The penultimate episode of Outlander on Starz — Outlander Season 8 Episode 9 “Pharos” — follows Jamie (Sam Heughan), Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and William (Charles Vandervaart) as they embark on a daring rescue mission. Lord John Grey (David Berry) has been betrayed by his on-and-off lover Percy Beauchamp (Michael Lindall) and captured by Captain Ezekiel Richardson (Ben Lambert).  What unfolds in the episode shatters Lord John’s long-time relationship with Percy while solidifying the bond shared by John, Jamie, and William forever.

**Spoilers for Outlander Season 8 Episode 9 “Pharos,” now streaming on Starz**

We learn early on in this week’s Outlander that, yes, Captain Richardson is indeed a time traveler bent on ensuring the British win the Revolutionary War. He wants to use the scandal of Lord John’s homosexuality to blackmail the nobleman’s older brother Hal to reverse his position on withdrawing the British Army from the colonies. As he explains to Claire later in the episode, he’s willing to go through all this insane skullduggery to end slavery earlier, and without the bloodshed of the Civil War, in America.

The problem is in pursuing this noble goal, Richardson has made an enemy of Lord John Grey. Before the end of the episode, Lord John has killed Captain Richardson and engineered the ruin of Percy Beauchamp, who dies by suicide. However, Lord John also finds time to make amends with Jamie and to ensure that William understands that he will always be loved by both of his fathers.

When DECIDER caught up with Outlander star David Berry this week, he talked about how this latest episode of the Starz hit pushed Lord John Grey to his limit and how he borrowed inspiration for his performance from none other than James Bond…

DECIDER: I think last time we spoke last season, you had been rocking a pirate eyepatch. This week you’ve got something of a lighthouse cell beard going on. Can you talk me through what that physical change was like for this episode? 

DAVID BERRY: Yeah, we get to see Lord John discomposed. He’s stripped back, but in some ways, being stripped back means growing a beard and putting more stuff on him. Yeah, we see him in a really raw place. That was really fun.

The beard itself was really itchy and actually very difficult to act with because it has to be paced on and your mouth movements are very restricted by it. So after about ten or so minutes, the mustache starts to fall off and it has to be re-glued on. Otherwise, yeah, it will fall off.

But yeah, I loved it. I loved seeing Lord John in this way. We so often see him as sort of composed and put together, it’s great to see him in the complete opposite way — although we’ve seen that before. Yeah, I guess we love to dress John up so we can kind of tear him down. It seems to be a pattern with this character. 

Well, speaking of which, I do think of Lord John as like the ultimate gentleman. He’s always so elegant and sophisticated and sensitive. This week, when he is finally free, he just pointblank shoots Richardson in the head and begins yelling these words of vengeance. You understand why he feels that way, but I was almost like, “Oh, that’s a side of Lord John we don’t see often.” Can you take me through what’s been unlocked, unleashed there? 

Yeah, definitely. There’s a rage that has been brewing and bubbling in Lord John for a while, especially with Richardson and what’s happened with him and William. Lord John gets pushed to the edge multiple times during this whole series, but in this season in particular. It is a very fine balance that was a challenge for me to find as an actor. In conversations sometimes with the director, Emer [Conroy] —who did a really fantastic job, I love working with her — she’s trying to find and ground his rage. She was always pushing me to go a little bit further with with how enraged Lord John was, particularly in those moments where he confronts Richardson. Always my instincts were to be like, “Yes, okay, but also he needs to keep a sense of composure about him.”

To me, like the way I envisage it, he has that quiet rage bubbling in him, much like James Bond. I know that sounds like a bit of a cliche, but in research for this particular episode, I did go back and watch Daniel Craig’s performance in Casino Royale and other things, just to see how that quiet, kind of bubbling rage inhabits and lives within Craig’s performance. But it’s also always composed and that’s something that really I wanted to play with in this particular episode.

Another very kind of interesting standoff happens between at the very end, between Lord John and Percy Beauchamp. It’s been really fascinating to watch this complex relationship between those two men unravel before our eyes. You know, Percy says he loves John, and then John basically sets him up to die and be ruined. I’m really curious, what do you think John makes of Percy Beauchamp at the end? 

Not sure John really knows. There’s a really beautiful ambivalence to that storyline. John hears the gunshot go off and his decision is not to run back. He has a quiet moment of reflection where he almost gives into his vulnerability of caring about him again, and yet he just says, “God rest his soul.” Then we see where Lord John nearly allows himself to feel again for Percy, but then he puts on, again, his face of stoicism and marches out of the scene.

That scene in itself kind of encapsulates that relationship. You know, Lord John wants to feel for Percy, but he must protect himself. And he learns his lesson, whether it’s a good one or a bad one, that to be too vulnerable to anyone can be a dangerous thing. Therefore he must always live with this mask of stoicism, which is kind of sad. He can’t really lean into the loving person that he wants to be. It is a violent world for people who are gay in that time. So he understands that Percy’s fate is horrible, but it’s also the grim and brutal reality of being a gay man in the 18th century, and to have to put on that face of that false face of stoicism and keep marching on through life. 

Speaking of vulnerability, the scene between you and Jamie where you finally sort of clear the air and make amends, I feel like that must be John at his most vulnerable and most raw, most open. What was it like to finally make amends over everything that’s happened and also to have that wonderful scene where you sit down and play chess with with Jamie? 

Yeah, you’re right, he is at his most vulnerable. But in many ways, their relationship is a status game. A lot of the time it’s like, who is top dog? And that tension always is an undercurrent through the scene. So whilst he is vulnerable, he cannot ever let that be shown to Jamie and the best way that they can sort of navigate that relationship is through a game of chess. They get close to talking about their feelings; like we didn’t want it to be a scene where we just kind of have a modern conversation about feelings because these are two stoic 18th century men. So they don’t have deep and meaningful [conversations], to the extent that they can. They do to a certain degree, but that level of emotional maturity is a little bit anachronistic, I think. So we need to still have that heart, but resolve it in a way that seems truthful to the time period and honors that friendship. And I love that it is resolved in a game of chess, which is very much of the time and of their friendship.

Before I let you go, there’s a beautiful moment towards the end of the episode. You have Lord John and William on the porch, kind of bidding farewell to Claire and Jamie. It just felt like this wonderful coda for what we’ve been watching for years. What was it like for you? Did you have a sense of that on set, that there kind of was this beautiful moment of, I don’t know, familial love? 

Absolutely. It’s funny now that I reflect upon it, because, yesh, that scene is so much about William, right? Charles had not been [there] — obviously like his character was — but he doesn’t get to see the throughline. So for me and, I’m guessing, Sam, it was a beautiful kind of, yes, as you said, coda to the whole story arc of William. It brings closure to that strange and wonderful relationship that these two men had through this shared child that they have. And yeah, it’s a really powerful moment, obviously, for Charles’s character, William, as well to now have that close and meaningful bond with two fathers. I think there’s a line in the show where he says, “How can I love one without hurting the other?” You kind of understand how that can happen at the end. So, yeah, I love that.

This interview has been edited and formatted for clarity.

The final episode of Outlander premieres Friday, May 15 on Starz.