The Battle of Sheriffmuir has been building for much of Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2, as the Jacobite Rising pulls Brian Fraser, Murtagh, Dougal and the rest of the Highlanders deeper into a conflict that is becoming increasingly difficult to escape.
When the battle finally arrives in Episode 5, “Forgive Me, Father,” it is chaotic, muddy and intensely physical. But some of the episode’s most memorable moments happen away from the battlefield: Colum quietly confronting his demons, Julia entangled in a Laoghire-esque conflict with Seema, and Henry and Arch finally finding a way to coexist.
Those contrasts were part of what made me want to speak with Emer Conroy, who directed the episode, about how she approached bringing it all to the screen.
Conroy has also directed some of the most consequential episodes in the larger Outlander universe, including the massive battle in the original series finale. So one of the first things I wanted to know was whether that experience changed anything about the way she approached Sheriffmuir.
“No. They were both completely different,” Conroy told Men’s Journal.
The battle in the Outlander finale took place up the side of a mountain, and Conroy didn’t want to rely on camera tricks to make the sequence look more difficult than it actually was, so she leaned into authenticity instead. For Sheriffmuir, she approached the battle differently, but she still wanted the action to feel as physically real as possible.
“All the explosions, all the muck, all the blood, we did as much in camera as we possibly could on this battle,” she said.
That meant the actors were actually running through the mud and around the explosion sites. And Conroy believes that physical reality changed their performances. During rehearsal, the cast had an idea of what the sequence would be like. Then the explosions actually started.
“When we first did it in the rehearsal, obviously you don’t set anything off and they were like, ‘Yeah, this would be fine,’” Conroy said. “And then the first take when I set everything off, they all came back, ‘Oh wow.’”
“It makes them act different,” she added. “It really does.”
Colum Finally Lets His Guard Down
One of the first things that struck me about the episode was its opening with Colum praying.
Colum has been a character viewers have wanted to shake since the beginning of the series, but the musings of his inner thoughts and the way Conroy holds on his face during the prayer — before he quietly blows out the candle — offers a glimpse of the character that we haven’t really seen before.
For Conroy, that was exactly the point.
“It’s one of my favorite scenes, actually, because it’s the first time we see a side of Colum that we haven’t seen before,” she said.
There is no bravado. No attempt to project strength. Instead, Colum is speaking to God — and, in Conroy’s interpretation, speaking directly to his father, Red Jacob, too.
“I actually think Red Jacob has a lot of blame at his feet in the way that he treated his son,” Conroy said. “And that made him feel less than.”
That history helps explain some of Colum’s choices throughout the series, including the things he’s now willing to do to Ellen and others around him. Conroy sees the prayer as a moment in which Colum finally acknowledges the darker path he’s being forced down.
The scene also changes the way we understand a line that comes later in the episode, when Ned says Ellen was Red Jacob’s weakness. Suddenly, the complicated history between the two men feels more tangible.
Henry’s PTSD Is in the Smallest Details
The episode’s battle also contains one of its most understated character moments. Immediately after the cannons begin, we cut to Henry holding a canteen. His hand is shaking. It’s a tiny detail, but it communicates an enormous amount about what Henry is experiencing without requiring him to explain any of it.
Henry’s PTSD has been such an important part of his story, particularly after everything we saw with his treatment in the asylum. So I wanted to know how much thought goes into those small physical details that allow an audience to understand what a character is feeling without having to spell it out.
Conroy said much of that work begins with the script, but it also comes from Jeremy Irvine, who plays Henry, and the conversations surrounding the performance.
Henry knows what he’s about to face.
“You thought that you would never have to go through this again and here you are facing into something that has affected you and your life in both past and present,” Conroy said.
But she also didn’t want the PTSD to make Henry incapable of doing what he believes he needs to do. And so, he did, as we can tell from Gerard Grey (Lord John’s dad!) approaching him in the aftermath.
The trembling hand therefore becomes a glimpse of the fear Henry is carrying rather than something that completely overtakes him. And there’s another reason that physical detail is so important: Henry can’t exactly explain his experience to the people around him.
“How do you explain that to somebody in 1715?” Conroy said.
The Blood-Soaked Horse Became a Motif
I was also struck by the way Episode 5 moves so abruptly between the battle and its other storylines.
We go from explosions and chaos to Ellen waking up with a pistol against her cheek. Later, the episode continues moving between the battle, Julia and Seema, and Ellen’s storyline. A blood-soaked horse becomes part of those transitions, carrying the violence of the battlefield into scenes that are otherwise much more intimate.
It turns out that image almost didn’t become what it was. The horse appeared in the original script in just one beat.
“And then as I was reading it, I was like, ‘Oh my God. This should be a motif through the whole thing,’” Conroy said.
So she expanded it. That small piece of direction became a recurring visual idea that helped connect the episode’s separate storylines, making the violence of Sheriffmuir feel like something that continued to linger even when the battle itself was no longer on screen.
For Conroy, that kind of discovery is one of the most exciting parts of directing.
“Sometimes things come from one little mention in a screen direction and you think, ‘That’s it. That’s my key. That’s what I’ll use,’” she said.
And, she added, Blood of My Blood‘s creative team gives directors room to follow those instincts.
It’s a fitting example of how much can happen between the script and the finished episode. Sometimes the detail that ends up defining a scene — or even an entire visual transition — is hiding in a single line on the page.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood Season 2, Episode 5, “Forgive Me, Father,” is now available to stream on Starz.
