Toni Graphia & Matt Roberts Annotation

We talked a lot in the writer’s room about how to stage Claire’s reappearance at Lallybroch and how she’d be received by Jenny and family. It was important that Jenny not just embrace her right away with open arms. In the book, Jenny has a similar reaction to Claire when she first arrives—Jenny is cold to Claire and makes herself scarce. Though Jenny in the book does believe Claire’s cover story, our Jenny’s a bit more suspicious. She doesn’t understand where Claire’s been and why she stayed away for so long. She watched her brother go through a great deal of pain over this woman, so like a protective sister, she is going to want answers.

Though the script starts with Claire and Jenny’s reunion, which we thought would be a dramatic opening, when filming, we added a piece which is the ride up to Lallybroch. We were split on this—some of us thought it was a little too jarring to go straight from the print shop fire in Ep. 307 to here…so we built in the ride up, which is also nice because you get to see Claire’s first glimpse of the manor house in the distance, and see on her face how much she’s missed it, yet a twinge of her nervousness at re-entry.

There was a lot of debate as well whether Jenny would greet Claire first or her son Young Ian, who’s been missing and whom she’s been worried about. In the end, Claire won out! After all, she’s been missing for twenty years. Jenny could see that Young Ian was at least home safe, so she dealt with him after she was done with her interaction with Claire.