This text accommodates spoilers about Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 1, episode 3, “Faculty of the Moon.”

Finally, Clan MacKenzie has a new laird.

And it is technically each Colum (Seamus McLean Ross) and Dougal (Sam Retford)?

In episode 3 of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, the query of who will step in to guide Clan MacKenzie after the demise of Purple Jacob (Peter Mullan) reaches a boiling level. Whereas Dougal and Colum proceed to bicker over which of them it ought to be, making an attempt to persuade a majority of clansmen to take their facet, Ned Gowan (Conor MacNeill) realizes that the boys are in peril of letting outsider James MacKinney (Ryan Fletcher) swoop in and steal the lairdship from them.

Ned persuades the brothers to pursue a path of co-leadership, the place Colum will successfully be laird however Dougal might be his proper hand and function a war-time chieftain when needed. “My physique is damaged however my spirit by no means might be,” Colum tells the gang. “I’m courageous however I canna be a warrior. I canna lead the clan alone, so will defer to my brother Dougal as warfare chieftain.”

Dougal, in flip, declares his fealty to Colum and this association. “I vow earlier than all MacKenzie males to be my brother’s leg and arm within the area,” he says.

For MacNeill, whose character’s profitable scheming results in this association, there is not any different manner ahead to guard their standing. “Each these positions are to each their strengths,” MacNeill tells Leisure Weekly. “They will see the household crumbling in that first episode. The danger is getting larger and larger, particularly with MacKinney’s character coming in. Actuality comes about them and so they understand, ‘Nicely, look, these are each our robust fits.’”

As for Ross and Retford, they reply a lot as their characters would, with Ross noting that Colum’s level-headed diplomacy helps him see there is not any different selection. “The MacKinney menace is actual and the monetary scenario is actual,” Ross says. “The stakes are all there and they should come to decision.”

Nonetheless, Retford notes that if push involves shove, Dougal is the one with combating energy behind him, which is what he needs anyway. “There’s an actual menace and motivation that Dougal is aware of, even when issues have been to show, at the least he has all of the lads,” says Retford with a smile. “Ideally he’d need to be laird and never should carry something into a worldwide settlement. However now, he has X quantity of sword-wielding highlanders behind him to help his trigger.”

The 2 actors put in a tough day’s work filming this significant scene, during which they kneel and swear fealty to one another earlier than the opposite members of the clan do the identical to them. “We each needed to do these huge monologues in entrance of like 150 actors,” remembers Ross. “That was a giant day and a extremely highly effective day. My favourite second of that scene is when Dougal helps me bend my knee to him.”

“There is a line in episode 1 that claims, ‘If you are able to do it, bend your knee to me,’” Ross continues. “I say, ‘Assist me, brother.’ And Sam’s character helps me down. Within the shot, they’re each on the similar stage, and it is the primary time we have got that reward of seeing them speak to one another as human beings, by no means thoughts as brothers.”

The episode additionally offers audiences a glimpse into the methods Purple Jacob intentionally pitted the brothers in opposition to one another prior to now. Most significantly, it reveals the failed looking expedition that led to Colum’s important leg damage, which was solely worsened when he fell down the steps throughout restoration, breaking the bone.

“I needed to do a flight to London to get a solid made of my leg,” Ross says of getting ready for that scene. “I went to this mad place, and so they put this mildew over your legs. It was fairly surreal seeing it; it is like the precise type of your leg.

“However to truly shoot it,” he continues, “there was a stunt man. I might solely go like three steps, after which, he would are available, hop alongside, and fall down.”

These sequences prior to now additionally showcase how troublesome it was for Dougal to win his father’s respect. All the motive the mission went sideways is as a result of Dougal determined to pursue the MacDonalds. Purple Jacob whipped Dougal for his recklessness, telling him, “I couldna beat any sense into if I attempted.”

For Retford, that could be a bitter tablet for Dougal to swallow, one which makes him lean even more durable into his brutishness and bodily energy.

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“As an actor, if you come to a personality, it’s a must to have full and whole empathy and perception in all the pieces that they do,” Retford explains. “In any other case, it turns into a caricature. So, in my head, Dougal’s very clever and knowledgeable in all of his selections. It is simply that they do not essentially align with all of these characters which are following a trajectory.”

Nonetheless, his father’s censure is way extra wounding than Dougal lets on. “It is very onerous for him to listen to that,” Retford provides. “On the finish of the day, all of his actions come again to wanting to meet his father’s legacy and be that individual for him.”

Outlander: Blood of my Blood airs Friday nights at 8 p.m. on Starz and streams the identical day on the Starz app.