‘Outlander’ Stars Talk Claire’s Choice, Geillis’ Sacrifice in ‘The Devil’s Mark’

In the April 18 episode of “Outlander,” titled “The Devil’s Mark,” Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Geillis (Lotte Verbeek) found themselves accused of witchcraft, and it didn’t take long before the suspicions and superstitions of their eighteenth century captors led to the pair being declared guilty and sentenced to burn at the stake. It was a pivotal episode for Claire as a character, and for her relationship with Jamie (Sam Heughan), so Variety spoke to the two stars — along with executive producer Ron Moore — to learn more about filming the dramatic hour, and what the revelations of episode 111 mean for the couple.

For much of the hour, the focus was on Claire and her relationship with Geillis — a woman whose motivations have remained shrouded in mystery for much of the season so far. “It’s great to watch these two women. There’s so much tension and animosity between them in the beginning and then they slowly have to learn [to understand each other],” Balfe said of the pair’s tumultuous journey over the course of the episode. “Claire can be very judgmental and very ‘this is black and white,’ and I think she has to learn with Geillis that no, it’s not black and white. There are reasons behind her actions and there are reasons bigger than herself, and she really has to learn to empathize with her.”

Jamie 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 a scar from the smallpox vaccine, proving to Claire that she was a fellow traveler who had also somehow ended up in 1743 from the future, hailing from the year 1968.

Executive producer Ron Moore admitted that the witch trial and Geillis’ unexpected reveal was one of the scenes he was most eager to adapt from Diana Gabaldon’s book. “You’re in this witch trial, which is all about superstition and madness and crowd dynamics and all this injustice, and you’re paying attention to that, so the time travel thing really is a great surprise. It’s a turn that you really don’t see coming if you don’t know the book, so I was always looking forward to getting to do that part of the tale.”

As a result, 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 was filmed in a real church. It’s a real location in Scotland. I spent several days in that location,” Moore recalled. “Mike Parker was the director. It took a lot of time and a lot of extras; [we were] working with the extras a lot because they have to sit in those pews for hour after hour in those costumes on hard benches. So that was tricky and it took a long time to get the tone right, and it was a challenging piece of business, but we knew the visuals were going to be so strong and that moment of her being carried away was going to be such a great end to it all that everyone got excited and there was really a great spirit on the set, because they knew this was going to be cool.”

Balfe admitted that she found Geillis’ sacrifice extremely affecting, noting that it served as a major turning point for Claire’s journey. “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.”

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