First things first: no humans — or bears — were harmed during the making of “Prophecies,” the second episode of Outlander‘s eighth and final season. Fifteen minutes into the hour-long installment, which marks the directorial debut of the show’s Golden Globe-nominated star Caitríona Balfe, a quartet of Fraser’s Ridge residents are on a blueberry picking run in the woods by the North Carolina homestead when they’re set upon by a hungry ursine who clearly isn’t happy to have its food supply raided.

That bear attack hits close to home for Claire and Jamie Fraser (Bale and Sam Heughan). Not only was their daughter, Briana (Sophie Skelton) part of the blueberry party, but the squad also included Rachel (Izzy Meikle-Small), their very pregnant niece-in-law, and Amy Higgins (Joanne Thomson) a longtime and much-loved member of the Ridge community. Poor Amy ends up on the receiving end of the bear’s anger, with her injuries ultimately proving too severe for Claire to heal. She dies on Claire’s operating table, her husband and sons nearby as she takes her final breaths.

Amy’s fate is taken directly from the ninth book in Diana Gabaldon‘s bestselling Outlander book series, but the actors reveal that the scene underwent a last minute rewrite on set. “Originally, it was going to be a cougar, not a bear,” Skelton remembers now, emphasizing that neither forest critter was on set during filming, but rather created by the visual effects team after the fact.

“When we were shooting the sequence, Caitríona initially wanted to do this kind of tracking shot from the point of view of the cougar,” Meikle-Small adds. “The whole scene was based around the idea of the cougar POV tracking us slowly through the woods. When we lost the cougar, they had to change the scene in the editing room from how we shot it on the day.”

Skelton recalls that while they weren’t stalked by an actual cougar, they were stalked by a camera-equipped drone that Balfe had flying around the woods. “It was very difficult, because we were filming in a forest where it’s hard to have a specific eye line,” the actress says. “The drone was supposed to be the POV of the cougar, and I had to find my gun and follow the drone with it, and was always out of sync. I’m still not sure what I was looking at!”

While Skelton had to match eyes with a drone, Meikle-Small says that Balfe put something else in her line of sight. “The idea was that we would never actually see the bear fully land on Amy,” she says. “And Joanne had wrapped shooting at that point, so we were staring at a neon-green cross on the log where she had been sitting. It was a hilarious eye line to look at.”

Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts confirms that the sequence was tweaked once the cougar-to-bear switch was made. “There was cougar stuff shot, but in the editing room — and this happens all the time — things are filmed and we’re like, ‘We don’t need this or that,'” he says.

As for why the cougar was dropped in favor of the bear, Roberts says it wasn’t due to a last-minute desire to be more faithful to the source material. Rather it’s a reflection of the improvements in creature visual effects — not to mention Outlander‘s increased VFX budget — in the 12 years that the show has been on the air. “We had previously thought about including a bear attack in Season 4, but didn’t have the resources or the time to do it,” he reveals. “Plus, The Revenant was right there, and didn’t want to have that comparison!

“But over the years, visual effects have gotten so much better,” Roberts continues. “In talking to our VFX supervisor, Jon Neill, we initially thought, ‘How do we make it a smaller animal that could still do the damage?’ And he ultimately said, ‘Hey, we could probably do a bear.’ He gave us some mock-ups and we also realized that we didn’t have to actually show what The Revenant showed — the audience will fill in the gaps. So that was the thing that broke it open for us; we knew we could take it right up to the limit.”

Despite the bloody crescendo of that scene, the performers credit Balfe with keeping the mood light and playful on set. “The girls don’t often get to be together and hang out,” Meikle-Small says with a smile. “We see a lot of the boys doing various things [together], but we don’t really get to see the girls drinking and hanging out. And especially being with Caitríona [made for] a really fun day of shooting, and then we all went and got dinner afterwards. We were like, ‘More of the girls please!'”

But even in death there can be new life. Following Amy’s passing, Rachel gives birth to her first child with Jamie’s beloved nephew Ian (John Bell). It’s a big moment for Bell’s fan favorite alter ego — a character that was very nearly a child himself when we first encountered him in Season 3 — and the actor appreciated the opportunity to play two solo scenes with his onscreen aunt and uncle. Claire presents him with his son, while Jamie later offers some words of fatherly wisdom.

“There was this sense of pride and joy that he’s a dad, and I was proud of him,” Bell says now. “It’s weird playing this character, because he also exists [in front of me] sometimes, and it’s almost like I’m looking at him from the outside and being like, ‘I’m proud of you for making it this far and not letting the demons get you.

“There’s always something that happens between Sam and I when we perform together,” Bell continues, referring to Ian’s tender scene with Jamie. “At the end of that one, we looked at each other and I think we realized, ‘This could be one of our last Young Ian and Uncle Jamie moments, and we reflected on all the ones we’ve shared in the past. It’s a lovely moment where the power balance between them shifts a little bit, because Jamie is leading the vulnerability. It’s earned by all the years that have gone into that storyline.”

For her part, Meikle-Small was relieved that Balfe decided not to put her through a full birth sequence. “We were like, ‘We’ve seen a lot of births on Outlander — do we need to see another one?'” the actress says, laughing. “Also, Ian’s stress around the birth was the more important emotional beat than seeing Rachel in labor. The idea was that Rachel would be in very safe hands with Claire, so we wanted to focus on this full circle moment for Ian where he realizes, ‘I’m a father, this is my family, I belong.’ That was more important than lingering on me sweating and pushing out a baby!”