- Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "Outlander" season seven, episode three.
- Sam Heughan and Caitríona Balfe told Insider that filming the fire at the Frasers' home turned out to be "funny."
After two action-packed episodes, "Outlander" showed no signs of slowing down in episode three as Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitríona Balfe) dealt with the fresh blow of losing their home, right after being heartbreakingly separated from their daughter and grandchildren.
Following on from episode two's explosive cliffhanger, which saw fellow time-traveler Wendigo Donner (Brennan Martin) set the couple's home alight in his attempts to get ahold of some gemstones, the latest episode opened with Jamie, Claire, and the inhabitants of Fraser's Ridge trying desperately to salvage the home.
When asked what it was like to film the pivotal scene, Heughan and Balfe said that only one word came to mind.
"Funny. It was really funny," Balfe told Insider with a laugh. "It's not the easiest thing to run with buckets of water when you're in heavy costumes."
"Some of us may not have done that very well," she joked, keeping quiet on who in the cast might have not been pulling their weight.
"Yeah, it was funny," Heughan added, giving his costar a knowing look.
Despite the levity on set while shooting the ambitious stunt, the actors, who have been playing the husband-and-wife duo on the hit time-travel drama since 2014, said that the gravity of saying goodbye to Jamie and Claire's North Carolina home soon set in.
"I think we all felt that it felt like a real character was leaving in a weird way," Balfe said.
Since the house had been used consistently since the show's fourth season, Heughan added that it turned out to be an emotional moment for all when they saw it reduced to just a hollowed-out shell the next day.
"It was just sad to say goodbye to something that had been a home for the Frasers, but also for us as actors for a number of years," he said.
As longtime fans know, the destruction of the big house brings a season-spanning mystery about the Frasers' fate full circle.
As Jamie and Claire watched their home go up in flames, they observed that it was not January, the month they had been warned that they would perish in a house fire, according to an obituary Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and Roger (Richard Rankin) had found and brought back to them through the stones.
As the fire had been caused by two before-their-time inventions — Claire's ether and Brianna's matches — the couple realize that they essentially managed to evade death and change history by destroying the house before that fire could happen.
However, Balfe said the fiery twist serves another purpose too.
"It's kind of the catalyst that sets them in motion," Balfe said, adding that in the following episodes, audiences will see Jamie and Claire "turn into a roadshow in some ways, a little bit like we had back in season one."
"They are homeless now," she continued. "They don't have the grounding that Fraser's Ridge gave them for the last three seasons, where it was set in this one location and we return to it over and over again. We don't have that anymore."
"So there's a propulsion of energy and a forward motion that happens from now on that happens at this point and I think it's quite exciting."
"It's tough for them but it's exciting," she added.
The third episode of "Outlander" season seven is now available to stream on the Starz app, and also airs at 8 p.m. ET Friday on Starz.