'Outlander' return trailer: They're doing it again!
The first full trailer for the return of Starz’ Outlander has arrived. Below Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) are reunited in the time-travel series, which re-launches for the second half of its debut season on April 4. When we last left our heroes, Claire had been captured by Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), but it seems she’s back in bed with her Scottish warrior hubby before too long. Plus there’s fighting, more Jamie whipping, a duel, an explosion and a certain infamous scene from the book that Balfe discusses shooting below. “The second half of the season really ramps up; the action is a lot stronger, it’s going to be heartbreaking and exciting,” Balfe recently told us. See for yourself:
At the Outlander panel at the Television Critics Association’s semi-annual press tour on Friday, Starz’ chief Chris Albrecht reiterated his support for the show. “We’re obviously doing the second book, we certainly have plans to continue with the franchise… [and] hopefully it will be around forever.”
More from the panel, which included stars Balfe, Heughan, showrunner Ron Moore and author Diana Gabaldon.
— Gabaldon was asked about her relationship with the actors playing her beloved characters. She quipped they were “much better than I thought they’d be.” And in terms of confusing the actors and their characters, “Caitriona and Clarie are always easy to keep separate; Sam flickers in and out for me,” she said drawing laughs.
— The author said the show has brought her a lot more more male readers, noting the series’ viewership is 47 percent male.
Spoiler alert for these final quotes!
–Balfe was asked about shooting the first book’s notorious spanking scene, which occurs during the second half of the show’s season. “We all knew a lot of people would be very interested in see in how we’d tackle it. First you have to look at it in the mind frame of 1743,” she said. “In 1743, this is a very justified form of punishment a husband would dish out. We talked a lot about it. We met a few times, we choreographed it quite well–” at this point, Balfe starts to giggle “– we tried to give it the respect it deserves. For Claire, she finds it hard to wrap her mind around what this man she loves is about to do. What I loved about it is we took time [afterward to include the scene in] the context of their marriage, how to get past this. Even tho she might not accept what he did there, they had to be coming to understand his reasons.” Heughan added: Jamie knows he has to do it to teach her a lesson ….it strengthens their relationship moving forward.”
— The first episode back will break with the show’s usual format and have Jamie providing voiceover instead of Claire. Moore explained there’s a few reasons for this: The episode focuses on Jamie and he wanted to give some catch-up information for new viewers tuning in, plus its an opportunity to shift to Jamie’s point of view given his independent storyline is increasingly important moving forward. Having said that, this will be the only time this season that this happens.
— We won’t see modern-day Frank again this season, but he’ll be in season 2.
— Though the second season is partly set in Paris, Outlander will continue to shoot in Scotland.