Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2 Episode 6 was a truly intense episode for Dougal and Maura! Not only did he have to endure torture, but Dougal also had to face that he led his men straight to their deaths—driven solely by his pride and bloodlust. Maura, for her part, can no longer deny what she is beginning to feel for Dougal. And that brings with it a different kind of problems.
Following our conversation with Matthew B. Roberts and Emer Conroy, we sat down with Sam Retford and Bobby Rainsbury to talk about the guilt shaping their characters, the feelings that refuse to disappear, and whether everything happening between them will bring them closer or push them apart. Ready?
Here we go!
The War Is Turning Dougal Into Someone New
Dougal has always had a strong sense of who he is, but the consequences of his decisions are beginning to catch up with him. Losing his men raises an important question: does he feel responsible for their deaths? For Retford, the answer is a clear “yes.” Also, Retford sees these experiences as the beginning of a transformation. He said that “we start to see the building blocks for the Dougal that was created in the original Outlander universe.”
The Dougal we meet in the prequel is still a young man, and the things he witnesses and does during the war are changing him. As Retford puts it, “we see a young boy feel the scars and effects of war,” beginning with “watching death, causing death, and then causing death of loved ones and ones he knows close to home.”
That last part matters. Dougal is not simply confronting the realities of battle from a distance. Death is reaching closer to him, affecting people he knows and cares about. Retford believes the guilt that follows is becoming part of who Dougal will be. “A lot of guilt comes with that,” he says, adding that “you sort of start to see the child chipping away from him.”
It’s a revealing way to look at Dougal’s development. The man we know from Outlander has learned to survive in a brutal world. But Retford points to the younger version of that man and the experiences that help build his defenses. “We build this hard exterior that is there to survive through war,” he explains. For Retford, there is no doubt that “it’s definitely something Dougal feels deeply.”
That guilt could also have consequences for his relationship with Maura. The two have been pulled apart by their circumstances, their pasts, and the choices they have made. Now, with Dougal facing the cost of his actions, the question is whether their feelings can survive everything that stands between them.
Dougal and Maura May Be Ready to Stop Fighting What They Feel
For Maura, the situation is complicated by the feelings she’s developing for Dougal and the revenge that has shaped her choices. Her past and Malcolm’s death haven’t disappeared because something new is growing between them. When we asked Rainsbury whether Maura would choose revenge or her feelings for Dougal, the actress suggested that she would move toward him, while making it clear that this would not resolve everything.
“I think that she is going to lean toward Dougal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the feelings from first season have totally left her,” Rainsbury explains. So Maura’s feelings for Dougal may influence what she chooses next, but that doesn’t mean the events that brought her to this point will stop mattering.
Rainsbury also hints that the series will explore the relationship with care because “it’s something that we’ll see played out very intelligently.” As Rainsbury puts it, we’ll see what this means “within their relationship and how they kind of hold a standard for one another.” That idea is interesting given everything that has happened between them. Feelings alone cannot erase the consequences of their decisions. And Maura still has to reckon with the past even as she considers a future with Dougal.
Still, both actors see the events of this episode as something that could bring the characters closer. When we asked whether everything happening would unite them or tear them apart, Retford leaned toward the former. “I think it will bring them together because they were pulled further apart,” he says.
For him, “the further they are apart from each other, the more they realize that they mourn the loss of each other,” Retford explains. That realization could change how they approach their relationship, allowing them to learn from what has happened and grow closer as a result. Retford is also hopeful that this change will encourage them to act on what they feel. He says he is “looking forward to seeing how that makes them grow,” adding that he hopes it will make them “act on their impulses of their feelings towards one another a little bit more.”
Rainsbury’s answer points toward another important change. So far, Maura and Dougal have largely been defined by the separate worlds they come from, but from now on “we’ll see them working as a unit, whereas up until this point, we haven’t really seen that dynamic between the two of them,” she explains. As Rainsbury sees it, both characters have been shaped by their own backgrounds and experiences. “They’ve both kind of just been Maura and Dougal from the worlds that they’ve come from,” she says. Going forward, however, “we’ll start to see them unify in a way.”
That possibility gives their relationship a promising direction. Dougal’s guilt and Maura’s unresolved feelings could create further obstacles, but the two actors suggest that those same experiences may help them understand what they stand to lose. Time will say whether that leads them to make different choices, but their relationship may be moving toward a point where they have to consider what they can become together.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2 airs on Fridays at 8:00 PM ET only on STARZ and at midnight in STARZ App.
