The second episode of the second half of Season 7 of Outlander, “Brotherly Love,” opens with Roger (Richard Rankin) and Buck (Diarmaid Murtagh) having time traveled to 1739, rather than 1787 as they had hoped, in search of Jem, Roger’s son, who was kidnapped by Rob Cameron (Chris Fulton).
Roger has already met Jamie’s father Brian Fraser (Andrew Whipp) and a young Jenny (Nell Hudson), Jamie’s sister, which was when Roger realizes he has traveled to the wrong time.
Then he gets news that Buck is feeling poorly—traveling though the stones is hard on the constitution—and Roger takes Buck to see a healer, which lands them at the door of Geillis Duncan (Lotte Verbeek). Roger is very much aware of who she is. She’s Buck’s mother—and a murderess in modern times, but on the TV series, Roger has yet to inform Buck who his parents are.
While at Geillis’ getting treatment for Buck’s heart issue—a little foxglove tea, in comes Dougal MacKenzie (Graham McTavish), Buck’s father, in search of Roger because he had heard that Roger was looking for a “fairy man,” and he has something he needed to show Roger. What he showed Roger was his father’s dog tags from World War II. Jerry went missing during the Blitz and his body was never found. Now Roger understands why.
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In a chat with bestselling author Diana Gabaldon, we asked why she sent Roger to that time period. We know that one of the tenants of time travel could be that you end up where someone you were thinking about might be, and possibly Roger was thinking about his father when he and Buck went through the stones.
Related: Outlander Author Diana Gabaldon Weighs in on the Trials Jamie, Claire and Young Ian Face on their Return to Scotland
“We drop small hints and speculations throughout the books as to how time-travel MAY work,” Gabaldon tells Parade about Roger’s trip to the “wrong” time. “This brief section indicates that there may be a sort of cellular recognition between people who are genetically related, so that they may encounter each other in times other than their own. Both Roger and his father Jerry are out of their own times, but find each other—and we know from another part of the overall story that Jem and Mandy can sense each other—and are also aware of their parents and grandparents.
“There’s also a theme of violence; so far, all the time-travelers we know about have traveled to places where there is or is about to be a lot of social turmoil. Possibly the vibrations attract them?
“Beyond that, this segment of the story is kind of an Easter Egg for the book-readers; the whole story of Roger’s meeting with Jerry (as well as what happened to his mother) is in a short story titled “A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows” (it’s available as a single on Amazon, and is included in the book (a collection of short stories and novellas) titled SEVEN STONES TO STAND OR FALL)—this show bit is a call-out to that.”
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But the most shocking part of the episode is the death of Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). The ship that Jamie was aboard on his return to America from France sank and there were no survivors.
“As to Jamie…well, he’s been dead at some point in every book in the series, I think,” Gabaldon shares. “Voyager actually begins with ‘He was dead.’ You know, readers/viewers think they want Jamie and Claire to be together every moment of every day, preferably in bed, but they really don’t. You don’t have a story without conflict, and in Outlander the bottom line is always the struggle between life and death at some point. And in terms of symbolism, Claire the Healer is Life and Jamie (warrior that he is) is Death. So there’s this underlying thread that runs through the whole series; Death is real, but it never really wins.”
When Claire (Caitríona Balfe) is told the news by Lord John (David Berry) and a sea captain who has a document with the proof, she denies it. She says, “I would feel it in my heart if his stopped. Mine would, too.” And she takes to her bed. She has no care for herself.
Related: Sam Heughan and Caitríona Balfe on Why Their Outlander Love Story Is ‘Endless and Boundless’
And while she is mourning, Captain Richardson (Ben Lambert) turns up at Lord John’s home to share the news that he’s about to arrest Claire as a spy. She has been observed dropping off missives with information for the revolutionaries. Richardson is trying to ascertain if Lord John has a personal interest in her. Lord John informs Richardson that Claire is at church to delay him.
After Richardson leaves, Lord John hastens to Claire’s room and declares that she has to marry him so he can save her because she’s been discovered to be a spy. His words don’t move her. She doesn’t seem to care if she hangs.
But when Lord John pleads with her to marry him in order to protect Young Ian (John Bell), Mercy (Gloria Obianyo), Rachel (Izzy Meikle–Small) and Denzel (Joey Phillips), because if she’s convicted of espionage, her family and friends aren’t safe, she considers that.
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“As to Claire…she’s a healer,” Gabaldon says. “That means she has an innate sense of other people’s pain or damage, and feels a deep call to alleviate it, so far as she can. We’ve seen this about her from the very first scene of Season 1, Episode 1. Why would she lose that? And on the positive side, the urgent call to help someone else is a lifeline by which she can pull herself out of the morass of despair in which she finds herself.
“You don’t have to be a professional healer to find that concern for someone else’s well-being is a distraction/cure for one’s own troubles. That’s just one of the standard patterns of the universe.”
New episodes of the second half of Outlander Season 7 will premiere at midnight ET on the STARZ app, all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms each Friday. On linear broadcast, it will debut on STARZ Friday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT in the U.S.
Next, Everything We Know So Far About Outlander‘s 8th and Final Season
