 18th century.
“When you look at the tremendous change they’ve been through, from the dangers and threats of the impending American Revolution to the relatively safe haven of a modern domestic life in the 1980s, you’d say to Roger, ‘Who cares ? Look where you just came from! Just chill out and enjoy life in the 80s.’”
Yet he has sympathy for Roger, a product of his time and place.
“It’s not a rivalry between them,” he said. “It’s just that he’s questioning himself.”
When it comes to an “Outlander” “theology of love,” Skelton Balfe echoes.
“It’s really cool that the show shows that all kinds of dynamics can be healthy or unhealthy, but they can all function and all can be fixed,” she said.
Roger and Brianna, she said, exemplify this diversity of romantic experiences.
“They are such a crazy love. It’s not as perfect as Jamie and Claire,’ she said. “I think that’s why people relate to them.”
It’s not a hearts-and-flowers, floaty relationship and that’s the point, said Rankin, who takes it upon herself to keep this dynamic — tender, funny, willing to be awkward if that’s what it takes to fight on – to portray very seriously. .
“It’s very complicated to navigate TV,” he said of the work to “find the real truth and honesty” in these scenes. “It’s a challenge that requires a lot of thought and intuition, and if we can get away with it, I think we’ll do well.”
Skelton approaches it with a similar sense of duty to the characters – and the viewers.
“People want to see the show and be taken on this immersive journey of romance, but I think we also have a responsibility to show realistic things,” she said. “To show them that it’s okay if things don’t go perfectly, that sex is a little awkward, or that you’re nerdy and uncool and make a mess.”
Love, she concluded, will prevail even then.
“It’s so great to be the vessels for people for that, and to find the richness in that while also giving the reality is really challenging,” she said, “but I’m honored that we have that responsibility.”
