Warning: This article contains spoilers about Friday’s episode of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, “Providence.”
In Friday night’s premiere of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) clap eyes on each other for the first time — and from then on, their fate is sealed. From the first moment they see each other, they’re enamored, and by the time they meet alone and tell each other their names, it’s too late — they’re hopelessly in love with each other. Unfortunately for them, they come from rival clans and their fathers hate each other.
It’s all very Romeo and Juliet, a fact which Slater pointed out at Comic-Con, but it gives the actors plenty of juicy moments to play, particularly during Brian and Ellen’s meeting on a bridge where they hold hands for the first time.
“The theme of forbidden love is so fun to play,” Roy tells Entertainment Weekly. “Something as simple as a hand hold or touching was — that’s not something you do unless you were going to be with that person.”
The stakes are raised even higher when it’s touching someone who is essentially your family’s mortal enemy. When Brian and Ellen reveal their surnames to each other, the looks on their faces say more than words ever could, as they realize the error they’ve made falling for each other.
“That is unfortunate,” Ellen tells Brian when he confesses his parentage to her. “Tis,” he agrees.
“Before he touches her hand, he realizes that this is Ellie Mackenzie, and this is the worst possible person that I could have possibly fallen for,” Roy says. “Then, he has the boldness to actually touch her hand without even asking her, but it’s almost like Brian knew that she wanted that as well, without words being spoken, until he gets nervous and second-guesses himself.”
Lucky for Brian, Ellen is a woman who knows what she wants.
“She pulls him back,” Slater adds. “It’s almost like a whole dance between the hands. It is choreographed. There was like the slight touch and then the pulling away and then pulling him back in.”
Furthering the Romeo and Juliet comparison, the moment calls to mind what Juliet says when she first meets Romeo at a masked ball: “For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch. And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”
Juliet, however, doesn’t know who Romeo is yet, unlike Brian and Ellen.
Fans may have expected, or at least hoped, that Brian and Ellen might kiss during this first moment. But Slater thinks it’s even sexier and more exciting that they don’t.
“I love the fact that they don’t kiss in that scene,” she says. “You want them to, but they don’t because even just to touch hands is huge for them. She shouldn’t have even been there without a chaperone. The stakes are really, really high.”
Making the stakes even higher is the fact that Ellen’s father has recently died, leaving the question of who will be the next laird of Clan MacKenzie an open one. Her brothers, Dougal (Sam Retford) and Colum (Seamus McLean Ross), each believes they should lead the clan, but it is Ellen who their father raised to be the laird. Even if her sex makes it impossible.
“She was very clearly his favorite, and he gave her an education,” Slater reflects. “She’s fully equipped to be laird, except that she can’t because she’s a woman.”
In some ways, Slater says her father’s teachings and favoritism are the greatest tragedy of Ellen’s life, not falling for the wrong man.
“It’s almost the worst thing he could have done,” she notes. “Now she is fully aware of her potential and how life could be, except that it can’t. She uses the wits that she has in other ways to influence her brothers, and ultimately, to help herself get out of terrible situations that she finds herself in because of her brothers largely.”
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And if you think her brothers were playing fast and loose with her hand in marriage in the premiere, just wait.
“They very quickly use her as a pawn in order to form their own alliances and secure the lairdship,” Slater teases. “And all she really wants is to be with Brian, but she’s torn because she wants to protect the clan at the same time.”
Outlander: Blood of My Blood airs at 8 p.m. on Fridays on Starz and is available to stream on the Starz app.
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