Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe Explains Claire’s Powers In New Interview

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of “Outlander.” Please proceed accordingly.

Claire Fraser brought a baby back from the dead via mysterious means in Friday’s “Outlander” — but how, exactly? 

Turns out, that exact question created a lot of discussion among the Starz series’ cast and writers during the filming of Season 8, Episode 3, “Abies Fraseri.” 

The moment we’re referring to took place in the back half of the hour, when a laboring mother in distress wound up at Claire and Jamie’s home in need of help. She was pregnant with twins, one of whom was delivered with relative ease. But the second baby came out not breathing, and Claire’s attempt at CPR didn’t revive the child. As a desperate Claire clutched the child, she had flashes of memory — Master Raymond in Paris, wings flapping — and all of a sudden, the baby started breathing again. Later, Claire told Jamie the feeling that came over her right before the newborn came back to life was “something I’ve felt before. In Paris, after Faith was born, after she died. (Read a full recap here.)

Longtime fans will recall that Claire has been involved in similarly mystical situations before — namely, the beneath-the-sheets action that made Jamie a whole new man in Season 5 — so we took the question directly to series star/executive producer Caitríona Balfe: Is what happens in this week’s episode the same thing? Is Claire honing her powers?

“I think it’s all linked,” she said. “From the very beginning, Season 1, Season 2, she’s touched skulls, she’s had intuitions, she’s had feelings. There’s always been an air of otherworldliness around her.”

She laughed. “She can f**king time-travel, for God’s sake!” 

Caitríona Balfe recalled that various factions had differing opinions on exactly what was going on in the scene. “It was very hard for us to get a consensus, because obviously, I had my feelings about what Claire has, in terms of powers, and the writers had theirs.” Showrunner/executive producer Matthew B. Roberts, for instance, felt “that it just sort of happens to her, that it’s not something that she can control in any way, and he was quite adamant that that was the case,” Balfe said.

Roberts confirmed that his opinion is that Claire doesn’t have much authority over these transcendental moments. “My take is that maybe Claire’s a conduit,” he said. “If you’re not in control of something and you don’t know how to use it, then maybe you’re just the conduit to bring it out. That’s the way, in the story, for me, it plays out.”

Balfe acknowledged that her character’s supernatural abilities seem to manifest “at times of absolute need,” are hard to define, and leave her in a bit of shock. “What I like to think is that Claire has power,” she said. “I, personally, believe in energy… Some people have a very strong connection to their ability to transfer energy and that kind of stuff.” She shrugs. “So I, personally, would have liked her to have had a little bit more engagement with it rather than it just be a thing that happened to her.”

Roberts added that the ambiguity leaves room for the viewer’s two cents. “Does [what happens] speak to magic? A higher power? The bigger universe? The Big Bang?” he asked. “I don’t know. That’s for you to decide.”

What’s your take on Claire’s powers? Hit the comments, and let us know!