Outlander gay scene

"How positive it is, really," he told us when asked what has surprised him most about the reaction so far. But on the other side, I always try not to shy away from that and cheat it and make it so that it's prettier than it should be. However, their night together in Outlander season 7 was a significant step forward for their characters' mourning process.

For me internally, as I was cutting the show, if there was a point where I couldn't watch it anymore, then I know we had gone too far. Claire screamed that Lord John had no right to mourn Jamie since he had never been his. That's fine. I don't mind making them uncomfortable. But I don't want to lose them. The otherwise perhaps sappy moment felt earned.

Claire and Lord John's marriage will undoubtedly be annulled, but Jamie may have some feelings about the news that his wife and best friend had sex in his absence.

Jamie will, of course, forgive Claire. (And yet, as many fans will argue, the idea that Sansa's new sadistic husband Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) would do anything different, would have been ludicrous—and Sophie herself even "loved" the twist.)

When asked if he would ever add a rape storyline to a TV show based on a book, Moore is thoughtful.

So the only way I could keep track of that was my own sense of, ‘When would I stop watching?' I always pull back from that line. And yet, when you think about it, there are some pretty valid reasons as to why Outlander's sexual assault was received, as a whole, far better than Game of Thrones'.

For starters, and perhaps most importantly, unlike Game of Thrones, the rape on Outlander was directly taken from the book series (written by Diana Gabaldon).

But it seems that Outlander has done something pretty unbelievable in its execution of what was arguably the most difficult source material ever for television: Doing the darkest part of the books justice without seriously turning off viewers for good, and even making fans more excited for season two.

—Additional reporting by Sydney Bucksbaum

Twitter: Follow @kristindsantos for more Outlander and Game of Thrones scoop