Fans may be curious about the plot point
With the Droughtlander in full force, Outlander fans are revisiting previous seasons of the historical Starz series, with some curious to know Claire Fraser’s (played by Caitríona Balfe) reasons for trying to alter history.
In season two, Claire encouraged her husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) to head to Paris in the hopes of trying to stop the disastrous Battle of Culloden.
The second outing saw the couple trying to infiltrate the court and influence Bonnie Prince Charlie (Andrew Gower) to prevent bloodshed and the battle, which would irrevocably shape the course of Scotland’s history.
She wanted to stop the rise up against the British in the first place rather than trying to win the conflict.
Previously speaking on the Outlander podcast, executive producer Ronald D. Moore said how he’d had to completely revise the scene.
He said about Claire’s motives: “Stopping the war as opposed to trying to win the war.”
He went on to explain how the scene where Claire wants to change time went through several script changes.
Moore said: “A kind of whole different take on it in the first draft, where Claire made this whole analogy about she’d seen two World Wars really.
“She went on this extended speech about World War I and how that had happened and it happened and everyone thought it was going to be over quick and easy and it ended up taking four years and costing millions of lives.
“She was doing it to illustrate once a war starts, there was no way to predict how it was going to go.
“So the best way to stop this disaster from befalling the Scots was not to have the Jacobite Rebellion happen at all.”
The very first episode of Outlander even showed Claire covered in blood on the battlefield with news breaking about the end of World War II.
So, it’s clear Claire had seen much death and destruction during her time at the military field hospital tending to wounded soldiers.
Moore elaborated further about how he scripted the moment Claire revealed her motives for wanting to stop the Jacobite Rebellion.
He said: “It was sort of one of those writerly speeches that you fall in love with on the page as you’re writing. You’re like, ‘I love these words, it’s flowing so beautifully.’
“Then people read it and go, ‘This is just a long speech about World War I. What does this have to do with f***ing anything?’” He added: “Then you go, ‘Maybe it doesn’t really work.’”
Sadly, Jamie and Claire failed to alter the course of history, and the Battle of Culloden went ahead with the time traveller forced to return to her own era.
This isn’t the first time people have tried to change the course of history in Outlander, Geillis Duncan (Lotte Verbeek) also wanted to put Bonnie Prince Charlie on the throne, but again this didn’t happen.
There was also Otter Tooth or Robert Springer (Trevor Carroll), who tried to stop recent the Native Americans from being wiped out but his warnings to the tribes fell on deaf ears.
Moreover, Roger MacKenzie (Richard Rankin) tried to save his father Jerry (Nicholas Ralph) after he accidentally went through the stones, but once more it wasn’t to be.