The battle lines have been drawn, the Battle of Culloden appears to be an inevitability, and Jaime (Sam Heughan) and Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) continue to struggle with the tide of history.



The season finale of the increasingly epic second season of "Outlander" airs July 9th, a supersized 90-minute extravaganza that reintroduces the underlying time-traveling conceit in a big -- and potentially heartbreaking -- way. Even better, now that the show's network, Starz, has renewed the series for not one but two seasons (taking it to the halfway point in author Diana Gabaldon's eight-book series), allowing the creative team the leeway to play a longer-form game. Executive Producer Maril Davis offered a teasing peek at the road ahead.



Moviefone: Give me a little tease on what's left for everybody who's been with you on the journey in Season 2.



Maril Davis: We're getting closer to Culloden and closer to war, and we'll see a lot of old favorites come back. It's war time, and we know what happens with war, and people are divided and loyalties are torn. So I think the last two episodes are amazing, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how everyone reacts.How challenging was that, to go to the scale you needed to go to to depict a war?



Well, we won't actually see , we don't quite get to Culloden in these last two episodes. It's kind of towards the eve of it. So I'm not sure we'll get to the "Game of Thrones" battle that they had. But it was a really emotional time, these last two episodes, and really powerful performances. I think we're all so proud of these last two.



What has it meant to you to know that you have a lot of storytelling left to do? You've got a nice extended pickup for two more seasons.



Yeah, I'm so excited about it. It's so rare that you have something where you're not constantly searching for story and you're not in the room. Kind of like, what is next? And what are we going to do? And knowing that you have so much material down the line. So I find it personally liberating.



How does that pickup affect the way you tell the story? Does it affect it, the knowledge that you have two seasons? Is that going to change the way you pace things out?



No, I mean, I think it's personally gratifying, and kind of like, "Oh, okay. We can relax in terms that we don't have to also have the fans asking us constantly, 'When is Season 4 coming?" when Season 3 is on. Honestly, we haven't changed our game plan. We are kind of sticking to a book a season. So that hasn't changed. It's just changed the amount of work we have to do.



What does it mean to see where you've expanded a little bit beyond what Diana Gabaldon put in the books, and to see the fans respond to that and to be able to take things a little bit further and explore little corners that interest you guys?



Yeah, I think it's fun for us. I'm actually a huge book fan. But I think there's been so many moments I'm proud of. Like, in the first season, when we see kind of what Frank's doing back home searching for Claire that we don't get to see in the book. I think filling in those gaps that maybe Diana didn't have time for, for us is really rewarding. Especially when we get it right.



The "Outlander" Season 2 finale ("Dragonfly in Amber") airs Saturday, July 9th on Starz.