Entertainment

The Decade's Best Fantasy Spin-Off Is Officially a Surprise HBO Max Sensation

Nairavoice · Oct 25, 2026 · 5 min read

The most exciting fantasy spin-off of the decade so far continued earlier this week. Now having spent almost 400 days in the Starz top ten, there’s no doubting the popularity of Outlander: Blood of My Blood. When the love story of Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitríona Balfe) came to a jaw-dropping end earlier this year, fans’ heartbreak of losing their favorite show was more than made up for by the incoming second season of this clever spin-off.

Rave reviews met Hermione Corfield‘s Julia, Jeremy Irvine‘s Henry, Harriet Slater’s Ellen, and more for the first season of the series, with the second more than living up to the hype. Scoring a perfect 100% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, critics have had nothing but gushing praise to pour over Blood of My Blood Season 2. This included Collider’s Carly Lane, who wrote in her review that Season 2 “does enough to carry Outlander‘s legacy forward by building out even more of the past,” praising the writing and performances of a stellar and underappreciated supporting cast.

The most recent Episode 6, “Small Mercies,” saw Ellen find “herself a guest among unexpected company,” whilst “Brian and Murtagh attempt a daring rescue; Colum waits for news of the war,” and much more in a jam-packed installment. The praise just keeps on coming as episodes are released, helping continue the show’s presence on the biggest streaming charts. Not only does that include Starz in the U.S., but it also includes HBO Max in several territories. It has proven so popular in its second season that Outlander: Blood of My Blood currently appears in the global HBO Max top ten.

Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely
different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you
would be having within a week.

You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts
works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war
so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting
you.

You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within
about five minutes and has never stopped.
This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every
single person in your life would be.
The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you
do with things you love.
The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the
arguments are about to start all over again.

You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where
somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth
rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.

You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something
enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly
alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all,
which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make
that argument.

You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one
where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of
it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.

You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a
grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly
1980 with no sign of resolution.
The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score
and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good
time.

You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the
argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in
space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.

You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major
franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that
makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is
appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you
will always find somebody willing to have it.

What Else Is Popular On HBO Max?

Image via Starz

The global HBO Max charts are packed with a wide range of genres and a blend of classic and new content. In the TV top ten, Outlander: Blood of My Blood ranks tenth, with the list also including Dragon Ball Super: Beerus, the new horror favorite Crystal Lake, Dominic West and Sienna Miller‘s new legal thriller War, and the current chart-topper, Lanterns, the superhero series starring Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler.