Harriet Slater (Ellen) in 'Outlander: Blood of My Blood.' Starz Logo text [This story contains spoilers from the third episode of the second season of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, “Rabbits Don’t Swim.”]
The writers of Outlander: Blood of My Blood like to describe the most recent installment of the Starz historical romantic drama as “Home Alone, but with knives.” In last Friday’s episode of the Outlander prequel, written by Toni Graphia and directed by Azhur Saleem, Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) rallies the women of her clan to thwart a surprise attack on Castle Leoch.
While most of the men have left to battle on the front lines of the 1715 Jacobite rising, Ellen, in the vein of Home Alone‘s Kevin McCallister, secretly devises a series of makeshift booby traps — and even uses her own trusty bow and arrow to kill eight male attackers. “I was so excited when I read episode three because we see a whole new side to Ellen,” Slater tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We see her fight physically, and we see the women of Clan MacKenzie all band together and kick some ass.”
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Together, the women hold the line against an invasion led by James MacKinney (Ryan Fletcher). MacKinney, who appeared in the first season, still harbored a bitter grudge against the clan after being passed over for leadership following the untimely death of Ellen’s father, Red Jacob — a coveted title that was awarded instead to her brothers, Colum (Séamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford).
“This MacKinney character was perfect. If you watch season one, you see when he bends a knee to Colum, there’s a [sense of] ‘I’m not doing this wholeheartedly.’ So it was really natural to bring him back as the villain of that episode,’” explains long-time Outlander universe showrunner Matthew B. Roberts, who “wanted to show the war at home” in this episode. With Dougal at war and Colum nursing a condition now known as Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome that renders his leg immobile at times, MacKinney “feels like it’s the perfect opportunity. ‘All I have to do is deal with these women, and I can take over the clan.’ Well, lesson learned!”
At the start of episode three, the remaining clan members — Colum, his legal advisor Ned Gowan (Conor MacNeill), Dougal’s new wife Maura Grant (Bobby Rainsbury), and Colum’s three sisters Ellen, Jocasta (Sadhbh Malin), and Janet (Ailsa Davidson) — sit down for a tense dinner. Colum is still furious with Ellen for failing to go through with her arranged marriage to Malcolm Grant (Jhon Lumsden), Maura’s brother who died fighting Ellen’s lover, Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy), in the season one finale; Ellen, in turn, resents Colum for breaking his word and attempting to have Brian killed.
Though Ellen and Brian fled Castle Leoch immediately after Malcolm’s death at the end of season one, the star-crossed lovers knew they both had unfinished business to settle before committing to a life together — especially with the Jacobite rebellion looming. While Brian rode off to war, Ellen reluctantly returned to Leoch, fully aware of the wrath awaiting her from Colum in particular. “As an actor, I was actually thrilled that Ellen decides to go back to Leoch, because it meant she would have more scenes with Colum, no matter how tense they are,” Slater says.
That tension comes to a head in episode three. Following another sharp exchange between the siblings, Ellen excuses herself from dinner. Moments later, MacKinney storms in, kills one of Colum’s guards, and orders his men to round up the castle’s women and sequester them in the chapel. MacKinney then demands that Colum hand over the keys to the castle — only for Colum to inform him that the estate was actually recently transferred to Ellen. “Every acre, every stone, all in her name,” Colum says with a smug grin on his face. “Kill me. Then ye’ll be laird of nothing.”
Having escaped just in time, Ellen comes up with a plan to pick off the captors one by one, ending with MacKinney himself. “MacKinney sees us as he sees all women — weak creatures meant to serve and obey, helpless without our men to protect us,” Ellen tells her fellow women after slipping into the chapel with them. “That blindness is his weakness. He’ll hunt for us where women belong — kitchens, bedchambers, corners. He’ll think us rabbits fleeing to our burrows.”
Through a series of childhood flashbacks, Ellen recalls advice from her late father, Clan MacKenzie leader Red Jacob. Rather than conforming to what others — especially her brothers — expect of her, Red Jacob urges Ellen to play to her own unique strengths. “When the fox hunts rabbits… he doesn’t look in the loch,” he reminds her. “Remember that. Rabbits don’t swim. Let their blindness be their downfall, lass.”
Audiences may be left questioning what Red Jacob meant by “rabbits don’t swim,” but the intended meaning is quite simple. “Rabbits do swim, but most people don’t think rabbits swim,” explains executive producer Maril Davis. “That’s the point of this episode — people are underestimated and use that to their advantage.”
Slater herself was not on set to watch the filming of the scenes between the younger Ellen and Red Jacob, but she believes those flashbacks help shed new light on the lessons the late MacKenzie patriarch imparted to his daughter. After all, Red Jacob always believed that, if it weren’t for the gender constraints of the 18th century, Ellen would have been his rightful successor as a leader.
“Her father saw her as more from the day she was born. There’s lines in the first season that he literally says multiple times: If she was a man, she would be leading this clan,” Roberts says. “It was really important that we showed that her father trained her to be more than what society was going to put on her — and that’s exactly what MacKinney underestimates.”
“I think particularly in episode three, we see her learn not to act in a way that anyone expects,” adds Slater. “People will underestimate you, and actually that’s how you can win because they won’t expect you to act in certain ways or be a certain thing. Ultimately, that is how they conquer MacKinney and his men because they do completely the unexpected, what nobody thought would be possible of them.”
The women exploit the invaders’ assumption that they are helpless victims, turning the castle’s layout into a series of lethal traps. The retaliation begins outside the chapel, where Ellen uses her bow to quietly pick off the guard escorting the hostages, allowing the women to escape and seize his weapons. Later, as MacKinney’s men give chase, they slip and lose their footing on floorways slicked with oil, sliding straight into waiting ambushes. Janet also acts as a decoy, luring several men inside the chapel; once the doors shut behind them, the women drop a heavy, suffocating tapestry over the group and stab them through the fabric.
Sadhbh Malin (Jocasta MacKenzie Cameron),Harriet Slater (Ellen MacKenzie), Rebekah Lumsden (Letitia) and Sally Messham (Glenna Fitzgibbons). Starz Elsewhere in the castle, Ellen corners invaders near the gatehouse portcullis and unleashes the castle’s hunting dogs onto the trapped men. Ellen takes on two more guards in the dark bell tower, where she strikes the great bell to rouse a swarm of roosting bats — using the deafening noise and blinding chaos to slit their throats unseen. The sequence culminates in the Great Hall, where Ned kicks part of his broken cane to Colum, who stabs MacKinney in the leg. The momentary distraction gives Ellen a clear shot to finish the leader off with an arrow to the chest.
Slater happily confirms that she did her own archery when cameras were rolling. “I was not bad on the day, but then I tried it again a couple months later and I was terrible,” she recalls with a laugh. “I need a whole team behind me directing me and making sure the angles are just right. It’s a lot harder than it looks, but I was so excited to learn it because I was a huge Hunger Games fan growing up. I channeled my inner Jen Lawrence — and it felt powerful.”
The women of Clan MacKenzie, however, don’t come out of that battle without casualties of their own. While luring the men into the chapel, Janet was fatally stabbed in the abdomen. Though Ellen has grown accustomed to the violence around her, losing her younger sister is a particularly devastating blow, Slater notes “[Ellen] says, ‘Janet, you’re the best of all of us.’ She’s so pure and kind, and she’s the last person who deserves to die in this scene. She has such a kind heart. I think Ellen really feels like it’s just not fair, and it does hit her harder than most.”
Shortly before Janet takes her last breath in her arms, a tearful Ellen reveals that she is actually pregnant with her and Brian’s first child. “I love the fact that she promises to name her child Janet if it is a girl,” Slater adds. “I think that’ll be a lovely thing for Outlander fans to see as well, because we know that Brian and Ellen do eventually go on to have a daughter that they name Jenny [whose full name is Janet].”
Brian, meanwhile, is completely unaware that he is a soon-to-be father. In the second season, Brian and Dougal find themselves forced to set aside their personal grievances over Brian’s secret relationship with Ellen — as well as their individual clans’ grudges — in order to co-lead their men into battle at the start of the 1715 Jacobite rising. (As Brian’s cousin Murtagh, played by Rory Alexander, puts it, “War makes for strange allies.”)
“War does strange things to people, and it brings people together who necessarily wouldn’t be friends. So you see them literally on the front line shoulder to shoulder,” Roy says of the future brothers-in-law. “I haven’t been in war, but I can only imagine that you have to have the person on your side’s back.” And while “there’s definitely still a tension” between Brian and Dougal, “there is this modicum of respect between the two now that only deepens as we go further into the season, which was really, really great to explore.”
Brian’s shifting allegiances also call into question his loyalty to his despicable father, Lord Lovat (Tony Curran), who believes that “love makes men weak” and “makes them forget their duties” on the battlefield. But, as Roy points out, finding love with Ellen actually gives Brian the strength to stand up to Lovat’s tyranny rather than bow to it.
“In season one, [Jamie] didn’t really have anything to fight for before Ellen. It was like, ‘This is my life. I am a bastard. These are the circumstances, and I’m not going to be a victim about it. It’s just the way life is,’” Roy says. “But now Ellen has opened up this whole other door to a new universe of possibilities for Brian, and Brian now has the confidence to be like, ‘Yeah, do you know what? I can do these things. I can go off to war. I can lead people. I can stand up to our tyrant.’ I think fans are really going to enjoy seeing that side of Brian.”
What Brian and Dougal don’t know is that Lovat has actually double-crossed the MacKenzies; Lovat has secretly aligned with the Crown to betray the Jacobite forces, marching both men directly into a deadly trap. Shortly before riding off with new maid Grace (Ruby Fubara) to warn them of Lovat’s betrayal, which she had discovered from MacKinney, Ellen tells Colum that she no longer considers Leoch her real home. Her real home is with Brian — the man Colum couldn’t kill.
That confrontation seemingly serves as a point of no return for Ellen, cementing the rift between her and Colum. “At the end of season one, she kind of gives him the opportunity to admit what he did, and when he doesn’t, that for her is the final straw,” Slater says of the strong-willed siblings’ relationship, echoing what she told THR around this time last year. “I don’t think she sees that trust ever being repaired, which is so sad because they had such an amazing friendship beforehand. We see it at the beginning of season one and in flashbacks. But I think there’s a huge amount of hurt and betrayal there, which is going to take a long time to repair.”
Meanwhile, back at Castle Leathers, Julia (Hermione Corfield) is begrudgingly forced to readjust to life as Lovat’s wife after her plan to escape through the standing stones at Craigh Na Dun with Henry (Jeremy Irvine) and their newborn son William was thwarted by Arch Bug (Terence Rae). Stripped of her freedom once again, Julia has found herself at another emotional breaking point.
“In season one, [Julia] was full of confusion and hope to try and get back to Henry and [their daughter] Claire. Once we get to the start of season two, her hopes have all been dashed and she’s almost back to square one,” Corfield says, describing Julia as hitting “rock bottom” in the premiere. “So when she’s taken back to Lovat, it was a negotiation of how much her internal pain and grief at being separated again and the plan failing is meeting her need to strategize and be back on her feet and ready to convince Lovat that she in fact is happy to be home and has been held captive by the Grant bladier. That was the thing I was trying to tread.”
To add insult to injury, Julia learns that Castle Leathers’ enigmatic new maid, Seema (Lauren McQueen), had a months-long sexual relationship with Henry after he was led to believe Julia and their baby died in childbirth — and Seema clearly knows more about Julia than she is letting on. “[Julia] first hears about [Henry’s betrayal] through Seema when we have the bath scene, and she’s washing me and she says it — and I don’t want to believe it then,” Corfield explains of Julia’s mindset. “I think that women have instincts, and her instincts start kicking in and she goes, ‘Okay, this feels not just like someone making something up; this feels real.’”
When Julia inevitably comes face-to-face with Henry again later in the season, Corfield teases, “she’s in a situation where she’s dealing with understanding he’s got mental health problems and PTSD [from serving in World War I], but also her own hurt and betrayal from that situation.”
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A new episode of Outlander: Blood of My Blood season two will be available to stream every Friday at midnight on the STARZ app and all STARZ streaming platforms, with the finale set to air on November 20.
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