Achingly Romantic Prequel Outlander: Blood of My Blood Builds on the Best Elements of Its Predecessor

Prequels (and sequels, come to that) are tricky things. Stories rarely compare all that favorably to the original work, and there’s often a whiff of desperation to the whole thing, as we watch a previously beloved franchise try to find a reason to keep existing past the end of its flagship property. Every so often, though, one of these sorts of series manages to surprise you: Not only justifying its own existence, but reminding you of everything you loved about the original in the first place. And while Outlander: Blood of My Blood may technically be a prequel that explores the familial origins of several characters from the megapopular Starz historical romance,  the series more than stands on its own tartan-clad feet, striking a near-perfect balance between the old and the new. 

For Outlander fans, the star-crossed romance of Jamie Fraser’s (Sam Heughan) parents was already the stuff of legend, a story that Sassenach Claire Beauchamp (Caitriona Balfe) heard about ad nauseam when she first time-traveled to early 18th-century Scotland and found herself caught up in the interfamily drama of the MacKenzies of Castle Leoch. Viewers knew much less about Claire’s parents, save the fact that they died in a car crash when she was quite young. Blood of My Blood aims not only to tell the story of these two love affairs but also to tie them together in a thrilling new way, rewriting the fates of Claire’s parents to firmly intertwine their lives with the story of Jamie’s in a way no one likely expected. 

To be fair, you don’t have to have seen a minute of Outlander to enjoy Blood of My Blood, which is a fully and compellingly immersive story in its own right.. Yes, the series is packed full of Easter eggs and narrative callbacks that will delight longtime fans of the long-running original. (Heck, the show’s entire premise is essentially that the romance between Outlander’s Claire Beauchamp and Jamie Fraser was so fated it impacted multiple generations.) And, those who are familiar with the original series will surely find themselves gasping at the skill of this franchise’s casting department, who have managed to find a quartet of leads who are startingly similar in both appearance and mannerisms to the actors who portrayed their onscreen relations. But if you have never heard of Craigh Na Dun, there’s still plenty to enjoy in this story of forbidden love, Scottish political intrigue, and women fighting for the chance to choose their own fates. 

Blood of My Blood revolves around two love stories, each of which faces seemingly impossible odds to be together. The story begins in 18th-century Scotland, where the death of MacKenzie clan laird Red Jacob (Peter Mullan) has left a power vacuum that his sons Colum (Séamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford) begin strategizing to fill, Succession-style, leaving their elder sister Ellen (Harriet Slater) stuck between them. Smart, fiery, and their father’s favorite, Ellen is particularly devastated by his death, for more reasons than one. Without her father’s protection and tacit endorsement of her unmarried status, she immediately becomes a pawn in her brothers’ quest for power, with each aiming to promise her to a different ally to shore up support for their claims to the lairdship. With little recourse in a world that privileges Colum and Dougal’s wishes over her own, Ellen chafes at the prospect of being stuck waiting around to see which man will unilaterally decide her fate. Her situation is further complicated when she meets and falls for the handsome Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), bastard son of the almost comically evil Lord Lovat (Tony Curran), and sworn enemy of the MacKenzie clan. 

Meanwhile, on the battlefields of World War I, a disillusioned English soldier named Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) addresses a letter of despair to no one and sends it off into the proverbial void. By chance, that letter arrives on the desk of Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), a cracklingly smart woman who has put her education on hold to contribute to the war effort at the Postal and Telegraph Censorship Office. She finds herself intrigued by Henry’s eloquent prose and writes him back, sparking up a regular correspondence and a friendship that slowly grows into something much deeper. By the time the two meet face to face for the first time, they’re already deeply in love, and soon marry and have a young daughter, named Claire. But a car accident during an ill-fated couple’s vacation to Scotland sees the pair thrown apart by supernatural forces, and it’s suddenly very clear where their daughter gets her time-traveling abilities from.

As the story leaps between timelines and time periods—sepia-toned flashbacks do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to telling the story of Henry and Julia’s romance, as well fleshing out the history of Ellen’s relationship with her father and brothers—Blood of My Blood casts its two key romances in one another’s shadow: One pair fighting to be together, the other desperate to find their way back to one another. It’s the stuff of epic romance, both couples are eminently compelling, and it’s easy to be swept away in both stories. That said, the forbidden Romeo and Juliet-style love story between Brian and Ellen easily steals the show from under virtually every other character.