Lord John Grey (David Berry) and Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) are now officially husband and wife.
But if audiences thought their marriage would remain in name only, the latest episode of Outlander had even more surprises up its sleeve. As Claire and Lord John continue to mourn Jamie's (Sam Heughan) death, absolutely wracked with grief, they find a raw comfort in an unexpected place — each other.
Drunk and disturbed by Claire's own screams, John storms into her bedroom, going full Rhett Butler, and informs her, "I will not mourn him alone tonight."
"He was not yours to mourn," Claire hisses back, before the two claw at each other, clothing shredding in the process. We see flashes of skin and passion before it fades to black, and then, the sun rises the next morning with Claire and John waking up beside each other, having officially consummated their marriage.
It's an improbable and surprising moment, one that Berry says he is still trying to wrap his head around. "The essence of their conflict in that moment is the selfishness of Claire saying that Lord John has no right to his profound feelings of grief, and Lord John really needing someone in that moment," he notes. "He's so alone. No one's there for him, and he's shouldering all this grief and also trying to shoulder it for her. He reaches a breaking point where he is like, 'I just need someone to hold me and to get me through this.'"
Still, the scene relies more on implication than most Outlander sex scenes, leaving much of this intimate moment to viewers' imaginations (in the novels, the love-making is described with far more detail). "There were a lot of really difficult conversations," Berry admits, as to the choices they made in filming and editing the scene.
"On the page, it was written a lot more. I was really interested to explore that a bit further, and I would've been happy to push it a little further. We ended up in a negotiated position where we didn't do that, and I do feel a sense of curiosity and even regret that we didn't challenge ourselves to do that a bit more."
For Berry, he's still not sure the scene really fully explains or allows the space to understand why this moment occurs between Lord John and Claire. Though he understands why they chose to limit what was depicted. "It was always going to be a weird sex scene," he adds. "I was excited by it because it was something that I'd never seen on TV before. The things that really excite me about Outlander are these moments of, 'What the hell? How do you inject a humanity into this?'"
"This was going to be my first Outlander sex scene," Berry continues. "For this to be my first Outlander sex scene was a massive challenge because there is consent, but what is the passion? What was written on the page is that there's an animalistic passion, and unfortunately, I don't really think that is translated to screen.
There was definitely a passion component that I'm not sure that we quite captured in that moment. There is something that will forever haunt me — how do these two end up in a moment of intimate passion and union? It still confuses me, and I don't know that we completely solved it. "
Much of that is dealt with in the post-coital heart-to-heart that Claire and John share the next morning. They admit that neither of them were making love to each other, but instead to Jamie. Lord John also confesses that it's been 15 years since he last slept with a woman, while also revealing that Jamie once offered his body to him — an offer that Lord John refused because it mattered more to him to preserve their friendship.
Berry is far from finished pondering the scene and its motivations. "I'll forever be thinking about it as an acting challenge," he says. "The challenge that was set up in the episode is so cool and curious and a cool thing for the series to contend with. It is a real pivot moment for these characters. It will have massive ripple effects moving forward."
