We meet the brother-sister duo after William (Charles Vandervaart) injures himself during his ill-fated mission to travel through North Carolina’s Dismal Swamp and is brought to their door for medical help. Together Denzell, his sister, and Young Ian (John Bell) — who appears to have learned a thing or two from his auntie — help save the young British soldier from succumbing to his wounds.
And if you thought you could see sparks flying between Rachel and both Ian and William, your eyes weren’t deceiving you.
“William and Ian have never really encountered someone like Rachel,” Meikle-Small told Insider when asked about the lingering looks the trio exchanged in the episode.
“I think William especially, he grew up as a Lord and all of the women he’s been around are staid and demure and there’s social constructs that keep them in place,” she continued. “Rachel’s obviously grown up very different to that, she says what she wants. I think he’s really taken aback by that, but finds it equally intriguing.”
However, she hinted that, as longtime fans of “Outlander” know, the romance plots are never straightforward. Viewers could very well see a “love triangle” develop between the three as Ian likewise sees Rachel “as this very complex, interesting woman.”
As for why exactly Rachel is such a breath of fresh air for the men of “Outlander,” Joey Phillips, who plays Rachel’s brother, Denzell Hunter, explained: “Quakers were really ahead of their time in the way they saw equality.”
Casting is always a big part of storytelling. Can you imagine anyone else playing Jamie and Claire than Sam Heughan and Caitríona Balfe? Well, Denzell and Rachel will be playing a big role in the rest of season 7 into season 8, so getting that casting just right was important – and New York Times bestselling author Diana Gabaldon was happy with the results.
“Outlander’s casting director/team pull it off again!” she told Parade. “I was delighted to meet Joey and Izzy on set at Lake Menteith a year or so ago. From stature (they’re both slightly taller than I am, but everybody is…) to having a very direct, pure sort of impact…they inhabit the Hunters beautifully. Tough, sturdy, and totally honest; emotionally very open.”
(…)
“William’s journey into the Great Dismal (back in the day, “dismal” was a word that just meant “swamp”) takes a bit more room in the book, but I admit that trying to film a cottonmouth chasing William (they really do chase people, if riled up enough) would be a) difficult and b) time-consuming, and there is a lot of more important material to cover,” Diana said of the changes made from the novel to the TV series.
Then she continued, “I’d say the major necessary points were covered, those being William’s meeting with Ian (with Ian and reader/viewer Knowing, and William Not Knowing [that Jamie is his father]), and his later meeting with the Hunters. We’ve also seen William at his first kill, and his reaction to it, which I think was important to his character development (and an echo of his parentage).”
Tom Christie is a very complex man with a very strong moral code. How did that play into giving his life in exchange for Claire’s?
Yeah. It’s a big journey, isn’t it?
It is.
From where we first meet Tom to where we end up. I guess you do it bit by bit, and it’s a very slow reveal. Those scenes in Series Six are great fun to play, even though he comes across as a very unlikable character and nobody can warm to him, and he’s incredibly strict and pious and self-willed and stubborn and all that.
They’re actually great fun to play those scenes.
Oh, sure.
Because the thing that I really loved about them was that the writers had always put points of vulnerability in there, which of course, he tries to conceal, but if you look back at even the first time he meets Claire and when he reads the book Tom Jones, and the operation and fainting and screaming with pain, and trying to whip Malva, but his hand’s not working.
All that stuff was great to play, and the payoff, I guess, is that you get to that place of vulnerability, genuine vulnerability.
By the time we get to the beginning of [Outlander Season 7], you get the real Tom, the vulnerable Tom, the Tom that feels love, genuine love, and is able to sacrifice himself on behalf of another.
This episode, your characters meet under not-so-great circumstances, well for William at least. We start to see how you two are opposites in some ways, but alike in others. Could there be a friendship budding here or conflict?
JOHN BELL: Well, you owe me your life!
CHARLES VANDERVAART: That’s true. You saved my life. So there’ll be interesting things to come from that.
BELL: That was the first scene we shot together. It’s a great little meeting of characters. I had such fun bouncing off of you that day.
VANDERVAART: There was a great feeling of familiarity between the two of us.
BELL: I loved the power dynamic between us where I actually know more about you than you do yourself. Seeing you struggle to find your own identity at that moment, I want to just reach out and hug you and say it’s going to be all right. But I cant, I’ve got my loyalty to Jamie there.
VANDERVAART: That’s such a common theme at the beginning of this for William. Every time he has a conversation, there are so many people that know more about who he is. He doesn’t really know anything about his true parentage. There’s something to note too between the two of us is we’re both really passionate about serving and fighting. We just happen to be on opposite sides completely. We’re quite similar but it’s just by circumstance that I’m on one side and he’s on the other.
Both of you have chemistry with Rachel. What can you share about the relationship you’ll each have with her this season?
VANDERVAART: I think we both fancy her.
BELL: Both of us, yes.
VANDERVAART: She’s a strong woman. She’s beautiful. Smart. What’s not to like?
“I think when we meet him at the beginning [of this season], he’s still quite naive. He still doesn’t really understand how the world works, he has really romanticised ideas about war,” he said.
Vandervaart thinks being brought up in a mansion has shielded William from the horrors of the real world. But his sense of invincibility will be put to the test on the battlefield, resulting in him becoming “a better person”.
“He thinks he’s invincible, because why else would he think anything different? Because, you know, he’s been cooped up in his little mansion in England,” he continued. “He comes from such a life of privilege that I think reality is going to hit really hard and we see that immediately he has some kind of adventure to go on.
“Things don’t go as planned for him. So he has a lot of growing to do still. And he does, I think, come out of this a better person for sure.”
(…)
“Lord John Grey is just worried about him. He doesn’t want him to go to war and William, I think he wants to experience life by himself,” he said.
“There’s so much love there though. Because that’s William’s Dad, he’s the one who raised him, he was the one who was there for him through thick and thin through his entire life. Right now, there might be some tensions between the two of them. But you know, deep down it’s all love between those two.”
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