Popverse's top stories

• How to be a success in American comic books in 2025, according to Spawn creator & Image Comics boss Todd McFarlane
• Explaining Rachel Rozman, Natasha Lyonne's Fantastic Four: First Steps character [Lore Corner]
• Star Trek: Voyager captain Kathryn Mulgrew doesn’t get fan hate for Janeway’s controversial decision in the Tuvix episode

How do you know when you have a good thing going? You do everything in your power to keep it going forever. That’s what Outlander: Blood of my Blood feels like because the Fraser family tree was complex long before a former World War II nurse named Claire Beauchamp accidentally travelled through time to land in 1743 Scotland. 

10 years and eight seasons later, Outlander has one of the biggest fandoms, grounded on the book series of the same name by Diana Gabaldon. On August 8, the Fraser family tree is about to get even more convoluted when the Outlander prequel series, Blood of My Blood, premiered. Talks of prequel series started much earlier than one might think.  

“At the end of Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5 we didn’t know how long Outlander would go, so we started to really think about a prequel at that point,” revealed showrunner Matthew B. Roberts. “In the books, there's a thread with Brian and Ellen. People talk about how they eloped and how they met.”

And that's it. There are no books dedicated to telling their story.

“So I started to look at that, but I didn’t think it had enough legs to carry a whole series full of multiple seasons,” explained Roberts. “So I went to Maril Davis’ office and I said, ‘What if Julie and Henry didn’t die in that car accident? What if they lived? What if they went back in time and met Brian and Ellen? What if their stories intermingled? And they helped Jamie and Claire be Jamie and Claire.’ I like to say that they’re love stories that tell the love story. So when I pitched that hook, everybody loved that hook.”

“And that became Blood of My Blood.” 

Blood of My Blood tells the story of Jamie Fraser’s parents and their courtship as they endure a forbidden romance. His mother Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) and his father is Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy). This long tale kicks off with MacKenzie’s father Jacob, passing away. Before his death, Jacob assured Ellen he wouldn’t marry her off. However his death, all but guarantees nothing for Ellen, and Colum (Seamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford) try to use their sister as a political pawn to strengthen the family name. Complicating matters is that she meets Brian Fraser who she instantly falls in love with and that does not sit well with her brothers.

That’s just one side of the story. Claire’s parents also had an epic love story. Her father Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) served in World War I while her mother Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield) kept focused on getting into a university and writing letters to Henry. Until she discovers the stones of Craigh na Dun and well, that's when things get messy.

Season 1 of Outlander: Blood of My Blood premieres August 8 on the Starz network and is 10 episodes long.

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions