Previously on Outlander: Claire broke up an altercation between Herr Mueller and the Cherokee, so when the Mueller family fell victim to the measles, Herr Mueller was convinced that the Cherokee cursed him. As revenge, he murdered Adawehi. As revenge for murdering Adawehi, the Cherokee burned down his house, bringing Adawehi’s prophecy to fruition. Meanwhile, while trying to convince townspeople to come and settle at Fraser’s Ridge, Jamie runs into the local blacksmith, and it’s FREAKING MURTAGH. They have a lovely reunion, but Murtagh won’t settle on Jamie’s land either because he’s leading the Regulators and sowing the seeds of rebellion. Oh, Murtagh!
Don’t forget, you can drink along with us, with the new and improved FYA Outlander drinking game!
Lord John Grey shows up at the homestead out of nowhere one day. He’s on his way to Virginia and made a bit of a detour to see Jamie because *surprise* he’s got William with him. William, who, at the moment, is waiting by the creek covered in leeches. Murtagh and Claire are out gathering water, and Murtagh tells her his regulator friends are petitioning the governor for lower taxes. They come across William and Claire offers to take him back to the cabin to treat his leech bites, and guys, William is ~kind of~ a lil bitch. He also doesn’t seem to remember Jamie when they arrive back at the cabin.
They stay at the cabin, and over dinner John tells everyone about the OTT palace Governor Tryon is building, which gets Murtagh all riled up about taxes again. Jamie takes William out to the outhouse, and when William hears him speak Gaelic, he suddenly remembers that Jamie Fraser is actually Mac the groom from when he was a kid.On his way back inside, Jamie runs into Murtagh, who is none too thrilled that Jamie stayed friends with John, nor that Jamie’s keeping company with Governor Tryon’s friends. It doesn’t take Murtagh long to figure out that William is Jamie’s son, and he doesn’t like all the secrets Jamie is keeping from him. Surprising exactly no one, John is still totally in love with Jamie. They get drunk on moonshine and play chess, and Jamie assures John that he is happy in the knowledge that he has a home and work and Claire and someone to take care of his son.
But the next morning, John is sick–and not from the moonshine. Claire is pretty sure he has measles. Jamie and Murtagh had it as kids, and Claire’s been vaccinated, so they’re safe, but William might be in trouble, so despite William’s protests, Jamie takes him away for a six-day tour of Fraser’s Ridge to teach him about being a man and stuff. They fish, hunt, camp, and Jamie tells William everything a settler needs to know about the tense relations with the Indians. When Jamie wakes the next morning, however, William has disappeared. Jamie tracks him to the creek, past the Cherokee’s territory line, where William has found a fish that the Cherokee’s caught. But before they can get away, the Cherokee show up angry and say that William must give his blood for taking their fish. Jamie panicks and shouts that William is his son, and therefore Jamie’s blood is William’s blood, but as the Cherokee are about to take a hatchet to Jamie, William steps in and shouts that he took the fish so he must be the one who receives the punishment. The Cherokee warrior lifts his hatchet but merely leaves a scrape on William’s hand. When they leave, William hugs Jamie, Jamie thinks they showed mercy because of William’s courage.
Back at the cabin, Claire asks about John’s late wife Isobel, and John admits that he felt nothing when Isobel died, and part of the reason he wanted to see Jamie was to see if he was able to still feel things. John STRAIGHT UP tells Claire she’s jealous of the time he had with Jamie, and jealous that he’s raising Jamie’s son. And Claire is like, “Listen, bitch, you don’t know me!” Okay, well, actually, she tells him about Brianna, and how she and Jamie were robbed of the opportunity to raise their daughter together because of Culloden. They skirt around the issue of John being in love with Jamie without ever saying it out loud, and Claire calls him out for pretending that this visit is about Jamie seeing William, when really it was just an excuse for John to see Jamie. Later, when John is feverish from the measles, he lets it slip that Jamie offered himself to John in exchange for raising William, which was kind of a shitty power move tbh. Things are SUPER awkward between them the next morning when John wakes up feeling better, but they settle into an uneasy respect for one another. Claire is aware of John’s feelings for Jamie, but also sympathetic of what it must be like to be a gay man in the 1770s. John has a newfound respect for Claire when she hints that she believes he was born the way he is and that there is nothing wrong with it.
Jamie and William come home that morning, and after gifting Jamie his chess set, John and William hit the road. Finally alone for the first time in awhile, Jamie gives Claire a bath (a big thank you to my closed captions for typing out every single one of Claire’s moans during this scene) and presents her with a ring that he had Murtagh make from one of his mother’s candlesticks. There’s an inscription in Latin: “Give me a 1,000 kisses, and I’ll give you 1,000 more.” And it’s sexy time!
Kilt Drops: 1
Wow guys I really thought they were gonna make us wait another week before sexy times, but thankfully they slipped a good one in right there at the end (sex jokes!).
Wit and Wordplay
John Grey: “Have you not faired well in the New World?”
Murtagh: “Oh, aye. I have more than rats to eat now, my Lord.”
Claire: “I can’t help it, I was born that way.”
John Grey: “So was I.”
Claire: “I don’t need a ring to know how much you love me.”
Jamie: “No, but it helps.”
Sasse-WHAT?
- OMG how freaking TENSE was that scene between John and Claire! The look on Claire’s face when John told her Jamie offered himself to him!
- Did y’all hate William as much as I did? That kid sucks!
- These last few episodes have felt too…nice to us. Is something really bad about to happen soon? ANXIETY.
Next week: We catch up with Brianna, who has arrived in Scotland and buys passage aboard a ship to America…that seems to be captained by that scoundrel Stephen Bonnet. Okay, yes, bad things are about to happen soon.
