The world of Outlander is returning to the small screen soon in the 2025 TV schedule with the premiere of Blood of My Blood. The prequel spinoff centers on the respective love stories of Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) and Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) as Claire’s (Caitriona Balfe) parents as well as Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) as Jamie’s (Sam Heughan) future parents. It seemed like a straightforward premise… until the trailer blew up any straightforward assumptions by revealing that Julia and Henry will travel back in time and possibly meet Brian and Ellen.
I was fortunate enough to speak with the cast of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, including actors who will be playing the younger versions of some key Outlander characters, at San Diego Comic-Con 2025. They opened up about the big twist getting spotted by the paps and the early renewal for Season 2.
Papparazzi Caught Photos Of Time-Traveling Julia
The big twist that got Outlander fans talking was revealed in the trailer, with the shocker that we won’t be watching one love story unfolding in the 18th century while the other was in the 20th. Julia evidently will go through the same standing stones that changed Claire’s story forever, to encounter Jamie’s future parents. When I spoke with Hermione Corfield at SDCC, I had to ask: was it a challenge keeping secrets about Blood of My Blood will filming the first season? She responded:
There’s a point where I couldn’t say I time traveled, People would ask, they’d be like, ‘Talk about your character,’ and I’m like, ‘She works in the reduction office,’ word for word. I can’t say anything else. There’s nothing else to say.
As somebody who had noticed that there were plenty of press photos released ahead of time with the 18th-century Scottish characters and not nearly as many of Julia and Henry in the 20th century, the time travel twist immediately made sense. The show did a pretty excellent job of keeping a lid on spoilers, considering that the time travel seems to be about as central to Blood of My Blood as time travel in the original Outlander. Hermione Corfield went on to explain what happened when she filmed outside for 18th century scenes with some paparazzi in the mix:
The first time outside… they were like, ‘You have to have umbrellas over you when you walk around, in case you get papped.’ So we were walking around with umbrellas, and we’ve been walking around all morning. We take the umbrellas down, and there’s just three paparazzi in like perfect view. [laughs] Set up and ready to go. And they just watched the whole shooting of the scene, because they get perfectly placed.
Well, if those pap pics circulated online after they were snapped, they didn’t get to everybody! I hadn’t seen them, and based on social media chatter after the trailer release, plenty of Outlander fans were as surprised as I was to see Claire’s mom going through the same stones that would claim her daughter a couple decades later. The big time travel twist seems to have been at least mostly preserved.
The Cast Is Already Working On Season 2
Starz wasted no time in renewing Blood of My Blood for at least one more round, with an order for Season 2 announced more than a month before Season 1 arrives. Production kicked off in late June, using the same sets that Outlander used for years before filming wrapped for Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe in 2024. So, when I had the chance to speak with Sam Retford (playing Dougal MacKenzie), Seamus McLean Ross (playing Colum MacKenzie), and Rory Alexander (playing Murtagh), I had to ask what it’s been like for them to get started on Season 2 when Season 1 won’t premiere until August 8. Retford responded:
We spent so much time preparing for Season 1 with the boot camp. I mean, we started sort of floating around the project in 2023 and then to be at this position now, and looking all the way back to then seeing how long we spent working and developing these characters, put so much effort in there, and then to see that pay off, and the anticipation be taken away, and go, ‘No, actually, it does work, we’ve done it.’
Going from the “floating” stage in 2023 to taking Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con directly after Outlander‘s panel debuted the first Season 8 footage on stage is certainly an epic way to see how high anticipation is for the payoff! Fans still have some time to wait before the two-episode premiere, but the cast has already seen some of the first season. Sam Retford went on:
We’ve watched episodes in it, and it looks fantastic. As a fan of these stories, it is going to be extremely satiating to open that universe up. And so then approaching Season 2 just feels like we can sort of take the pressure off ourselves and think, ‘Okay, let’s just play with these characters. Let’s have fun with them. Let’s enjoy.’
A perk for the actors playing Dougal, Colum, and Murtagh has to be that even if they aren’t wrapped up in the main time travel drama like the two couples, their characters also can’t be killed off. Outlander guarantees their survival, and Season 2 can expand their stories. As Seamus McLean Ross said:
There’s a deeper dive into their kind of inner worlds. In Season 2, you’ll get the kind of more intricate understanding of their kind of inner psychology more. Not the kind of like given circumstances of the show, but the more kind of deeper dive into their psychology.
For now, the days are counting down until Season 1 kicks off on Starz on Friday, August 8 at 8 p.m. ET. That will be almost exactly eleven years to the day that Outlander premiered back in 2014, which strikes me as a good sign for the show. As for the original series, Claire and Jamie will return for their final season at some point in 2026. Be sure to check back with CinemaBlend for more from the cast of Outlander: Blood of My Blood soon!
