Things have been wild over on Outlander lately. Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) heard her husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) had died at sea, so she and Jamie's best friend Lord John Grey (David Berry) took solace in each other, engaging in a night of sad despairing sex. Then Jamie turned up alive things got complicated. And if that weren't enough, Lord John's son William (Charles Vandervaart) learned that he was actually Jamie's biological son. William and Jamie both had meltdowns and we're still sorting through the fallout.
Will Jamie and Claire's marriage emerge from this trial unscatched? Caitronia Balfe thinks so. “This is a marriage that has endured,” she told TV Line. “Their core is solid. There’s things that will definitely rock them, and there are wounds that may take a long time to heal, but it’s work, right? From here on out, it’s about work. It’s not about ‘Will they / Won’t they?’ It’s about ‘How do they?’”
We've still got several episodes to go before season 7 is over. Charles Vandervaart promises that the finale — which will air on Friday, January 17 — will be “bittersweet — maybe not what you hope for, but maybe it’s what was inevitable always. There’s good things and there’s really horrible things, but that’s the Outlander way, you know?”
As for Vandervaart's characters, he promises that William will get over this hump. “William does somewhat come to terms with the fact that he is quite similar to his biological father,” the actor said. “I do think it’s going to take him a long, long time, though, to reconcile with that, truly, and to accept him as his father. That might be a little bit later down the line.”
It might be so much later down the line that we don't even see it this season. “We’ve got a Season 8 for that,” Vandervaart chuckled.
Sam Heughan thinks Jamie would die for Claire, "and probably will"
The eighth and final season of Outlander will air sometime in 2026. The cast and crew have already finished filming it, and Caitriona Balfe is in a reflective mood. “It’s been such a strange year,” she told Bazaar. “Knowing that it was coming to an end, we all definitely felt heightened emotions at various times throughout the process. Finishing up was so emotional...I went away and did a yoga and meditating retreat and Sam's about to go on a trek in the Himalayas. I think we're all finding something to put our energy into. That's a very long-winded way of saying, 'I think I'm OK!'”
Balfe had an especially eventful season 8; she got to direct an episode of the show in this final season. “She was phenomenal,” Heughan said. “She’s such a people person, and she got out some great performances from some rather rusty actors. Honestly, I was so proud of you that day.”
Balfe has been playing Claire for over a decade by this point, so she was more than ready to step behind the camera. “My relationship with Claire has completely evolved over the years,” she said. “In the beginning, you were filling in all of these blank spaces of her history and her memories and then, as the years went on, you're living it, you're creating them in real time. And so, in a way, you know, without sounding weird, she lives within you. I think more than anything what I realised is, for me, personally, what an amazing teacher Claire has been.”
"She taught me how to be responsible, taught me how to use my voice, how to stand up for myself and for other people, about compassion and empathy. I hope I brought some of those qualities into it, anyway."
It's great to hear Balfe reflecting back on her time as Claire, but what can she or Heughan tell us about what's on the way in the final season? The closest they get might be this line from Heughan about Jamie's love for Claire: “I’ve always said when Jamie sees Claire, he sees his demise," he said. "He sees his death. He’s like, ‘I will die for this woman’… and probably will. That’s love.”
New episodes of Outlander air Fridays on Starz.
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