TV Romance
Your Full Guide to What ‘Outlander’s Already Revealed About ‘Blood of My Blood’s Romances
Only one more sleep until we’re whisked away into the world of Outlander again. We’re not talking about the main show, which doesn’t drop its eighth and final season until early 2026. Trust us, we’re as impatient as you are to see how Claire and Jamie’s (Caítriona Balfe and Sam Heughan) journey wraps up, which is why we’re so glad we can sink our teeth into the prequel in the meantime.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood focuses on the ancestors of our favorite time-traveling couple. On the one hand, there’s Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater), Jamie’s mom and dad. On the other, we’ve got Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), Claire’s parents. Based on the trailer, their dual love stories are even more connected than we thought: Henry and Julia are sent careening through time just like their daughter.
We already know a few details about Blood of My Blood‘s characters from Outlander, so we decided to take a look back at the major details that the main series has already revealed about Ellen, Brian, Henry, and Julia. Keep reading if you want to get a jump on how their stories end. If you don’t want to spoil yourself with our history lesson, you’ve been warned!
Ellen MacKenzie & Brian Fraser
Buckle up, because Outlander has given us quite a few nuggets of Ellen and Brian lore over the past seven seasons. There are so many that we probably missed a few, but we’ve rounded up the most important pieces of information about their romance below.
First and most importantly, we know that the couple’s love story is cut tragically short. In Season 1, Jamie tells Claire on their wedding night that his mother died in childbirth when he was young, though Brian lived to watch his son grow up. (Brian died much later, but before the events of Season 1.) In Season 7, we find out exactly what age Ellen died: 38. In Episode 15, Jamie remembers standing over her coffin and his father unraveling Ellen’s braid.
Starz
Even more tragic is that Jamie found the body of his stillborn little brother lying underneath Ellen’s hair. (We already know we’re going to cry if Blood of My Blood reaches that point.) By then, Ellen and Brian already had three other children. Along with Jamie and his sister Jenny (Kristin Atherton), who we meet in the series, the couple’s eldest son was William. He died when he was 11.
In Season 4, Ellen’s sister Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy in Outlander and Sadhbh Malin in BOMB) reveals more details about Brian and Ellen to their grandchild, Brianna (Sophie Skelton). She says that Ellen’s father, who favored her, allowed her to avoid marriage for longer than was socially acceptable. After her father died, Ellen’s brothers, Colum and Dougal, tried to marry her off, but Ellen eloped with Brian. Jocasta adds that Ellen had been pregnant (presumably with William) before they tied the knot.
On their wedding night, Jamie also tells Claire that a man named Malcolm Grant was one of Ellen’s suitors, but she rejected him. He adds that she and Brian “slipped out of the castle right under the noses of 300 clansmen.”
We also find out in Outlander that Ellen had a connection with Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser (Duncan Lacroix), whose younger self is being portrayed by Rory Alexander in the prequel. Murtagh was Brian’s second cousin, but he also fell in love with Ellen, who ultimately rejected him. So, there’s a good chance we’ll see some friction between Murtagh and Brian as they try to win over the MacKenzie daughter.
Still, based on what Outlander has revealed, Murtagh and Ellen were close. After all, when Jamie was born, Murtagh swore to Ellen that he would follow and support her son. We later find out that Murtagh created a pair of bangles made out of tusks, which belonged to a boar he killed during a MacKenzie-led hunt. He gifted them to Ellen, who passed them down to Jenny. Jenny tells Claire that her mother wouldn’t reveal the secret admirer who gave them to her.
On the Brian front, we also know that he was a bastard of Lord Lovat (Clive Russell in Outlander and Tony Curran in BOMB), the Chief of Clan Fraser, which likely makes him an unsuitable match for Ellen. (We love a forbidden romance!) When Jamie and Claire meet Lovat in Season 2, we discover that Lovat tried to reconcile with Brian and name him as his successor after Ellen’s death, but Brian denied him. He stuck with Clan MacKenzie and Lallybroch, which he built for Ellen. That speaks to the power of his and Ellen’s connection.
Henry Beauchamp & Julia Moriston
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We have far much less to offer on Henry and Julia, we’re afraid. (But hey, it gives the show more room to surprise us with their story!) Whereas Jamie can remember his mother and father, Claire can’t recall much about her own, having been raised by her uncle. All she knows is that they died in a car crash when she was five, so we don’t hear much about them throughout Outlander.
However, we do now know that their death might not be so straightforward. In the trailer, Henry and Julia’s crash is shown, but instead of dying, it seems like they end up traveling through time in Scotland. They obviously don’t make it back to Claire in the present, but whether they die in the past or live out the rest of their days there remains to be seen.
Are you excited to learn more about Claire and Jamie’s parents’ romances? Tell us in the comments!
Outlander: Blood of My Blood, Series Premiere, Friday, August 8, 8/7c, Starz
