This story contains spoilers for Outlander: Blood of My Blood.
Despite what you might be thinking, you don’t need mystical standing stones to travel to 18th-century Scotland. A visit to Blackness Castle, a half-hour drive from Edinburgh, will suffice. Fans of Outlander: Blood of My Blood—and the original Starz historical fantasy—know it as Fort William. The prequel series draws a line between past and present as Dougal MacKenzie (Sam Retford) encounters a familiar face: Jack Randall (Finley Glasgow), who is later known as Black Jack. Not yet the monster Outlander fans know him to be, 14-year-old Jack is already showing signs of the sadistic torturer he will later become when Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) is held in the same imposing fortress and publicly flogged.
On a balmy, gray October day in 2025, the mood at the former royal prison and artillery fortress that sits on the impressive Firth of Forth shoreline is buoyant. The night before, under the light of the harvest moon—which also happens to be the first supermoon of the year—Blood of My Blood director Azhur Saleem shot Brian (Jamie Roy) and Murtagh’s (Rory Alexander) daring rescue mission to locate Dougal’s cell, leaving the cast in great spirits as they prepare for the second part of this great escape.
The second season of Outlander: Blood of My Blood has seen Brian set aside his differences with Dougal to fight alongside his future brother-in-law for the Jacobite cause against the English Crown. Family ties also connect the two men, no matter how much they bristle at their shared bond: Dougal’s sister, Ellen (Harriet Slater), is handfasted to Brian; Ellen promised Dougal’s new bride, Maura (Bobby Rainsbury), that Brian would keep Dougal safe. Of course, Dougal is not one to back down from a fight, no matter how reckless it is. Last week’s Battle of Sheriffmuir ended in a tie, much to Dougal’s dissatisfaction, so he took a dangerous side quest to Argyll that ended in his capture. Now, in the sixth episode, “Small Mercies,” Brian and Murtagh break into Fort William to ensure Dougal makes it home to his wife at Castle Leoch. Little do they know that they are about to come face-to-face with a villain-in-the-making.
Finley Glasgow as Black Jack Randall.
Eagle-eyed viewers will undoubtedly spot that Dougal is tortured in the exact spot where Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) whips Brian’s son, Jamie, until his back is in bloody shreds. You might also have an inkling of the young English officer’s identity because the casting team has hit another home run, but it isn’t until Jack takes things too far that we hear him referred to by his surname, Randall. “When I got the episode [screener] to watch, the first bit I skipped to was when they reveal his name,” Retford admits when ELLE caught up with him earlier this week on Zoom. “It’s so beautifully subtle, and they linger on it for the perfect amount of time.”
Outlander has a way of forming unbreakable threads between past and present, with history being set in stone no matter how hard someone tries to change it: Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) has learned this over and over. Dougal might want to kill Jack after the young officer has taken great pleasure in threatening him with a hot piece of coal—first his face, then his most delicate parts—but Brian steps in to stop Dougal from killing his son’s future tormentor. If only Brian could “jump 30 years in the future and be like, ‘Ooh, that’s a bad idea,’” Roy said. The older Dougal (Graham McTavish) witnesses Black Jack’s violence against Jamie in Fort William, as depicted in a season 1, episode 6 Outlander flashback.
Even though young Dougal has zero inkling of what is to come, I wonder whether this Outlander scene was on Retford’s mind, given how much Dougal’s torture resembles Jamie’s beating. “Time travel is possible. Maybe young Dougal is sat up on the parapet somewhere looking down,” Retford jokes. But it is something the actor has thought about. “I think it all influences [us] because it’s that feeling of walking over someone’s grave,” Retford says. “There needs to be an essence of familiarity; ‘I’ve been here before’ from an audience perspective.” While the characters don’t possess any knowledge of the future (unless otherwise stated), the cast understands that they have a duty to uphold narrative continuity for the fans. “There was a little bit of me in there, in the back of [Dougal’s] mind that was saying, ‘This is the very step where Outlander begins to branch out from this universe, and we’re seeing all of these sliding-door moments start to happen,’” Retford adds.
Whereas Jamie’s whipping was a form of punishment, Dougal is being tortured for information about what the Jacobites plan on doing next. While Retford admits it was uncomfortable being cuffed in that position, he doesn’t mind being shirtless in the Scottish October weather. “I run pretty hot,” he says. “I was having a great time. I never like wrapping up warm anyway. Cold is very much a preferred element for me. I’m still running about in shorts.”
Sam Retford as Dougal MacKenzie.
On set, we get to step into the room where Saleem is setting up this confrontation between Dougal and Jack, with its low ceilings and haunted vibes. No imagination is required to conjure images of the past. In the episode, Brian and Murtagh have just rescued Dougal from the sea cell, with only seconds to spare before he drowns in the rising tide. Dougal’s fellow captive Angus (Ross Mann) is less fortunate and dies, adding to Dougal’s heady cocktail of rage and guilt. Whereas Blackness did have cells that would fill with water, that portion of this episode is shot on a soundstage at Wardpark Film and Television Studios, where we visited a few days earlier. The switch between the 15th-century fortress and the warm confines of the soundstage vault is seamless. However, Retford’s coldest moment occurred in the water tank. It is also an experience that he describes as “a dream come true.”
Retford, who dives in Scotland’s many beautiful lochs and waterways in his free time, is used to frigid temperatures. But Dougal is wearing a kilt, not a drysuit, and that can only keep you so warm. For most of this fraught sequence, the tank was preheated. Unfortunately, visibility became so poor that they needed to refill it, and that final run was in ice-cold water with Mann having to play dead as Angus. Unlike their characters, Retford and Mann had facilities to warm up in afterward. “We had a lovely little hot tub backstage, but Wendy [Brady], the medic, wouldn’t let us use it for a certain amount of time because she was like, ‘No, you’ll get thermal shock, which would be terrible for your body,’” Retford recalls. It was worth the wait, even if the actor didn’t change out of his battle-worn attire. “There’s a BTS [photo] of me in a hot tub eating a donut, and the water’s just brown from all of the costumes leaking into the water,” he says.
Retford eating a donut in said hot tub.
During the escape, Dougal, Brian, and Murtagh run into Jack, but Brian refuses to give Dougal his dagger to kill him. “He’s only a boy,” Brian says. If only he knew! Instead, Dougal throws Jack into a nearby box and locks him in so he can’t raise the alarm. This is only Glasgow’s second day on Outlander: Blood of My Blood, and while he knows his character is destined to be the big villain, he was advised not to watch the original series so he wouldn’t hate his character in advance. Before Dougal is freed, he is at his captor’s mercy but shows no fear as he takes punches from the more experienced officer. That changes when Jack shows his twisted impulses. “You see that stark contrast of what he sees in the eyes of this young boy,” Retford said a year ago on set. “You see this overwhelming fear rush over his face like, ‘Oh, I’m not in control here.’ This man is uncontrollable and not bound by societal ruling.”
It wouldn’t be the Outlander universe without a swooping love story. Dougal’s reactions during this ordeal are colored by the fact that he has fallen for Maura: he now has something to lose beyond his ego. He gets contemplative during his conversation with Angus in the mossy sea cell. “Had she not been in the picture, I don’t think he would have cared about [Angus’s] death like that,” Retford says. “It was a noble death; he died a prisoner of war, fighting for a cause that he truly believed in, fighting for the freedom of Scotland. That’s something he [Dougal] would have died for, but it was lovely to see that leaving Maura behind would have brought sadness to him.”
It might be an arranged marriage, but Dougal’s compatibility with Maura is off the charts—especially in the bedroom. However, they are ill-equipped to express their feelings. “It always used to frustrate me when I would read the scripts; I would see the pair of them yearning for each other, but so independently,” Retford says. “They don’t communicate it to each other.” It also hasn’t been easy for those left at Castle Leoch—but Retford teases a reunion impacted by the bloodshed they have both experienced. “It’s a really interesting paradigm shift between the two of them to see how they survive war because war brings back so much,” Retford says. “It stays with them. I think you’re gonna enjoy how they traverse that new emotional obstacle course.” Castle Leoch has seen happier days, that’s for sure.
Ghosts old and new haunt the corridors of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, whether on a contemporary soundstage or at a 15th-century fortress. Just be careful who you run into when you are there.