Outlander season eight has now finished its final run, bringing the story to its conclusion on screen, with its main players returning for the last chapter — including Jamie (played by Sam Heughan) and Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe), Young Ian Murray (John Bell), Marsali Fraser (Lauren Lyle), Fergus Fraser (César Domboy), and Lord John Grey (David Berry).

Season eight consists of 10 episodes and takes its cue from Outlander author Diana Gabaldon’s ninth novel Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone.

The historical fantasy drama has mixed together fact and fictions, often featuring real-life characters and events in the series.

Many fans are curious to know more about Lord John Grey, particularly after Outlander’s executive producer Maril Davis recently said she would be keen to do a spin-off based on Gabaldon’s novellas.

Florida State University’s Professor Charles Upchurch spoke to Reach Plc about the real-life figures that may have inspired Lord John Grey and what life would really be like for the character given his sexuality.

A man and a woman look at each other

Lord John Grey has become an important part of Outlander(Image: STARZ)

Professor Upchurch said there were “high-ranking military men on both sides of the American Revolution” that were similar to Lord John Grey.

He cited Prussian military officer Baron von Steuben, who trained the Continental Army at Valley Forge, and Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord George Sackville, who was responsible for conducting the war against the American colonies.

Both von Steuben and Sackville were known during their lifetimes for their same-sex attractions.

Outlander fans are hoping that Lord John, who is known for his deep unrequited love for Jamie, will finally find some form of romantic happiness of his own.

While viewers will have to wait to see how the season plays out, Professor Upchurch did say it was possible for gay figures such as Lord John to maintain a same-sex relationship.

Three men stand together in a field

Lord John Grey serves as an antithesis to Captain Black Jack Randall(Image: STARZ)

He said: “The more we look, the more scholars are discovering evidence of long-term relationships between both male and female same-sex couples in the 18th century, at the upper, middling, and lower-class levels of society, with the forms that these relationships take varying significantly because of the material resources of each class.”

Someone like Lord John would be afforded more privilege due to his upper class standing, being part of the military and having wealth.

The penalties for those caught having same-sex relationships were “draconian”, however, the “minimal” enforcement of these laws meant that upper-class men could “purchase their privacy” both at home and abroad and would be “relatively safe”.

The academic, who is currently working on the book ‘Called it Macaroni’: A British Queer History of the American Revolution, said that even those who broke with convention and “became notorious” were able to flee to abroad rather than face arrest and prosecution.

Reflecting on why Lord John Grey may have been included in Outlander by Gabaldon, Professor Upchurch said that he served as the antithesis to the barbaric Captain ‘Black Jack’ Randall (Tobias Menzies).

The academic explained: “In the torture scenes at the end of season one, Randall’s investment in getting Jamie to accept and consent to the violence being inflicted on him is a long-standing trope of literature on colonialism.

“Outlander was innovative in that it was not Claire but Jamie who was the victim, and while there were a number of asides in season one that indicated that sex between men was a part of this world and not such a big deal, the lack of queer characters in season one meant that the only representation of sex between men was through violence and sadism, made more extreme because of its use as an analogy for England’s treatment of Scotland.

“Lord John, first appearing in season two, is in many ways an atonement for this.”