‘Outlander’ Season 3: Caitriona Balfe, Tobias Menzies Preview New Season
Warning: This article may contain Outlander Season 3 spoilers.
It’s been a very long drought for those impatiently awaiting the arrival of Outlander Season 3. While Starz still hasn’t officially announced the air date for the new season, tantalizing spoilers and other bits of information have been steadily streaming in since production began last fall in Scotland, which makes the wait slightly more bearable.
The latest insights into the new season are offered up courtesy of Caitriona Balfe (Claire) and Tobias Menzies (Frank) in new interviews with E! News, as the pair previews the complicated reunion between Claire and Frank as Outlander Season 3 begins. According to Balfe, Claire will be overwhelmed by grief for Jamie (Sam Heughan) when she sees her first husband again, which is difficult for both of them.
“We start the season, I think everyone’s seen from the trailer so it’s not a spoiler, that Claire goes back to Frank,” she says. “And it’s very tough for her, because this is a man who really didn’t do anything wrong. You know, he was her first love, he was a good husband to her, but because of circumstances, she fell in love with someone else in a much deeper and much truer way than she ever did with Frank. So when she goes back, she’s a woman in the depths of grief, and also here’s a man who’s kind of pleading and full of hope and full of love and expects them to maybe get back to where they were. And that will never happen for Claire, so she feels love for him but also feels she has to keep him at an arm’s length.”
Meanwhile, Frank is “trying to recover” at the the beginning of Outlander Season 3, according to Menzies.
“I don’t get a sense that he’s moved on emotionally, particularly,” he explains. “I don’t get a sense that he’s gotten involved with anyone else. He seems like a man who’s sort of had to bury that bit of himself.”
Menzies also believes Frank has “laid the search aside” and “buried himself in work” to try to survive the loss of his wife. When Claire suddenly turns back up in the Outlander Season 3 premiere, he responds like the good man he is.
“His good qualities are that he’s loyal, I think he has — he’s moral. I think he is, albeit maybe quiet, he’s a person of substance. When we see the stuff in Episode 1, his response is rather remarkable. A very compromised, a very imperfect, but nonetheless wonderful expression of love, really.”
In other Outlander Season 3 news, Entertainment Weekly reports that Starz has cast Gary Young to play Mr. Willoughby and Charlie Hiett to play British Captain Thomas Leonard in Outlander Season 3.
Gary Young is set to play Mr. Willoughby on #Outlander! https://t.co/7VUOHohWxb
— Entertainment Weekly (@EW) January 31, 2017
Mr. Willoughby is a Chinese man with great knowledge of Eastern medicine. A confidante to Jamie, he is a talented poet in exile with a deep love of women. He speaks English well, but hides it when it is to his advantage. He comes across as even more of an outsider than Claire was when she first arrived in 18th century Scotland.
As for Captain Leonard, he is a green, by-the-book captain of the Artemis. Rising through the ranks due to the deaths of his superiors, the young officer takes his job seriously, though the responsibility weighs on him. He is determined to do what is best for the British Navy, even if it goes against his own moral standards.
In addition to Outlander, Young, a New Zealand native, has also appeared in the Netflix feature Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and the Australian miniseries Secret City. Meanwhile, British-born Charlie Hiett has been seen in The Suspicions of Mr Whincher,Judge John Deed, and M.I. High.
What do you think of the latest Outlander Season 3 news? Do you feel at all sorry for Frank?
Outlander Season 3 returns to Starz later this year.
[Featured Image via Starz]
