‘Outlander’ Boss Ron Moore Talks Surprising Reaction To Sam Heughan’s Brutal Rape Scene In Season 1 Finale

Outlander wrapped up its first season in dramatic fashion with a finale that featured a rape scene. Although the scene didn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has read the books, creator Ron Moore was worried that the scene would be met with a negative response from fans.

Moore’s concerns come after Game of Thrones recently showed a highly controversial rape scene that caused some significant backlash with its fan base. However, the Outlander rape scene hasn’t generated the same amount of negative backlash.

“How positive it is, really,” Moore told E! Online. “It’s been overwhelmingly positive. Any fan response to something they love will always have outliers that hate it who still watch it over and over. My favorite reviews are the ones that begin with, ‘This is the third time I’ve watched this episode and it gets worse every time I see it.’ I’m like, that’s a fan! They express it in a different way but they’re still fans. But it is kind of surprising.”

Part of the reason why the rape scene in Outlander wasn’t viewed in as negative a light as the one in GOT is because fans knew it was coming. Well, some fans at least. The scene is pivotal in the first book in the Outlander series. Fans of the series who have not read the books were more shocked than fans who knew it was coming.

For those who are not GOT watchers, fan favorite Sansa was recently raped by her new husband, psychopath Ramsey. But that was not what was shocking for fans, it was the fact that Sansa was not raped in the books by George R.R. Martin on which GOT is based. Instead, it was added by producers. So, Moore just shot a pivotal scene in the book, but would he ever add a rape scene to a tv series?

“This storyline that takes Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Jack (Tobias Menzies) to that prison and what happens there, it’s the conclusion of the entire novel. It was fundamental to the show and to the story we were telling… I actually haven’t seen the Game of Thrones episode and I never read those books, so it’s really hard for me to talk about what they did or didn’t do. I do know that we changed things as well from the books to the show and they had to make decisions about their storyline and what was important to them. I don’t really pass judgment on what they did or didn’t do, because I know that those are hard decisions to make and they did it for what they thought was the right reasons and the best of intentions. Ours was just different. Like I said, it was more fundamental to our entire story so we had to do it.”

While the graphic nature of the scene will surely stick with fans as the shows moves into Season 2, Moore also revealed that the events Jamie went through will continue to “haunt him and the emotions resurface throughout his life.”‘

Season 2 of Outlander is expected to premiere in 2016.