After Outlander: Blood Of My Blood's Latest Steamy Scene, I'm Worried About The Spinoff Staying True To Outlander's Timeline
Will the new show's canon match the original?

Warning: spoilers ahead for Episode 3 of Outlander: Blood of My Blood, called "School of the Moon" and available streaming with the Starz app.
We're only in Week 2 of Outlander: Blood of My Blood in the 2025 TV schedule, and the story has heated up and already resolved at least one major storyline. The MacKenzie brothers finally had some sense knocked into them about both campaigning to become the next laird, but there are still plenty of problems for both sets of star-crossed lovers. While Henry is doing pretty okay for himself, all things considered, Julia had to make a heart-wrenching decision to keep her pregnancy.
As for Ellen and Brian... well, the first scene of "School of the Moon" featured them getting so steamy with each other that I started doing the math about when that should actually be happening, according to Outlander's timeline. And I have questions.
The Steamy First Scene
It was clear from the two-part series premiere that Blood of My Blood wasn't wasting any time in stoking the fires between Ellen and Brian, and the opening credits sequence suggests that fans won't have to wait for Season 2 for things to get spicy. In fact, I was already wondering if it was Jamie Roy and Harriet Slater's turn with the show's intimacy coordinator when the episode opened with the pair kissing on the grass, with her skirts up and his hands exploring down once she gave him the go-ahead.
And while that obviously is going to have to happen for Jamie to be born and co-lead Outlander, the love scene started so suddenly in the episode that my first thoughts were 1) that it was VERY fast and 2) I hoped it was a fakeout. Fortunately, it was a dream sequence of Ellen's, and one of the few funny moments of the episode came with her reaction to being awakened just when the dream was getting good.
This was great news to me, at least! Not only is Blood of My Blood not skipping the juicy courtship phase that was so much fun with Caitriona Balfe's Claire and Sam Heughan's Jamie in Season 1 of the original series, but the timeline wasn't skewed by them already sharing a romantic interlude this early. It was still shocking enough that I started doing some Outlander math.
Will The Numbers Add Up?
The main action of Outlander: Blood of My Blood so far has been set in Scotland, circa 1714. The future is the most uncertain for Julia and Henry, since the only canon for their fates set by Outlander was that they'd died in a car crash when Claire was a little girl. The only real rule that they can't break is presumably that they never get to go back to resume their lives in the 20th century.
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As for Brian and Ellen, there's some more information available both from the original show and the novels penned by Diana Gabaldon. Thanks to a handy timeline from the author's German website, it's not too hard to connect some dots on when certain events will need to happen for Blood of My Blood to keep to canon. We just need to break down some dates that Gabaldon sprinkled throughout her saga, which is currently at nine books and counting.
While book and TV show canon will never entirely match within the world of Outlander, Diana Gabaldon became "100% on board" with the new series when she heard showrunner Matthew B. Roberts' pitch for the prequel. So, I feel comfortable applying the dates from her books to Blood of My Blood at this point.
Fair warning, though – the next section might not mean much for any BOMB viewers who haven't first watched Outlander. Be cautious moving forward, as there will be spoilers ahead for the original TV show and Diana Gabaldon's books!
What We Can Deduce From Diana Gabaldon's Dates
With Blood of My Blood's first season set in 1714, Ellen and Brian are seven years away from the birth of Jamie, their youngest surviving child, in 1721. William, their oldest son, was five years older than Jamie before he died at the age of eleven in 1727. Working backwards, that means that William was born in 1716, possibly conceived in 1715. (For good measure, Jenny was born in 1719.)
Given that there has been no indication in canon that William was an illegitimate child, it stands to reason that Brian and Ellen could be married as early as 1714 but no later than late 1715. This could mean that fans will get to see a wedding before the end of the first season or at some point early in the second, which is already in production.
Combining where Blood of My Blood began, what Diana Gabaldon's books and the original show told us about the timeline, and a smidgen of real-life history from the era, here's what the timeline should look like:
- 1714: Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie meet (Blood of My Blood Season 1, Episode 1)
- 1714 - 1715: Brian Fraser and Ellen MacKenzie marry
- 1715: The Jacobite Uprising
- 1716: William Fraser is born
- 1719: Janet Fraser is born
- 1721: Jamie Fraser is born
- 1727: William Fraser dies
In filling in the blanks left by both the Outlander novels and the Starz show, Blood of My Blood isn't just telling a pair of love stories. As of Episode 3, the series is incorporating the Jacobite rising of 1715 just like how OG Outlander included the Jacobite rising of 1745. Hopefully no villains as horrifying as Black Jack Randall will arrive to plague Jamie's forebears, although Dougal being whipped by his father in the latest episode was an uncomfortable parallel to Jamie being whipped in the first season of Outlander.
I wasn't pondering the Jacobite rising of 1715 when I watched the opening scene of "School of the Moon" with Brian and Ellen seemingly getting up close and very personal, though. My knee-jerk reaction had been that it was too much too soon, and I stand by that. But in looking at the dates, it seems like Brian and Ellen will likely have to act on their feelings sooner rather than later.
There's the not-so-small issue of Ellen being betrothed to another man, as well as Brian knowing that he'd fallen for the woman that Murtagh had been yearning for. Admittedly, Murtagh's yearning was from a pretty far distance, and Outlander already gave away that Murtagh's fate will be more aligned with Ellen's son than Ellen herself, but I imagine that could still be a difficult conversation with Brian.
What The Future Holds
My eyes are going to be peeled moving forward for Blood of My Blood to bring Ellen and Brian together so that they can get married and get to work on their firstborn before too much time passes. That is, unless the story starts to move through the weeks at a slower pace. It should honestly be fairly easy to gauge how much time has passed, assuming Julia's pregnancy progresses as normal.
We know from Episode 3 that more than a month has passed since Julia's arrival back in 1714 thanks to the watchful eye of the housekeeper. Since she and Henry were already aware of the bun in the oven before the car crash, she'd likely already been at least a month into her pregnancy when she arrived in the 18th century.
Assuming her plan was indeed to sleep with Lord Lovat for the purpose of being able to pass her unborn child off as his, I'm honestly curious to see if the man is sober and smart enough to do the math for how soon she starts showing. Hopefully Julia won't be stuck in that household long enough for him to start counting months.
See what's next for the two couples with new episodes of Outlander: Blood of My Blood on Fridays at 8 p.m. ET on Starz, as well as streaming via the Starz app. While I'm most invested in Brian and Ellen's story after three episodes, I'm more worried about Julia than anybody else.

Laura turned a lifelong love of television into a valid reason to write and think about TV on a daily basis. She's not a doctor, lawyer, or detective, but watches a lot of them in primetime. CinemaBlend's resident expert and interviewer for One Chicago, the galaxy far, far away, and a variety of other primetime television. Will not time travel and can cite multiple TV shows to explain why. She does, however, want to believe that she can sneak references to The X-Files into daily conversation (and author bios).
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