Would you literally risk your life to save your love? Claire (Caitriona Balfe) took the leap of faith of leaping off a British navy boat with the hope of actually reaching land and somehow warning Jamie that he would be arrested and possibly hung when he reached Jamaica. However, it sure seemed for almost three endless days that she would simply end up dying of thirst and starvation on the small island that she washed up on. Poor Claire, she has no idea where she has landed nor where to find civilization and she ends up slogging through endless tropical forest battling stinging ants and almost getting bitten but a large, creepy snake before finally stumbling on a homestead in the nick of time.
Luck of all lucks, an eccentric priest and his mother-in-law live there. He had lost his beautiful wife who died tragically young. The priest keeps her favorite gorgeous dress on display, his mother-in-law calls Claire an “old cow” and “whore” and the priest bizarrely talks to a coconut head for advice. BUT he is English and he and the grumpy mother-in-law do nurse Claire back to health.
This definitely was not the most gripping episode of Outlander this season . Neither is it the most plausible. In fact, this season, based on Diana Gabaldon‘s novel Voyager is the least plausible in the entire series. That’s because Voyager itself requires readers to accept a whole series of unlikely events in order to move the Outlander plot forward. So many of the books in the series meticulously detail actual historic events, but in this novel and season, Gabaldon needs to get Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire to Jamaica with a requisite amount of drama. Then from Jamaica to North Carolina. That’s why we have to also accept that Jamie, Fergus, Marsali, Mr. Willoughby and their band of Scotsmen survive some kind of disaster on their own ship, which kills the captain and many of his men, while also washing them up on shore, not far from where Claire has found shelter. Really?!
We never actually get a plausible explanation for what happened, but Jamie and his men are repairing the ship’s mast on shore as Claire races to meet them. In fact, they have almost pulled away from the beach and Claire when she manages to catch Jamie’s eye by using a mirror to reflect sunbeams onto the boat. As one of the Scotsmen on the boat says to Jamie: “Your wife turns up in the most unlikely places.” Yes, she does. But then, so do they all. Now, speaking of Gabaldon stretching the plot in this season — the fact that Claire’s rescuer is a priest is just too handy, because of course he is now available to marry the lovebirds Fergus and Marsali. And prepping for her almost instantaneous wedding finally breaks Marsali’s icy attitude towards Claire. After all, Marsali needs some sex and birth control advice. She has noticed that Claire doesn’t shrink from Jamie’s touch, like her mother Laoghaire did. “I want to be with Fergus the way you are with daddy [Jamie] and not have a bairn,” she confides. “Maybe you aren’t the devil, after all,” she concedes. Breakthrough.
The best breakthrough of the episode, however, is during the wedding ceremony when the priest needs a last name for Fergus, who has no idea of who his biological parents actually are. Fergus is at a loss until Jamie chimes in — “His name is Fraser… Fergus Claudel Fraser.” It’s a moment that Fergus has been waiting and longing for for years. Jamie has been his unspoken surrogate father, and now he’s stepping up as a “real father.”
Also, let’s give kudos to Fergus for proudly standing up for the strong, outspoken Marsali: “She speaks her mind and it’s one of the things I love about her,” he tells the priest. Okay. So now, Jamie and Claire are back together, having hot reunion sex, Marsali and Fergus are married and the merry band are on to Jamaica to find young Ian, while dodging the British army and the gallows. Let’s hope next episode is more reality-based and gripping. Do you agree HollywoodLifers? Let me know.