‘Outlander’ Star Caitriona Balfe Loves That Season 2 Will Shock All Fans Of The Series
Warning: This article may contain spoilers for season 2 of Outlander.
With just one week to go before the second season premiere of Outlander, news about what fans can expect is coming from showrunner Ronald D. Moore and series star Sam Heughan, but perhaps the female lead of Outlander, Caitriona Balfe, is even more outspoken and revealing in her thoughts on the series and what fans can expect in the new installment. To begin, Caitriona talks alongside Heughan and Moore in a round table style interview about the biggest surprises and changes coming in season 2, but the Outlander star also talks about the changes that will force Caitriona’s character to alter the way she deals with situations.
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Executive producer for Outlander, Ronald D. Moore, starts off the interview by revealing their goal has been to surprise fans of Outlander and he says that goes for readers of the Dragonfly in Amber book by Diana Gabaldon, as well as for those fans that gather all they know only from the television series. He adds that the series finale of Outlander left off with Jamie (Heughan) and Claire (Balfe) sailing off to France, but the new segment won’t be picking up with their arrival on the shores of that country, but will, instead, reveal what has happened to them in the new country with a time jump. Much of the following episodes telling the story of how the two Outlander characters arrived at that point.
“I want them to be surprised!”Caitriona Balfe says of that first Outlander scene. “I want them to be shocked. I love that [Ron Moore] chose that way to tell the story. He shows us in the beginning where we’re going to end up, and then it’s like a choice of here’s how we get there, and I thought it was a really bold, wonderful move.”
Moore adds that loyal fans of Gabaldon’s books won’t be disappointed, but they might find that some of the story’s major points are arrived at through different means. The Outlander showrunner admits that adapting the story for television required some slight deviations, but he adds that all of the major story points are still present in season 2 of Outlander. On the topic of book versus television, Moore says fans who have not read the books are going to experience a very different feel to the story than they have been used to up to this point, particularly for those who have assumed Outlander is strictly a Scottish story.
The locale isn’t the only thing to have changed in this installment of Outlander. Adding his own unique outlook on what can be expected in Outlander, Heughan says that things have changed for Jamie and Claire on an emotional level as well.
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“Season one was two people getting to know each other and the honeymoon and the marriage and kind of a new relationship, a discovery,” Outlander‘s Heughan explains. “Season two for me is very much a grown-up relationship, a modern day marriage with all its kind of grey areas and complexity.”
The Outlander star also reveals that Jamie and Claire will have to play very specific (and deceptive) roles in trying to blend in with French society and that will change them in ways that they won’t be expecting. Jamie will be behaving as though he’s on a mission in France, which, in some ways, as more truthful than the people of France will know, but it will still lead him down a dark path. Balfe’s character will be tasked with blending into French high society as a woman of leisure and, after a time, this will affect Claire as much as Jamie’s role affects him.
“They get good at it and they learn to adapt, but it’s poisonous and it certainly changes their relationship,” revealed Heughan. “So I think it’s more dark this season in a strange way.”
Caitriona says things are changing for Claire in drastic ways on Outlander this year and Balfe says she likes the way her character will evolve along with those changes that will force her to mature.
“This season she’s so much more contemplative, and with that, things bubble to the surface,” the Outlander actress said. “A lot of it is also sort of helping Jamie deal with his PTSD from last season, and her solution is to make him busy and give him a mission and give him something to sort of challenge himself with. I think it’s a much more emotionally mature woman you’re going to see this season.”
The season 2 premiere of Outlander will air on Saturday, April 9, on Starz.
[Image by Starz]
