- After trying to reunite all season, Henry and Julia finally manage to escape Castle Leathers in the season 1 finale of Outlander: Blood of My Blood.
- They make haste for the stones, desperate to get back to their own time and to Claire.
- But Arch Bug is hot on their heels — will the make it?
This article contains spoilers about the Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 1 finale, titled “Something Borrowed.”
Time travel is always a difficult proposition on Outlander, even more so when you don’t know the rules.
While Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) have largely deduced the requirements of traveling via the stones, Claire’s parents — Henry (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia (Hermione Corfield) — do not. So the season 1 finale of prequel series, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, left a big open question with Henry, Julia, and their son William pressing their hands to the stones at Craigh Na Dun and the scene fading to a memory of their (final?) farewell to young Claire.
Their arrival at the stones comes with some fraught realizations, namely that they have no idea whether or not the baby can pass through the stones the way they can. They decide that one of them needs to attempt to go with William and the other will join if their attempt is successful. Julia passes the child to Henry, knowing that his life will be in danger at any moment with Arch Bug (Terence Rae) hot on their heels.
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But Henry grabs Julia at the last moment and presses all of their hands to the stones at once. “There’s is no way in hell he’s going to leave his wife,” Irvine tells Entertainment Weekly of the last minute switcheroo. “She’s got a much harder deal than he does in the 1700s. She’s working for a real slimy piece of s—. So, there’s no way he’s going to leave her. And if that means him fighting Arch Bug and the henchmen and potentially putting his life on the line, he’s not going to think twice about it.”
Corfield agrees that going together is the best plan and things only get complicated when she realizes the potential of leaving the baby behind. “The thought that William can’t time travel only hits her just in that moment,” she explains. “With the threat of Arch Bug and the men arriving, that becomes a reality — if he’s left on the ground here, what becomes of him?”
“Probably Lovat would grab him,” she continues. “She’s been so focused on getting there, just getting the task done and getting them all to that same point at that moment in time safely. Then, that’s a horrific realization that it even could be a possibility.”
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There’s also the fact that neither Julia nor Henry appear to be carrying a gemstone with them, which Outlander fans will know is pretty essential for successfully time traveling through the stones. Is that going to ensure they don’t go anywhere?
“No comment,” says Irvine, with a laugh. “You’ll have to wait and see. I mean, the characters don’t know that, do they?”
While we’ll have to wait until season 2 to find out if their efforts worked, the final moments of the episode are dedicated to Julia and Henry’s parting from a 5-year-old Claire (Mae Roberts) at the train station. They tell their daughter, “We’ll be back before you know it,” and as the train pulls out of the station, they wave goodbye with Julia calling “I love you” out the window.
Canon would suggest this is the last time Claire will ever see her parents, given that they’re assumed dead in a car crash (and actually are lost in time). “I’d like to hope [it isn’t],” says Corfield. “But I have a horrible feeling it might be.”
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Adds Irvine: “[Author] Diana Gabaldon is still involved in this and in her books that was the case. We are trying to be very loyal to the original Outlander and that world. But I am always surprised at where the scripts go. So we shall see. It is a crazy old world. Anything could happen.”
Regardless of whether or not Julia and Henry make it through the stones, there’s plenty of obstacles ahead. Of course, they both have secrets, transgressions they made while not in their right mind or out of a need for protection. “There are difficult conversations to come,” teases Corfield.
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And if they don’t make it, there’s an even greater problem awaiting Henry. Malcolm Grant (Jhon Lumsden), his employer and a trusted ally, is now dead, slain by Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) when attempting to run away with Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater). That leaves good old Uncle Mac (Simon Merrells) as the most senior member of the Grant clan.
“This world has great villains,” says Irvine. “Uncle Mac is not necessarily a villain, but he’s a ruthless man. And Henry has a lot to answer for.”
