- Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for season seven, episode two of the Starz drama "Outlander."
- Sophie Skelton and Richard Rankin spoke to Insider about Brianna and Roger's choice to leave Fraser's Ridge.
The second episode of "Outlander" season seven was all about introductions and goodbyes.
The revolutionary war, now in full swing, brought Jamie Fraser's (Sam Heughan) redcoat-wearing son William Ransom (Charles Vandervaart) into contact with the Frasers for the first time ever, allowing him to meet his half-sister Brianna MacKenzie (Sophie Skelton).
Elsewhere, Allan Christie (Alexander Vlahos) resurfaced in the wake of Malva's (Jessica Reynolds) murder, only to meet his maker after confessing to the crime himself.
Both were quite unexpected turns of events, but one storyline that audiences did see coming in this episode was the birth of Brianna and Roger's (Richard Rankin) second child together, a girl they name Amanda.
However, even that ended up taking the story to an unexpected place when Claire (Caitríona Balfe) realizes that her new granddaughter has a heart problem that goes beyond her skill level as a surgeon. Their daughter, she tells the couple, needs modern medicine or she'll die.
By the end of the episode, Brianna and Roger have made the heart-wrenching decision to take their young family and return through the stones to their own time period, something Skelton and Rankin told Insider they think is a pretty final decision.
Skelton said that in her mind, it could well be the last time Brianna sees her mother and father. She said she played the scene in which they exchange final words at the stone circle in Ocracoke that way.
"With Mandy's heart issue, they're not going to want to bring her back," she explained. "And then there's the safety of them being in that time with the American Revolution around the corner."
"What parents would voluntarily thrust their children into that scenario? I think it's a very final farewell for sure."
However, her costar and onscreen husband Rankin said that he at least thinks "there's maybe a glimmer of hope" that the Fraser's Ridge foursome could be reunited again in the future, though it's not something Brianna and Roger will be considering any time soon.
"I don't think they can entertain the idea that they can just commute with Jemmy and Mandy," he reasoned, since traveling through the stones is "supposed to be a pretty horrific experience."
"It's not necessarily one you can guarantee the outcome of either," he mused.
Yet it's not the first time that Roger and Brianna have attempted to pass through the stones to return to their own time period. They tried to do so back in season five, only to find that it wasn't their time to go.
Skelton said she believes that during that first attempt, "they were tethered back to Jamie and Claire and the life they've built on the ridge."
This time around, though, it's the strength of their love that makes their mission successful.
"What's interesting is usually they say you need somebody on the other side of the stones to pull you through, but I think this time it comes from the two of them going through together," Skelton explained.
"There's no one pulling them through the specific era — I guess they could be thinking of Joe, the surgeon — but it's not quite the same," she continued. "It's more the urgency and the abundance of love that they have for their baby. They have to go back to save their family."
"It's not really a decision, it's a necessity," Rankin agreed.
Now, with Roger and Brianna back in their own time period, the show will feature two simultaneous timelines — one in 1776 and the other in the early 1980s — for the first time since season four.
The change was something that Skelton and Rankin welcomed after spending the last few seasons wearing a lot of period costumes and filming mostly outdoors on the "Outlander" set in the Highlands.
"It was nice to film in a studio for once! It just felt so different," Skelton said.
Rankin added that because of their characters' new '80s looks (Roger dons a lot of corduroy and Brianna gets a new hairdo) filming the coming episodes "almost felt like a different show."
"It's nice in season seven to have something so fresh, a different storyline completely," he said. "It was like our own little world."
The second episode of "Outlander" season seven is now available to stream on the Starz app, and also airs at 8 p.m. Friday on Starz.