With the End of Outlander Approaching, It’s Time for a Lord John Spin-off

By Sloane Rosenthal, Kinfolklore Contributor

Earlier this spring, the House of Kinfolklore received some alarming Outlander news. The improbably long-running show, whose seventh season begins tonight, was renewed for an eighth — and final — season. This will necessarily involve capping off the television version of the story substantially earlier than the end of Diana Gabaldon’s still-in-progress book series. But, it opens up the perfect opportunity for Ron Moore and the team at Starz to do something they should have done ages ago: take advantage of our current mania for prequels, spin-offs, and expanded universes, and give one of Outlander’s best secondary characters his own show. We know they’re busy, so we figured we’d help them out a bit, with a clear case for why — and a few thoughts on how — we’d make the Lord John show we deserve.

Warning: This article contains mild spoilers for Books 4-9 in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series of novels, as well as the Lord John novellas. Also, while Kinfolklore often covers stories that contain adult content and Outlander is no exception, the Lord John novellas are works of what I can only describe as stunning anatomical clarity, so if that isn’t for you, consider yourself warned.

“Also, while Kinfolklore often covers stories that contain adult content and Outlander is no exception, the Lord John novellas are works of what I can only describe as stunning anatomical clarity, so if that isn’t for you, consider yourself warned.”

It’s hard not to love both Lord John (the character) and David Berry, the Australian actor who plays him, even in his Season 3 Interview with the Vampire makeup. He’s lawful good personified, always doing the right, self-effacing thing, and helping the Frasers out of one entirely self-induced catastrophe after another. He’s period television’s best-dressed MacGuffin, showing up exactly when he’s needed, whether that’s to stand as stepfather to Jamie’s illegitimate son William, placate an aunt by pretending to be engaged to a pregnant Brianna, prevent Jamie’s seemingly-inevitable arrest for treason (multiple times!), procure Chekhov’s muskets for the Cherokee, or speak for the entire viewing public in reminding Claire how annoying her constant post-orgasmic glow is.

The Lord John of the books has quite a bit more depth…and quite a bit more chaotic energy. An officer in the British army and a sometime diplomat and spy, the John of the books has a profound sense of honor coupled with a Fraser-level inability to stay out of trouble. Unlike the Frasers, whose inner monologues mostly generate unintentional comedy, however, John’s got something rare and vital in the Outlander universe that’s crucial to his potential as the centerpiece of his own show: jokes.

As the later Outlander books expand their point of view characters beyond the Frasers’ nuclear family, John and his sprawling, improbable family become increasingly important to the story, much to its benefit and ours. We briefly met John’s brother Harold (Hal), Duke of Pardloe, and of course, John’s stepson William and his wife, Isobel Dunsany, in Voyager (and the beginning of Season 3). The later novels and spinoff novellas introduce us to more of the Grey clan, including John and Hal’s mother, Benedicta Stanley, her husband General George Stanley and his stepson Percy Wainwright (about which, more later), Hal’s wife Minnie, who might or might not still be a spy, and Hal and Minnie’s children, plus a long string of John’s best and worst boyfriends. Although the English aristocracy generally does not cover itself in glory in Gabaldon’s universe, the Greys, who “would pause on the gallows to exchange witty banter with the hangman before graciously putting the noose about [their] neck[s] with [their] own hands” are largely an exception: fiercely loyal, intensely funny, and at least occasionally sensible, they’re just really, really fun to be around.

John and William both become major POV characters in the later novels, and their chapters represent a really stunning tonal shift from the chapters narrated by Claire, Jamie, Young Ian or (sigh…) Roger and Brianna. It’s a curious mashup of personal and political, spycraft and parlor room drama, and it reads like Jane Austen had a baby with John Le Carre. Following John’s story as he periodically collapses onto what I can only describe as George Smiley’s Fainting Couch helps humanize what’s going on behind British lines in the early days of the American revolution, and gives us a needed break from the 473rd round of Mortal Peril Hour with the Frasers. Sometimes we need a little comic relief, even if only in the knowledge that John’s closest friend and colleague secretly writes (terrible) erotic poetry and very likely slept — at least once — with John’s mother.

“Sometimes we need a little comic relief, even if only in the knowledge that John’s closest friend and colleague secretly writes (terrible) erotic poetry and very likely slept — at least once — with John’s mother.”

John’s stories make for fun reads — and great potential television — for another reason, too, which is their focus on John’s chaotic sexual and romantic life. John’s doomed love for Jamie may be a driving force for (mostly good?) in his life, but it doesn’t stop him pining for and/or lusting after him in hilariously inappropriate moments, or from showing up at brunch to discover that he had a one night stand with a man who is about to become his stepbrother, or waking up one morning and wondering — with full sincerity and based on no lack of evidence — whether he might have had recent carnal knowledge of Ben Franklin. While we can’t say for sure that John is actually the messiest bitch in His Majesty’s Army, he’s certainly a strong contender for that title, and after having lived without it for so long, we deserve to see that energy on screen in all its glory.

So, where to start? Diana Gabaldon has written (at last count) eight novellas and one full-length novel in the Lord John series proper, plus one long short story/short novella about the, er, unconventional beginning of Hal and Minnie’s relationship, so there’s quite a lot of ground to cover. If we were Moore and his team, here’s how we’d approach this vast trove of source material. We’d do three short seasons, which would allow you to hit the emotional high points, while giving each story room to breathe, and, critically, time to live in the charm of these characters’ interactions with each other:

Season One: Skipping Lord John and the Hellfire Club (which is funny, but not necessary), move straight on to Lord John and the Private Matter and Lord John and the Succubus: set in 1756 and 1757, respectively, these two novellas cover a manageable amount of ground, while introducing us to most of the sprawling secondary cast. They also introduce us to the conceit governing each of the installments in this series: they’re essentially mystery stories, whodunnits with side quests that take place within the labyrinthine apparatus of the British army and intelligence structure, with snippets of John’s personal and family life along the way, like a kind of very well dressed 18th century version of White Collar. We also meet John’s valet, Tom Byrd, his sometime boss, spymaster Hubert Bowles, and the man who will go on to become his most compelling love interest, German aristocrat Stephan von Namtzen (played, in our dreams, by James Norton, channeling all the charming earnestness of his turns in War & Peace and Death Comes to Pemberley combined). We’d cast Norton’s War & Peace cast mate Jack Lowden as the long-suffering (and critically discrete) valet, Tom Byrd, and Downton Abbey’s Robert Bathurst (sorry!) as Bowles.

Season Two: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade: The emotional centerpiece of the series, at turns extremely funny and guttingly sad, this novella deserves a season of its own. It centers on John and Hal’s quest to redeem the honor of their father, who died under mysterious circumstances when John was twelve. Timeline wise, it syncs up approximately with the middle of Voyager, the third of the main novels, with the events of the story beginning right around William’s birth (and Geneva Dunsany’s untimely death). The tale follows John from England to Germany and back, as he attempts to solve the mystery of his father’s final days and gets into — and in an achingly sad manner, out of — a passionate but doomed relationship with Percy Wainwright, his stepfather’s stepson from a previous marriage (think Cher and Josh from Clueless). John and Percy’s relationship has hints of its slow-moving-train wreck nature from very early on, but from its earnest beginning to its wrenching end, it has all the lived-in warmth and charm of Gabaldon’s best arcs, and deserves some significant air time. (Our pick for Percy, who all but introduces himself as the worst idea that you would absolutely do anyway? Matthew Goode, who we’ll forgive for the second season of Discovery of Witches if he manages to bring all of his George Wickham “baby, hate me, please” swagger. A strong second choice? Callum Turner, who actually did play the absolute worst idea that many people did anyway in War & Peace.) It also reunites John with Jamie (who is busy feeling extremely sorry for himself at Helwater), and shows us the strength and bravery of the Dowager Duchess of Pardloe, John and Hal’s mother, who has more than a few secrets up her own sleeve. We’d take a pass on Lord John and the Haunted Soldier, which doesn’t add a ton plot wise, and cast Bridgerton’s mother-daughter duo Ruth Gemmell and Claudia Jessie as Benedicta and Minnie, and get Thrones’ Mark Addy (the erstwhile Bobby B) in for a cameo as the General.

Season Three: The Custom of the Army and The Scottish Prisoner (with flashbacks to A Fugitive Green): If I described what James Fraser, man of peace, was doing during the opening scene of The Scottish Prisoner to you, you would never believe me, but we had damn well better see it on television. Told alternately from Jamie and John’s POVs, The Scottish Prisoner is an even more adventurous detective tale than its predecessors, and puts John and Jamie together on a chase through Ireland and back again, in search of a literal Wild Goose (an Irish Jacobite), based on evidence compiled by John’s Army friend Charlie Carruthers in The Custom of the Army. The Custom of the Army deserves maybe an episode or two as preamble to the meat of the season, if only to introduce some funnier anecdotes in John’s life, including but not limited to that time he accidentally killed a man with an electric eel, and the beginning of his on-again, off-again relationship with Manoke, an indigenous man he meets just prior to the battle of Quebec. (My nonexistent kingdom to get Longmire’s Zahn McClarnon for this one.) As Minnie’s past as a spy takes center stage in The Scottish Prisoner, we’d also propose a brief detour back in time to the events of A Fugitive Green, which describes the beginning of Hal and Minnie’s relationship and her unorthodox upbringing, before carrying on to solving the mystery at the heart of the novel. Just like John, though, we’d take a bizarrely timed break from solving that mystery so that he and Stephan could finally — FINALLY — consummate their relationship. Seeing these two get it together after 47,000 false starts is incredibly charming, and gives us some hope that the happiness John so deserves — and knows he’ll never have with Jamie — might be there for him after all. We’d skip the last two stories in the series, Besieged and Lord John and the Plague of Zombies.

Why end there? Well, besides the fact that realistically, the less Diana says about what happens in Jamaica, the better, wrapping up at the end of The Scottish Prisoner makes sense for a few reasons. The major ongoing mysteries are as resolved as they’re going to get, and John’s subsequent return to Helwater to be named William’s guardian places all the pieces of the chessboard where they need to be for the story to continue on (indeed, all of the events described here take place during Episodes 3 and 4 of Season 3, beginning with John’s departure from Ardsmuir and ending with his marriage to Isobel Dunsany and Jamie’s departure from Helwater). Besieged and Zombies make little chronological sense, and, other than a few charming moments between Benedicta and the General, don’t add much to the story. And besides, we can’t think of a cuter ending than Stephan being so happy to have finally had sex with John that he sends him a puppy (no, I’m not kidding, and you can pry my belief that Hal’s “I see you’ve kept up your German” quip to John in Go Tell the Bees That I am Gone means they’ve stayed together out of my cold, dead hands). The enigmatic moral note on which The Scottish Prisoner ends is a fitting mission statement for this more nuanced, layered look at John’s character, reminding us that there are always more threads in the spider’s web.

A Lord John show won’t eliminate the sting of the forever-droughtlander to come, but we can’t think of a better next step for Ron Moore and his team than this deep dive into some of the most fun, least-explored content in this universe. We’ve given them a good start here, and we’re standing by to help — now all they’ve got to do is clear their schedules and we’ll be on our way, right?