Blood Of My Blood’ Is An Entertaining Prequel With One Big Problem

Outlander: Blood Of My Blood

Credit: Starz

I tend to view prequels with a healthy dose of skepticism. Every once in a blue moon, one comes along and not only justifies its existence, but blows my mind in the process. Most of the time, prequels are little better than fan-fiction.

Better Call Saul somehow managed to be every bit as dramatic and compelling as its parent show, Breaking Bad. The series maintained suspense by introducing a handful of really compelling new characters whose fates remained a mystery. Just as importantly, the show’s writers resisted the temptation to make it little more than a vehicle for Breaking Bad callbacks.

Better Call Saul brought back characters from Breaking Bad judiciously and with purpose. Jimmy and Mike, in particular, were given a great deal more depth than they ever had in the original series.

Another great example of a prequel done right is Andor, Tony Gilroy’s exceptional companion series to Rogue One which was itself a prequel to A New Hope. Star Wars has lots of prequels and prequels of prequels. It’s less known for profound character studies and brilliant explorations of revolution and political upheaval, but Andor managed to do all that and more in its 24-episode run. Of course, we knew the fate of Cassian Andor, and the Empire and the Rebellion, but the show helped fill in so many gaps, while giving us a darker (and better written) portrayal of a galaxy far, far away, that it quickly became my favorite piece of Star Wars media since the original trilogy.

But Better Call Saul and Andor are diamonds in the rough. Far too often, prequels are little more than another way to squeeze more content out of an IP. A prequel faces many hurdles. It’s rarely as good as the original but always compared to the original. A prequel often gives us too much information, like explaining how the Force works in Star Wars. It rarely stands on its own two feet as a story, with many of its best gags or moments inextricably tied to work that came before. Unlike a sequel, a prequel isn’t tasked with ending a story, but rather with making up some new story altogether which can somehow lead to the one we’ve already been told. This can make many prequels seem hamfisted or unsurprising.

Which brings me to Outlander: Blood Of My Blood.

I Wanna Go Back, When You Were Mine

Spoilers follow.

The new series takes place some years before the events of Outlander, though given that these are stories about time-travelling “before” and “after” are rather hazy prepositions. We are introduced to Jamie Fraser’s parents, Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater) before they become his parents. We are also introduced to Claire Beauchamp’s parents, Henry Beauchamp (Jeremy Irvine) and Julia Moriston (Hermione Corfield), though in the timeline of the prequel their daughter has already been born (though we get to see how they meet during WW1 briefly before the main story kicks off).

The casting is quite superb. It’s so uncannily good that it throws me off at times. Hermione Corfield’s Julia looks and sounds and acts so much like Claire (Caitriona Balfe) at times that they could have just as easily cast her to play a younger Claire rather than her mother. It’s quite extraordinary. I’m less thrilled by how similar their personalities are. Mothers and daughters are often quite different people, but with Claire and Julia, the apple didn’t fall far from the proverbial tree.

I rolled my eyes a few times at how Strong and Independent Julia happens to be, a generation ahead of Claire, who was already quite uniquely strong-willed and opinionated for her time (and took those views back with zeal to the 17th century where they were even more foreign). To have her mother not only look but act and think almost exactly the same is peculiar. Sure, kids learn from their parents and often hold similar views, but just as often they fight to distinguish themselves from their parents or even rebel against them, even if only intellectually or politically. A more conservative, traditional Julia would have helped make her more distinct and feel less like a clone of Claire.

It doesn’t help that Jamie’s mother, Ellen, is also fiercely independent and progressive for her time. The daughter of a Scottish laird, she was promised by her father that she would never have to marry. And so the two main female protagonists each possess strikingly similar personalities, very out of place for their respective times, that also happen to mirror Claire’s personality from the original show.

The fathers, meanwhile, are both handsome, progressive, noble and brave. Again, the casting is exceptional. Jamie Roy looks a lot like a young, dark-haired Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). His voice sounds like Heughan’s as well. And he is every bit the gentleman, chivalrous and kind and self-sacrificing. He’s the one man, it turns out, that might tempt Ellen away from her commitment to spinsterdom. But her family loathes the Frasers and the Frasers loath the MacKenzies, so we have two star-crossed lovers. It’s Macbeth meets Romeo and Juliet.

In some ways, the fact that Jamie and Claire’s parents are all so fierce and good and independent and stubborn makes sense. They passed these qualities down to their children. In other ways, it strikes me that this makes Claire and Jamie much less unique.

This is all made much, much worse by the fact that Claire’s parents end up time-travelling . . . directly into the same time and place as Jamie’s parents during the early days of their forbidden courtship. If you told this story chronologically rather than having this be a prequel, it would seem very strange. You’d have these two couples meet thanks to pretty random time-traveling, and then (I assume, I haven’t watched the whole season) fall in love and make some babies, and then somehow they separate and then . . . miraculously . . . their babies, born in different centuries, end up falling in love a generation later.

Now, Claire is hardly special at all. Her parents always wanted to visit Scotland and go there on honeymoon there, so her trip there with Frank was just a weird repeat of theirs. Only now, she didn’t go to Scotland because of all the wonderful stories they told her but because Frank was researching his genealogy. Recall Claire of the first season. She really knows very little about Scotland. Frank is always teaching her things. Isn’t that a little odd given her parents’ story? They even went through the same exact stones that Claire travels back through!

Meanwhile, we are given a long parade of characters from the main show, only in younger actor’s bodies. Murtagh is a dashing young man played by Rory Alexander. Colum MacKenzie is played by young Seamus McLean Ross, who reminds me of a young (and Scottish) Joaquin Phoenix; Sam Retford plays his brother Dougal, with a full head of hair and a full belly of fire. There are even young versions of Ned, Angus and Rupert. The characters face some of the same problems I noticed in Dexter: Original Sin. That was an enjoyable prequel, but the younger versions all started to have the “high school play” effect. It’s not that any of the casting is off. I’m pleased with all the actors. But it’s just a lot of “Oh look, that’s young Angus! Oh look, that’s young Colum! Oh look . . . ” and so on and so forth.

The first two episodes of Blood Of My Blood still get a lot right. I enjoyed the setup, introducing us first to Jamie’s parents and secretly to Claire’s parents (as a maid in the Fraser household and the bladier of House Grant) before revealing their story in the second episode. You meet both Julia and Henry as characters in the past before realizing later that they came from the 20th century. That’s clever, and would have been even better if we were given more time to make this connection on our own, with perhaps a midseason reveal that they came from the future.

The costumes and music and cinematography are all great and lovingly crafted, though at times a shot here or there looked weirdly fake. We’re not quite at Outlander levels of detail and production value here, but it’s close enough for cannonballs. I also love that the show takes place in Scotland rather than the New World. I’ve had a harder time staying invested in Outlander’s main story ever since it left Scotland for the high seas and the Americas. As much as I might gripe that we’re treading old ground or hewing a little too close to the characters in the original show, it’s still good to be back.

I’m not sure what to think of Blood Of My Blood just yet. I remain optimistic despite my worries. I’m not sure this is a prequel that will justify its existence beyond throwing fans a fun new story. Who knows, maybe that’ll be enough.