Full spoilers for Outlander: Blood of My Blood through Season 2 Episode 8 (“The Dance”) and the original Outlander television series follow. No future book spoilers.
Yes. Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser was in love with Ellen MacKenzie. Outlander: Blood of My Blood makes that old piece of Murtagh’s history explicit by showing us the younger Murtagh before Ellen chooses Brian Fraser, before Jamie is born, and long before Murtagh becomes the hardened protector we meet in Outlander.
But the important part is not simply that Murtagh loses the girl.
The important part is what he eventually chooses to do with the love that remains.
Quick Answer
Murtagh loves Ellen, but Ellen loves Brian Fraser.
Season 2 Episode 5 makes that connection concrete. Before Sheriffmuir, Brian asks Murtagh to protect Ellen and their unborn child if he dies. Murtagh agrees. What begins as unrequited love becomes a chosen responsibility toward Brian’s family—and, years later, toward Jamie. The baby Ellen is carrying in 1715 is not Jamie, who is born later.
Season 2 Episode 8 Update: Murtagh and Brian Make Peace, But Grace Faces Separation
“The Dance” gives Murtagh an important step beyond his old feelings for Ellen. Brian tells Murtagh that Lovat poisoned Ellen and caused the loss of their baby, and the two men finally talk openly about Brian and Ellen’s relationship. Brian apologizes for keeping his love secret, and Murtagh’s teasing shows that their friendship can survive the hurt.
Murtagh also tells Grace Cameron he loves her, but John Cameron has acquired a sugarcane plantation in the West Indies and orders Grace to accompany him. Because she is enslaved, she cannot simply refuse or choose a new life with Murtagh. He promises he will follow her, while she fears the risk his pursuit could bring. That unresolved storyline shows Murtagh capable of loving someone after Ellen, without erasing his earlier feelings or the promise he made to Brian. Read the Episode 2.08 KJR for more.
How Blood Of My Blood Reveals Murtagh’s Love For Ellen
When we first meet young Murtagh, he is not the grumbling, world-weary man Outlander viewers remember. He is funny, hopeful, reckless, flirtatious, and already completely taken with Ellen MacKenzie.
At first, it feels almost like a young man’s impossible crush. Ellen is Red Jacob MacKenzie’s daughter, important within one of the most powerful families in the Highlands, and someone Murtagh has spent more time admiring from a distance than actually knowing.
Rory Alexander, who plays young Murtagh, has described Ellen as having a kind of mystique for him. She is beautiful, important, and perhaps most importantly, difficult for someone in Murtagh’s position to imagine actually having. That distance allows Ellen to become partly a person and partly an ideal in his mind.
And then Blood of My Blood makes the situation considerably crueler.
Because Murtagh’s cousin and best friend Brian Fraser meets Ellen too.
And Ellen chooses Brian.
Why Brian And Ellen Hurt Murtagh So Much
The obvious version of this story would make Murtagh jealous because the woman he loves chooses someone else.
Blood of My Blood makes it worse.
Brian is not some rival Murtagh can simply hate. He is his cousin, closest friend, and essentially his brother. Murtagh spends the early part of the season confiding in Brian about Ellen without realizing that Brian and Ellen have already begun falling in love themselves.
That means the eventual revelation lands as two losses at once.
Murtagh has to accept that Ellen does not love him the way he loves her, but he also has to confront the fact that Brian has been hiding something enormous from him.
That distinction matters. Murtagh is not merely heartbroken. He feels betrayed.
Needfire Is The Moment Murtagh’s Fantasy Breaks
Episode 5, “Needfire,” is where the emotional triangle finally stops being theoretical.
Murtagh discovers Brian and Ellen together during Beltane and realizes that the relationship he has imagined with Ellen is never going to happen. Brian has not simply developed feelings for the same woman. Brian and Ellen have already chosen each other.
Murtagh responds badly because of course he does.
He drinks. He fights. He spirals. And when Jocasta offers him another possible connection, even that becomes contaminated by his feelings for Ellen. Their encounter collapses when Murtagh invokes Ellen instead.
It is messy, embarrassing, and exactly what this storyline needs.
The series does not make young Murtagh noble simply because we know he will become noble later. It lets him experience the selfish, wounded part of loving someone who does not love him back before asking him to become something better.
Read our Blood Of My Blood Episode 5 “Needfire” review →
Brian Did Not Steal Ellen From Murtagh
This is also where the story needs one important distinction.
Brian does not steal Ellen from Murtagh.
Ellen was never Murtagh’s to lose.
That is the emotional problem Murtagh eventually has to solve. His love can be real without giving him ownership over Ellen, and his heartbreak can be legitimate without making Brian and Ellen wrong for choosing each other.
That is much more interesting than a conventional love triangle because the actual dramatic question is not Which man will Ellen choose? Outlander fans already know the answer.
The question is:
What kind of man will Murtagh become after she does?
The Boar-Tusk Bracelets Explain Everything
If you watched the original Outlander, the boar hunt in Blood of My Blood should immediately set off an alarm.
Young Murtagh kills a wild boar and keeps its tusks. Those tusks eventually become the famous bracelets associated with Ellen MacKenzie—the same bracelets that later make their way to Claire.
The original series had already told us the story behind them. Murtagh killed the boar, used the tusks to create the bracelets for Ellen, and loved Jamie’s mother long before Claire ever met him.
Blood of My Blood finally lets us watch that history happen instead of hearing about it decades later.
By the Season 1 finale, Murtagh gives Ellen the bracelets as a wedding gift after she has chosen Brian. And that is where the object becomes much more interesting than a clever Outlander Easter egg.
The bracelets are the physical evidence of a love Murtagh has decided not to turn into resentment.
The boar-tusk bracelets are not really about whether Murtagh could have won Ellen.
They are about the moment he begins accepting that loving Ellen may mean wanting her happiness even when that happiness is with Brian.
Why Murtagh Protects Jamie: Brian’s Promise at Sheriffmuir
We already knew Murtagh loved Ellen. We already knew he became Jamie Fraser’s godfather. And we knew how much he would risk to protect Jamie in the original Outlander.
Those were facts about Murtagh’s life. Blood of My Blood Season 2 Episode 5, “Forgive Me, Father,” gives those facts a new cause-and-effect relationship.
Before the Battle of Sheriffmuir, Brian Fraser confronts the possibility that he may not come home. Ellen is pregnant, their future together is precarious, and there is no guarantee the battle will end with Brian alive to protect them. He turns to Murtagh and asks him to look after Ellen and their child if he dies.
Murtagh answers with a promise: “To my last breath, Brian.”
The words are short. What makes them devastating is everything that happened between these men before Brian asks.
Why Does Brian Trust Murtagh After Everything That Happened With Ellen?
Brian is asking the one man whose heart he helped break to protect the life Brian has built with the woman they both loved.
That is the difficult choice inside the scene. Murtagh could allow his disappointment in Ellen, his anger at Brian, or the bitterness of losing the future he imagined to define their relationship. Instead, he accepts responsibility for the family that will exist because Ellen chose Brian.
This does not mean Murtagh suddenly stops loving Ellen. It means he decides what his love will do.
And Brian has to make a choice too. He could see Murtagh only as the cousin he hurt or the former romantic rival who might resent him. Instead, he entrusts Ellen and their child to him. Brian’s request makes their friendship something more substantial than an old bond or a sentimental speech: it is an act of trust with consequences.
Why the Promise Matters More Than the Battle
Sheriffmuir is full of military decisions, divided loyalties, and commanders weighing what they may lose. Brian and Murtagh make a different kind of decision. They cannot control who wins the war, but Murtagh can choose what responsibility he will carry if Brian falls.
This is why the promise works dramatically. We are not merely being told that Murtagh is loyal. We watch him accept a burden at the moment when walking away would be emotionally understandable. The scene turns a feeling into a commitment—and gives that commitment a cost.
There is also a crucial timeline distinction: Brian asks Murtagh to protect Ellen and their unborn child, not Jamie specifically. Sheriffmuir takes place in 1715, years before Jamie’s birth in the established Outlander chronology. The promise concerns Brian’s family and the future he hopes Ellen can have. Jamie later becomes part of that larger responsibility.
Does Murtagh Protect Jamie Only Because Brian Asked Him To?
No. That would make Murtagh’s lifelong devotion too simple. He has his own love for Ellen, his relationship with Brian, his bond with Jamie as godfather and kin, and the choices he continues making long after the battlefield.
The promise does not erase those motivations. It gathers them into one moment we can point to.
Now, when we watch Murtagh protect Jamie in the original series, we can see more than a gruff older man doing right by his godson. We see a younger man who chose to protect the family he could never have for himself. The series has not changed what Murtagh did. It has changed why we understand him to have done it.
That is the kind of revelation a prequel should earn: not a connection that makes viewers say “I recognize that,” but a choice that makes an old scene hurt in an entirely new way.
Keep exploring this turning point: Read our Blood of My Blood 2.05 Knee-Jerk Reaction, or hear Mary and Blake unpack Brian and Murtagh’s promise in the Episode 2.05 recap and reaction podcast.
The Search Already Told Us This Story
The original Outlander gave us one of the most important pieces of Murtagh’s history in Season 1 during “The Search.”
Claire is consumed by losing Jamie and lashes out at Murtagh as though he cannot understand what she is feeling. Murtagh answers by finally revealing his own history with Ellen and the boar-tusk bracelets.
The scene works in the original series because it unexpectedly reveals that this rough, quiet man has carried an enormous private loss for years.
Blood of My Blood now changes the scene again.
We are no longer imagining the young Murtagh who loved Ellen.
We have met him.
We have watched him hope.
We have watched Brian accidentally become his rival.
We have watched him discover the truth.
And we have watched him begin the painful work of remaining in their lives anyway.
That is exactly the kind of thing a prequel should do. It does not change what happened in Outlander. It changes how much an old scene weighs.
Revisit our Outlander coverage of “The Search” →
What About Murtagh And Jocasta?
Blood of My Blood also deliberately complicates Murtagh’s story by putting young Jocasta MacKenzie around him.
Jocasta notices Murtagh almost immediately. Murtagh notices that she notices him. There is attraction there, but Ellen remains the person occupying most of his emotional attention.
That is significant because viewers of the original television series know that Murtagh and Jocasta eventually develop a romantic relationship much later in their lives.
The prequel therefore creates an interesting triangle across decades rather than merely across one season. Young Jocasta can see Murtagh while Murtagh is still looking past her toward Ellen.
That makes their later connection feel less random, but it also emphasizes just how long Ellen remains part of Murtagh’s emotional history.
Did Ellen Ever Love Murtagh?
Not romantically, at least based on what Season 1 shows us.
Ellen cares about Murtagh, trusts him, and understands that his feelings are real. But the series never presents her as secretly torn between Brian and Murtagh.
Her romantic choice is Brian.
That is important because giving Ellen a hidden romantic attraction to Murtagh would weaken the story. Murtagh’s arc only really works if he eventually accepts a truth he cannot negotiate his way around: Ellen loves someone else.
Why Murtagh’s Unrequited Love Matters
The weakest version of this story would exist only to make Outlander fans point at the screen and say, “Oh! That explains the bracelets.”
The stronger version explains the man.
Murtagh begins Blood of My Blood believing love might mean getting Ellen.
By the Battle of Sheriffmuir in Season 2, he makes that lesson a choice: sometimes love means remaining loyal to the family of the person who did not choose you.
That is the Murtagh we eventually know.
His defining trait in Outlander is not romance. It is devotion.
And Blood of My Blood shows us how that devotion becomes a promise he actively chooses to keep.
Murtagh does not get Ellen. He becomes the man who protects what Ellen loved.
That is a much better origin story.
Keep Going
More Murtagh & Blood Of My Blood
Murtagh And Ellen FAQ
Was Murtagh in love with Ellen MacKenzie?
Yes. Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser is explicitly in love with Ellen MacKenzie in Outlander: Blood of My Blood. His love is unrequited because Ellen falls in love with Brian Fraser.
Did Ellen love Murtagh?
Ellen cares about Murtagh, but Season 1 does not portray her as romantically in love with him. Her romantic relationship is with Brian Fraser.
Did Murtagh know Brian loved Ellen?
Not initially. Brian and Ellen keep their relationship secret, leaving Murtagh to talk openly with Brian about his own feelings for Ellen before eventually discovering that Brian and Ellen are together.
Why was Murtagh angry with Brian in Blood Of My Blood?
Murtagh feels betrayed because Brian is both his cousin and closest friend. Discovering that Brian secretly entered a relationship with the woman Murtagh loves makes the revelation about friendship as much as romantic jealousy.
What are the boar-tusk bracelets?
Murtagh creates bracelets from the tusks of a boar he kills and eventually gives them to Ellen. The bracelets later appear in Outlander, where Claire possesses them and Murtagh reveals the story behind them.
Why does Murtagh protect Jamie?
Murtagh is Jamie Fraser’s godfather and kin, and he loves both of Jamie’s parents. Blood of My Blood Season 2 Episode 5 adds an important decision: before Sheriffmuir, Brian asks Murtagh to protect Ellen and their unborn child if he dies. Murtagh promises to do so. His later devotion to Jamie is not caused by that promise alone, but the scene shows him deliberately accepting responsibility for Brian and Ellen’s family.
What did Murtagh promise Brian before Sheriffmuir?
In Blood of My Blood Season 2 Episode 5, Brian asks Murtagh to protect Ellen and their unborn child if Brian does not return from the battle. Murtagh responds, “To my last breath, Brian.” The promise matters because he chooses to care for the family Brian is building with Ellen despite his own painful history with them.
Was Ellen pregnant with Jamie during the Battle of Sheriffmuir?
No. The battle takes place in 1715, while Jamie Fraser is born in 1721 in the established Outlander timeline. Brian is asking Murtagh to safeguard Ellen and their growing family, not specifically Jamie. The meaning of that promise extends to Jamie in later years.
Do Murtagh and Jocasta get together?
In the Outlander television adaptation, the adult Murtagh and Jocasta eventually develop a romantic relationship. Blood of My Blood foreshadows that future by establishing an attraction between the younger characters even while Murtagh remains focused on Ellen.