Outlander plumbs new emotional depths in a twisty finale

Refill your water jugs because another Droughtlander is upon us, folks. Starz’s Outlander is going back into hibernation once again after this week’s season-seven finale that claimed two lives, reunited a family broken by time, and sure seemed to dabble in resurrection or something like it. But in order to fully grasp that last bit, which punctuated the season’s final scene, let’s embark on our own little time-travel trip through the stones back to May 2016 and season two, episode seven.

Diehard fans will immediately know that as the episode when Claire (Caitriona Balfe) awakens in a French hospital to learn her baby, named Faith, was stillborn, the trauma from which began as she watched Jamie (Sam Heughan) challenge Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) to a duel. Early in the episode, a recovering but fever-stricken Claire is visited by Master Raymond (Dominique Pinon), the owner of an apothecary who also happens to be an ancient shaman and a time traveler like her. He visits her bedside to save her life by literally removing the infected placenta from her womb that is swiftly killing her. As he performs this miracle, he tells her to describe what she sees in the moment, to which she speaks of the blue wings of a heron. Blue being the color of healing, Raymond says, is a good sign. Almost immediately, her fever breaks, but before Raymond slinks away into the night, her savior promises he will see Claire again one day. And sure enough, that day has come.

Back in the waning hour of season seven, Claire is slowly but surely recovering after being shot during the Battle of Monmouth and nearly dying on the surgery table. You’ll recall Jamie wrote his resignation as brigadier general in Claire’s blood on the back of a poor errand boy so he could be by her side, and that’s where he has stayed. Except for one night, when she awakes not to a burly Highlander at her bedside but a cloaked Master Raymond. He jokes that she keeps trying to join the dead, but it isn’t her time. Then he says he has come to ask her forgiveness, for something she does not yet know. That cryptic apology is laced with the same images of the blue-winged bird, linking the two moments when Claire came closest to knocking on death’s door.

It’s unclear to even the audience what this could mean, and in any other show, the mystery might have been dragged out for an entire season. But not in the world of Outlander, where things move at a fast clip. For that reason, hold on tight for this next part. By the end of the episode, William Ransom (Charles Vandervaart) has enlisted his father Jamie to help rescue his sex-worker girlfriend Jane (Silvia Presente), who has been arrested for killing the British officer that tried to rape her 10-year-old sister Fanny (Florrie May Wilkinson). Unfortunately, William and Jamie are too late to save Jane, who killed herself in custody believing there was no escape. This leads a grief-stricken William to ask Jamie and Claire to care for Fanny as they head back to Fraser’s Ridge in North Carolina.

While saving goodbye at Jane’s grave, Fanny shows Claire a locket with an etching of their mother and her name: Faith. Claire sees it as one of life’s little coincidences, having just pondered with Jamie whether or not she will see their late daughter Faith when Claire eventually dies. It is all very sweet until she hears Fanny singing “I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside,” the same song Claire sang to Faith’s lifeless body before she was taken away by the nuns. It’s a song that was written in the 20th century that Fanny couldn’t possibly know—except she says she was taught it by her mother. So somehow, some way was Fanny’s late mother, Faith, actually Claire and Jamie’s first child? Did she survive being stillborn, or perhaps was she brought back to life by Master Raymond?

That’s the cliff off which Outlander hangs its penultimate season, which saw the series bend over backwards to accelerate the plots of Diana Gabaldon’s books. Yet you have to respect the show for reaching back this far back into its early days for such a twist. Even the most tuned-in viewers probably considered retreating to Netflix to rewatch that season-two episode just for a refresher on exactly what happened with Master Raymond. (It’s been almost a decade, after all.) So yeah, it’s a bold choice for the show to make as it steps into its final act. Season eight will be the show’s last, and bringing this story to some semblance of a full circle when it has otherwise treated time like an Etch-A-Sketch may end up being the show’s greatest feat. Book readers have long had an advantage when it comes to knowing what’s around the corner. But even the books are still pondering the question of Faith’s fate, which resurfaced in Gabaldon’s ninth and most recent book, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, which the TV series will adapt in its final season. So for once, Outlander has put all of its fans on equal footing.

If Fanny is Claire and Jamie’s granddaughter, and Master Raymond is apologizing for keeping this secret long after they had the chance to connect with her, then Outlander has just given itself new emotional depths to plumb in its final 10 episodes. That is pretty impressive for a show that might understandably be emotionally spent after time-hopping through three centuries and bearing witness to at least two history-defining rebellions. If this is the beginning of Outlander’s endgame, consider me intrigued.

Stray observations

• • While the Fanny and Faith drama will undoubtedly be the headline of the season, the greatest tragedy of this episode was the loss of the most loyal character in the show, Rollo, the canine best friend of Ian (John Bell). A trusty companion that never left Ian’s side while he found his place in America following his time with the Mohawk, the loss of his first marriage and child, and his new relationship with Rachel (Izzy Meikle-Small), Rollo was a hero who will be missed in the show’s final episodes. But as Ian put it, he needed to know his owner would be okay before he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. With the happy couple now expecting their first child, the time had come. You did good, Rollo.
• • Sure, Jamie is a big deal and all, but could he really just resign from a military command post he received directly from George Washington and go back home when he wants to? He was conscripted into the Continental Army! This isn’t a hotel you check out of when you’re done.
• • Speaking of Jamie, the romantic leading man is still being docked points for his continued grudge against Lord John Grey (David Berry), who married Claire to protect her and even risked his own safety to come visit her behind enemy lines in the hospital. The dagger eyes he gets from Jamie during an otherwise poignant moment when Claire finally thanks him are uncalled for and not befitting of the swoon-worthy Highlander audiences have come to love.
• • Brianna (Sophie Skleton), Roger (Richard Rankin), and their children safely reunited in 1739 at Lallybroch, despite toddler Mandy bum-rushing the stones in the last episode in an uber-dramatic moment that suggested she might have been sent to the wrong time. But alas, everything worked out for them, and all they have to do is ask the important question: Where or when do they go now? They have a cushy life restoring Lallybroch in 1980, but she misses her parents in the 1770s. Oh, what a luxury it must be to time travel on a whim, not a care in the world for what ramifications may be unleashed. Cynicism aside, the way that Roger screams “Brianna!” at the sight of her was overwhelmingly endearing and romantic. Little moments like that prove this show’s still got it when it counts.