Outlander opened up its New York Comic Con session with a full screening of the season four premiere episode.
The hour was introduced by unannounced guest, author Diana Gabaldon, who later thanked fans for “laugh[ing] at all of the lines from the book.”
In the fourth season, Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) have settled in North Carolina. “It’s a slightly less happy place than you would think,” Moore teased. “[But] it really is the season where they decide to have a home and decide to have a place where they can have roots.”
It’s also a different dynamic for the Frasers, who spent many years yearning to reunite. “They’ve been fighting to be together and finally this season, they are,” Heughan said. “They’re briefly together and that’s what they wanted.”
Which also means their new challenges will be more about what the duo will face together as opposed to what might keep them apart. “This season there is such a contentment with the two of them together,“ Balfe previewed. “I don’t think there are cliffhangers again about whether this couple will stay together or not.”
Added Heughan: “We got this.”
As for Claire and Jamie’s daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton), her relationship with Roger (Richard Rankin) — in the 20th century — “follows the [fourth] book with their dynamic,” Skelton teased.
“We get a good look of how they function together and how they stress each other out and what they’re like individually and how it impacts them,” added Rankin.
The panel took a serious turn when a fan addressed the discussion of non-consensual sex that occurs in the season premiere. She asked the panel what they thought of the state of the world today, but the moderator — Lola Ogunnaike, host of Entertainment Weekly the Show and PEOPLE Now — “remixed” the question and asked instead how the real world impacts their work.
“Ultimately, the show is about these characters and this story,” Moore said. “We don’t choose to look at it as a platform for political ideas. But at the same time, all of us live in the world, all of us live in the society, we can’t help but have what happens in the world inform what we do. We try to be cognizant of our audience … and try to talk with our show and not preach to the audience that this is our point of view. We look at the world that we live in just like you do and it can’t help but sort of influence our work.”
Outlander returns Sunday, Nov. 4 on STARZ.
