*New* Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan's Interview With Variety - ***1x11 Spoilers***

After the jump because of 1×11 Spoilers

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Jamie (Sam Heughan) arrived in time to interrupt Claire being beaten — but it was the quick thinking of Geillis that saved Claire’s life and cleared her name, with the enigmatic woman declaring that she was a witch and revealing “the devil’s mark” on her arm — which was actually the scar from a smallpox vaccine, proving to Claire that she was a fellow traveler from the future, hailing from the year 1968. In one of the most chilling and evocative scenes in the series so far, Geillis was dragged out of the courthouse by a mob of villagers to be burned alive, while Claire and Jamie made a surreptitious exit.

“It’s heartbreaking, what Geillis does for her,” Balfe said. “That moment she’s being carried out, it’s so epic, and Lotte was so great… From there, everything changes. It’s like, ‘hold on a minute, so it is possible. You’re from there — are there more?’ So it opens up this whole other storyline that we will see progress a little bit in this season and then towards the next season, which I think is fantastic.”

Once they were a safe distance away, Jamie asked Claire whether she was a witch, since he’d seen a similar “devil’s mark” on her arm. “He’s forced into a situation where he has to address it and be like, ‘Well, are you a witch?’” Heughan said. “He doesn’t believe it, but he’s still superstitious. He knows that she’s got secrets, and he knows there’s something she’s hiding.”

But Claire’s response was far more shocking, as she revealed the whole truth about her trip through the Standing Stones and her origins in the future.

“At this point, so much has happened, and I think it’s a quest for some solace,” Balfe said of Claire’s decision to tell Jamie everything. “I think she needs comfort. Since the bliss of the wedding, there has been a lot [of trauma] and I think that’s almost her breaking point. I’m not sure that she’s thinking clearly, but she just needs to connect with him on a very, very real level.”

While Jamie seemed bewildered, he also chose to believe her, even if he didn’t fully understand everything she was telling him. “Does he wholeheartedly believe it? Yes, he believes her,” Heughan confirmed. “He says, ‘I believe your words, and I believe in you, in your truth.’ He starts to get his head round it, but it’s going to take a while. Again, it changes their relationship. It makes them closer, because she doesn’t have to hide anymore, and that’s a relief for her.”

With the parameters of their relationship once again changed, the two then set off to put as many miles between them and Castle Leoch as they could. After days of travel and a romantic last night together, Jamie revealed that he’d brought Claire back to Craigh na Dun to return to the future and her other husband. Luckily for viewers, Claire changed her mind and chose to remain with Jamie, forsaking her life in the future with Frank (Tobias Menzies) and all the comforts of the ’40s.

“It was quite difficult for me, coming to that scene, because I didn’t want to just be like, ‘well, she’s in love with Jamie so she’s got to stay,’ because that’s not Claire,” Balfe noted. “You had to think about an entire lifetime of a place and experience, versus a few months and a man. That’s a big battle. The knowledge of the ’40s and the ability for her as a woman to be surrounded by that kind of openness and possibility, versus this place where for saying too much or for mixing a few herbs together to heal people, you’re almost been thrown in the fire. So for me, it was difficult to come up with her rationale.”

In the end, Balfe said, it came down to Claire not wanting to further hurt Frank or Jamie, as much as it was because Claire was following her heart. “I felt that part of it had to be that when she fell through the Stones the first time, it was an accident. So her death or disappearance had already happened and Frank, she has to imagine, must have suffered so much, but must be healing. And I think she felt like, how could she do that again to somebody, but this time choose it? It’s like causing a death. And of course, the pull of love is very strong and we will do almost anything for the people we love, but I just don’t think it was as black and white for Claire as that.”

Naturally, her choice was Jamie’s dream come true — but it became even more poignant in the wake of Jamie choosing to let Claire go for the sake of her happiness, allowing them to start fresh on more equal ground. “It gives them the ability to go, ‘Okay, let’s go and create the life that we could have,’” Heughan noted. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t last very long…”