For over a decade now, Starz’s time traveling period piece hit Outlander has been dazzling audiences with its strapping romance on the Scottish Highlands. Now, with next year’s series finale on the horizon, Starz is expanding its roster with… more Outlander!
Specifically, a parent-focused prequel called Outlander: Blood of My Blood, which just premiered. And what the new show lacks in cohesion, it makes up for in the breadth of its story. Where original flavor Outlander offered one trope-filled romance to root for, Blood of My Blood delivers two.
Fulfilling the Romeo and Juliet quota are Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), the future parents of hunky Outlander hero Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). Born of two rival clans in early 18th century Scotland, Ellen and Brian seemed destined for different futures. He’s a bastard without much social standing while she’s a single daughter fated to be used as a pawn in her family’s political scheming. One quick meet cute later, however, they’ve formed an unbreakable love-at-first-sight bond that empowers them to defy convention.
For something a bit more mature, there’s Julia (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine), current parents of the toddler who will grow up to be Caitríona Balfe’s Claire Fraser. Julia and Henry’s love story begins in World War I era London, where a pen pal connection turns into an adoring marriage. After wandering through those infamous Outlander time traveling stones, however, they find themselves separated across different corners of Scotland in 1714. Their epic romantic drama hinges on whether they’ll be reunited despite impossible odds.
For fans of classic romance tropes, it’s a delight to see two very different storylines served up in one sumptuous period piece. Whether you like earnest, sexy young love or erudite, sexy marital love, there’s something here for everyone. All four leads bring winning life to their respective archetypes. Roy looks like he’s stepped directly off the cover of a romance novel, Slater has all the plucky spunk of a rebellious young royal determined to take control of her own fate, and Corfield and Irvine bring a welcome sense of emotional depth to their out-of-time travelers.
The trouble is, even as Julia and Henry weave themselves into 18th century Scottish life, the show doesn’t really find a central theme to anchor its two main romances together. Plotwise, it’s not hard to follow the show if you’ve never seen Outlander before. But there’s no real internal hook driving the series beyond the meta twist that Jamie and Claire’s parents crossed paths. If you were creating a series from scratch, you almost certainly wouldn’t structure it this way, with one time traveling couple and one rooted-in-history couple who don’t really interact much.
It doesn’t help that the show’s love of cheap looking black and white flashbacks really slows down the pacing at times, overexplaining things that could’ve been understood through subtext and suggestion. That’s particularly the case for Ellen’s memories of her recently deceased father Red Jacob MacKenzie (Peter Mullan), whose death leaves a power vacuum at Clan MacKenzie that Ellen, as a woman, isn’t allowed to fill—even though she’s perfect for the job.
Particularly in its first episode, Blood of My Blood gets a bit too bogged down in Scottish politics, with big roles for the younger versions of familiar Outlander players like Ellen’s siblings Dougal (Sam Retford), Collum (Séamus McLean Ross), and Jocasta (Sadhbh Malin), as well as Brian’s bestie Murtagh (Rory Alexander).
Still the show’s palpable love of the era is charming, too—especially now that the original series has moved away from the Highlands to the American colonies. The old-fashioned Scottish accents are back in full force. (Press screeners of the first six episodes came prepped with subtitles to aid the uncultured American ear.) And it helps that the episodes alternate in focus, so that the lead up to the Jacobite rising of 1715 is contrasted with the psychological impact of World War I, depending on which couple is center stage.
While Blood of My Blood could stand to trim some storytelling fat here and there, the truth is that probably won’t bother Outlander fans or just fans of sexy period romances in general. Blood of My Blood isn’t particularly deep TV, but it’s glossily watchable—unafraid to be earnestly romantic, earnestly smutty, or earnestly melodramatic as the moment calls for.
There’s plenty of the pastoral yearning and sultry, softly lit sex scenes that made the original Outlander such a hit. And while the show’s exploration of life under patriarchy is fairly basic, it does allow Slater and Corfield to take center stage as two strong women striving to claim agency within the limitations of their circumstances.
It adds up to a 10-episode series that doesn’t rewrite the historical romance playbook, but has a lot of fun rearranging familiar pieces in slightly new ways. Given that it’s hard enough to craft one couple you immediately root for, it’s all the more impressive to craft two. That alone is an achievement for the time-traveling history books.
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