Welcome to the regrouping section of Outlander season seven, everybody. After using the first two episodes of the season to tie up the twisted adventures of the Christie family and send the Mackenzies off to begin their big story in the future (which technically is our past, but you get it!), Outlander literally blew up Fraser’s Ridge, and now it’s time to figure out what’s next. We’re planting seeds about gold, we’re getting vows of revenge and tearful good-byes, we’re visiting the 1980s, and, yep, it’s true, we’re making plans for a return to Scotland. Personally, I think I might pass out when the Frasers set foot on Lallybroch once again, so please watch this space for that. Scotland, although closer than it’s been in a while, is still a ways off, though, so for now let’s get into what happens to the Fraser’s post-fire, because you know these people can never be drama-free for too long.
First, the major news: Claire and Jamie do make it out of the Fraser’s Ridge fire alive. That shot of them jumping out of the house together as it explodes behind them is possibly the truest visual metaphor of this series I’ve ever seen, and I’ll cherish that moment. Their survival is perhaps not surprising to any of us since we still have a lot of show to go, but it is certainly something Bree and Roger had been waiting to hear about with bated breath since, you’ll recall, the whole reason they went into the past originally was to save Bree’s parents from dying in the house fire mentioned in the obituary Roger had found.
The news of Jamie and Claire’s survival comes straight from the two of them — by way of a box full of letters written by the Frasers to Brianna that had been sitting in a bank vault for some 200 years. That’s time travel, baby! Although I find it INSANE that there is not one mention as to how the MacKenzies just popped out of those stones in North Carolina (in their 18th-century clothes, by the way) and somehow made it to Boston, where I guess Claire’s house was just sitting vacant all this time and were able to pay for Mandy’s surgery — not one little scene with some awkward conversation upon their return? — it’s nice to see them all doing so well. Brianna got bangs! As we all know, Time Travel Bangs are the younger cousin of Breakup Bangs. We find the MacKenzies in 1980 making a visit to the Wakefield residence in Inverness — Fiona is so happy to see them — where they pore over the first letter, find a random musket ball, and agree to parse out the rest of the boxes’ contents because, for Bree, it feels like once the letters are over and she learns everything that’s happened to her parents back in their time, then they are really gone. I mean, I’m a girl who lives for spoilers and binging my favorite TV shows, so I cannot relate, but you do you, Bangs! But the letters aren’t the only thing Bree and Roger are doing to feel closer to Claire and Jamie — those two crazy kids are going to buy Lallybroch! Honestly, I’ve never been more thrilled for Bree and Roger, and that’s only because you know there’s going to be some weird shit waiting for them in those hallowed halls. So, I guess it’s more like I’m thrilled for us as an audience. Either way — Lallybroch! What an adventure.
Meanwhile, back in 1776, Claire and Jamie have their own big moves to make. After the fire — the citizens of the Ridge make their best effort, but there is no saving that place — Claire and Jamie vow not to let this defeat them. They’ve survived worse. They’re going to dust the soot off and move forward. There’s also a very sweet moment a little later in the episode when Claire quotes Robert Frost’s “The Death of the Hired Man†and says, “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,†to which Jamie notes that Claire keeps taking him in, so she must be home. I love my horny grandparents so much.
While you’d think that dealing with having your house and most of your possessions burned to ash (Jamie’s kilts survive and, honestly, does anything else matter?) would be more than enough for a couple, these little trauma overachievers have something else pretty awful to process, too: dealing with the Bug mess. No, I’m not talking about another round of locusts attacking the Ridge (I truly love that “locust attack†is just another Outlander moment we can call back to when needed), I’m talking about Arch Bug and Mrs. Bug and the gold. When Jamie confronts Arch about the gold Wendigo Donner’s men found in Mrs. Bug’s possession, wow, does Jamie get an earful that really forces the audience to dig into the Outlander memory center of their brain. Guys, it’s the lost Jacobite gold. Remember when this show was 90 percent about the Jacobite uprising? What a time. Anyway, there was gold meant to help fund the uprising to be smuggled into Scotland by three men, including Dougal MacKenzie, Jocasta’s husband Hector Cameron, and the guy Arch Bug was working for at the time. You may recall that Hector took the money and ran off to the Americas with it. When Arch first went to River Run, he realized Hector was a thief and, to him, a traitor, etc., so he decided to take that gold for himself. Jamie’s livid that Arch has been stealing from his family and basically tells him to get off Fraser’s Ridge. That night, Jamie and Ian stake out the Bugs, knowing that they’ll want to grab the gold before they go, and Jamie’s right. Unfortunately, things get out of hand. When Jamie confronts Arch as he’s digging up the rest of their stolen fortune under the rubble of Jamie’s house, Arch shoots in Jamie’s direction and Ian doesn’t hesitate to shoot an arrow, killing … well, when they turn the body over, Jamie and Ian realize it was actually Mrs. Bug. Ian is beside himself over the mistake. I guess Ian’s cool with killing Arch because he’s a crazy old man, but Mrs. Bug is a bridge too far! She was nice! She helped him and Claire bury Allan’s body that one time! All of this is to say, I don’t think the Bugs played as big of a role in the series as they do in the novels, so this death doesn’t hit as hard as maybe the show wants it to — Claire singing “Ave Maria� But why? — however, it is now the second person Ian impulsively killed in just three episodes. I’m not saying Allan didn’t deserve to die, but, like, is Ian just an executioner now? Someone help this man! It does, at least, seem like Ian, too, is questioning what he’s been doing in the wake of Mrs. Bug’s death. He actually ends up offering himself up to Arch Bug as a way to “make things right,†but Arch, in a great heel turn, tells Ian that killing him would be too easy. He wants to take someone Ian loves away from him. He vows revenge: When Ian finally has “something worth taking,†Arch will be there. It’s actually quite frightening.
Maybe it’s the threat on Ian, or maybe Jamie’s just taking stock of their lives up to this point, but as he and Claire decide to build a new house on a different piece of land within Fraser’s Ridge, Jamie thinks it’s finally time to make good on his promise to his sister Jenny and finally bring Ian back to Lallybroch. With the impending war, he knows he may not have many other chances. It’s not all about Ian, though: Jamie also fears facing William on the battlefield and believes heading back to Scotland may prevent this. Anyone else want to reach into the screen and be like, BUDDY, you know this is definitely going to happen, but you’re so cute for trying to stop it?
But before heading to Scotland, Jamie, Claire, and Ian have a few housekeeping items to attend to. First: There’s all that Jacobite gold the Bugs left behind! They melt some of it down and disguise it as musket balls — hence the one left in the box sent to Bree and Roger — and the rest of it they hide in a cave that Jamie and Jemmy had found one day and kept as their little secret. They called it the Spaniard’s Cave, and in his letter to his daughter, Jamie uses some coded language to let them know the Jacobite gold is there waiting for them and Jemmy will know how to get to the location. In 1980, Bree and Roger are hesitant to get involved with the gold, for now anyway, and in 1776, Jamie notes how this gold must remain a secret from everyone else — they would all be in danger if people came looking for it. You have to assume that this gold will somehow cause trouble for the Fraser family in at least one timeline. We’ll see!
We get a nice good-bye scene between Lizzie, her Beardsley husbands, and the Frasers — did anyone else catch Jamie’s face when he noted that baby Beardsley is just like his parents and then he suddenly remembered their wild family setup? It was perfect. Jamie is really trying his best to be open about it! The saddest good-bye, however, has to be when on their way out, Claire comes along with Adso the cat, who had been presumed dead in the fire, out in the woods. She hugs that cat and then tells him to go home. And then she promptly breaks down into tears. Now, yeah, Claire obviously loved Adso, but these tears aren’t just about the cat. Claire has lost so much recently: She said good-bye, possibly forever, to her daughter and grandchildren, she lost her house and her surgery, and now she’s leaving America with no idea when she might return to Fraser’s Ridge. Let the woman weep at the edge of her property line! But if Claire is Jamie’s home, of course Jamie is hers, too. When Jamie assures her that they’ll return one day, she knows he means it. Earlier in the episode, Claire had caught Jamie praying, and he ended those prayers with, “Let me be enough,†and it’s at this moment that she’s really reminded that she can face any hardship as long as she has Jamie by her side, and she makes sure he knows that he is, indeed enough. “You will always be enough,†she tells him before they head out of Fraser’s Ridge for who knows how long.
Now, don’t think I haven’t been noting all the talk about Jamie’s dreams we’ve been getting in the past few episodes. We’ve known that Jamie has some sort of mystical connection to the future for a while — he dreamed of Brianna before he knew her — but it feels like now that Bree is back in the 20th century, that little party trick might become more integral to the show. In this episode, Jamie tells Claire that he dreams of Bree and her family showing up to a house where they are greeted by a brown-haired woman named Fiona, where Jemmy picks up an object he doesn’t recognize, but it ends up being a telephone (Jamie trying to describe a phone? That’s high art), where they are all happy and healthy. There’s no explaining it, but it doesn’t matter — it is a welcome relief to Claire to know her family is safe. Of course Claire wishes she, too, could just pick up a phone and speak to her daughter, but if Jamie’s dreams and their letters are the only way they can talk across long distances, that’ll have to do for now.