‘Outlander’ Star Sam Heughan Says Jamie Fraser Wants To Get Back To Being ‘The Man He Wants To Be’ In Season 2

By now, most fans are well aware of the challenges in store for Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) in Outlander’s second season. However, mingling with the upper class of French society and preventing the Jacobite rebellion aren’t the only challenges the time-traveling couple will face. The traumatic events from the first season will carry over, and for Jamie, he will need more than a little help in working through his dark past.

Fortunately, Jamie will have Claire to lean on as he deals with Season 1’s imprisonment and sexual abuse at the hands of Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies). In an interview with TV Guide, Heughan and Balfe discussed some of the elements of Jamie’s mindset going into the new season and how Jamie’s past trauma will impact him and Claire moving forward.

“There’s definitely still some mental trauma there. The physical side he can heal. It’s not modern-day life, so there isn’t a psychologist he can talk to. He did something that was out of his control,” Heughan explained in the interview. “He betrayed Claire and he feels guilty about that. He feels that he can’t be the husband or the man that he wants to be. He needs some sort of reconciliation.”

Clearly, Claire will play a major role in helping Jamie work through his past issues. That doesn’t mean she won’t find herself powerless at times, which will be especially hard given her love for Jamie. For Balfe, the inability to relieve Jamie’s pain is going to be one of the more difficult aspects of the new season.

“If you watch someone that you love go through something as horrific and traumatic as that, it can’t help but affect you; the empathy that you would feel for the person that you love and the guilt as well, because you wish that you could take away their pain and you can’t,” Balfe shared. “I think Claire somehow feels responsible in some ways for Jamie being in that situation.”

Exactly how Jamie’s past hauntings will impact their relationship is unknown. However, Claire will try to use their mission in preventing the Jacobite rebellion as a means to distract Jamie from his mental trauma.

“She also takes this idea of giving him a mission as something that will help him heal and take his mind off what he’d gone through,” Balfe stated. “We see her really being this champion of this idea that they are really going to change the future. It gives him something to get up for.”

Meanwhile, filming for the new season of Outlander is currently in its final stages in Scotland. While fans eagerly await the premiere of season 2, Sam Heughan recently sat down with Scotsman and discussed the impact the show has made in his native country of Scotland.

While Scotland has been the setting of many interesting and unique stories, the area has not been a major player in the film industry as of late. With Outlander leading the charge, Heughan expressed his excitement at how the show has brought new light and attention to Scotland’s potential.

“It’s been fantastic because I’ve been able to rediscover my country,” Heughan stated. “It’s so magnificent to watch the sun come up when you’re standing on a moor with hundreds of highlanders dressed for battle. I’m very lucky. There’s definitely an interest in Scotland and what happened here. I think the rest of the world are fascinated by our history and it’s nice to be able to bring Scotland and our culture and music to the screen.”

The new season of Outlander airs April 9 on Starz.

Tell us! Do you think Sam Heughan’s Jamie Fraser can overcome the trauma from Season 1 in Season 2 of Outlander? Let us know in the comments.

[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]