'Outlander' Season 3 Finale Recap
Well here we are friends, at the end of Season 3. My head is spinning a bit, and not in a particularly good way. This has been by far the most wide-ranging of the Outlander seasons, taking us not just from Scotland to England and the new world, but back and forth in time. Our characters had to age 20 years, not to mention travel between the 20th and 18th century.
I think this show is at its best when it forgets it’s an epic and just focuses on the world of its main characters. It’s strength is in working slowly through questions like how do you rebuild a life when you have lost everything - in Jamie’s case, to the English bullies, in Claire’s, to the stones? How do two people get to know each other despite the vast differences of their life experience? What does it mean to feel you are fated to be with someone, both romantically and sexually?
There was far too little of that in Season three and far too much rushing around. I lost track of how many times Jamie was arrested and thrown in prison. He was shot, Claire was kidnapped, she was lost at sea, attacked by ants, menaced by a snake, and nearly died of thirst. There’s been so much peril I’ve become a little immune to the dangers. After all, these are our heroes - and Outlander is not the Sopranos or the Walking Dead - it’s not likely to kill off a main character just to keep you on your toes. Nothing is going to happen to Jamie and Claire, not when we have several more seasons to go.
Foreshadowing
The episode opens with Claire sinking in water, a jumble of clothing and ropes swirling around her. Her voiceover helpfully explains that she is dead. “Everything around me was a blinding white. And there was a soft rushing sound like the wings of angels. I felt peaceful and bodyless. Free of terror. Free of rage. Filled with a quiet happiness.”
I guess it’s good to know that drowning isn’t so bad and that Claire’s last thoughts are happy ones? But mostly we’re meant to wonder how she got into this perilous position.
Then begins the rushing around and accomplishing of a great many plot points. Flashing back, we see Claire searching for young Ian in Geillis’s slave quarters. She has passed slaves with torches and the whole thing has an air of sweaty menace. (More on that later.) She even finds the body of a young boy - not Ian! Phew! Marsali and Fergus are rushing around too. That’s all there is to say about that.
Geillis is Very Very Bad
Well Geillis isn’t just bad, she’s clearly crazy too. She thinks Claire is in on the prophecy and is trying to thwart her nutty efforts to bring about a Scottish king. (Why is Geillis so obsessed with a Scottish king anyway? You’re from 1968, lady. Why not be obsessed with an independence referendum?)
When Claire shows up at Geillis’s big pink house, the two women begin an elaborate pantomime, pretending they are friends and allies. Geillis wants to find out what Claire is really up to; Claire wants to find out where Ian is. The two women are terrible actors. (Just to be clear, I’m going to give Lotte Verbeek and Caitriona Balfe more credit - they have their moments. But Claire and Geillis are terrible. No one would believe that Geillis is anything other than an insane witch and Claire’s barely suppressed desperation - she’s all tremulous pout and furrowed brow - makes her attempts at casual friendship laughable.)
The whole point of this interaction seems to be to reinforce that Claire and Geillis, like Claire and Jamie, are drawn together by fate. As Geillis points out, “I never met another traveler. Only you. We share a bond. Something not even you can share with Jamie.”
Geillis’s theory on time travel boils down to a complicated, messy mixture of fate, incantations, the need for special jewels, and of course, human sacrifice. (In case your forgot, she murdered her husband to come through the stones in the 1960s - “He was one of my favorites,” she says to Claire. “Handsome. Such a lovely cock.”) Claire points out that she didn’t need any of those things. “I think it has something to do with who’s on the other side, drawing you to them,” she says.
Geillis seems convinced that Claire has been after her for the last 20 years, tracking her from Scotland to Jamaica to thwart her plans to bring back the Scottish king. To prove this isn’t true, Claire makes the ill-advised decision to tell Geillis about Brianna. She’s been busy for the last 20th century, raising Jamie’s daughter in the 20th century. Suddenly, Geillis puts all the pieces together. Margaret Archibald’s prophecy about the 200 year old baby? That’s Bree.
John Gray to the Rescue Again
As you’ll remember, for several episodes, the young British naval Captain, Leonard, has been after Jamie, presumably to advance his career by arresting a high-value prisoner. Turns out that whole subplot was a giant bait and switch. Jamie isn’t in any real danger. He isn’t going to see the inside of a British prison - much less a gallows - at least not in this season. John Gray intercepts the prisoner transport and asserts his local authority as the imperial governor of Jamaica. He then out lawyers the young officer: “Your authority ends at the water’s edge. Where mine begins.”
Jamie thanks Gray again for saving his life. And we get to see John’s longing adoration for Jamie one more time. “Goodbye Jamie,” he says breathily. “And good luck.” (Just an aside: I would very much like for John Gray to find romantic and sexual fulfillment with a worthy partner at some point on this show. I mean I know it’s tough out there for a gay man in the 1760s, but this is a fantasy show, after all.)
Mysterious Rituals
Back at the Abernathy plantation, Geillis has disappeared and Claire is trapped. Fortunately, Jamie arrives and busts in free her and they both rush off to rescue young Ian. They hear drumming in the jungle and follow it.
They find the slaves, dancing with torches in a clearing. Crouched down in the grass watching the ritual, Claire is struck by the similarities between this rite and the one at Criagh Na Dun that she witnessed with Frank so many decades before - the dancing at the stones.
Like the scenes at the slave market in the previous episode, this whole sequence is deeply problematic (to use a word Bree will definitely have to explain to her parents). Once again, the black characters on Outlander are reduced to nameless, faceless (literally - many wear masks) others, dancing around in a way that seems foreign and strange and dangerous. This particular racism can’t really be blamed on a depiction of the 18th century, when slavery was the defining evil of the times. This is a choice Outlander has made to reduce a group of people to a stereotype and use that stereotype - the superstitious, menacing savage - to create an air of chaos and magical strangeness.
It seems like everyone is here for this dance party. Willoughby and Margaret were invited - apparently Yi Tien Cho and Ms. Archibald are in love and are going to run off together (“she is the first woman to truly see me,” he says. “The man that I am.”) Margaret looks happy and relaxed and in love - until she goes into a trance when she sees Jamie. She has a vision of Jamie in Culloden. She sees 20th century Claire talking to a bird in Boston when she was desperately lonely for Jamie. She then seems to channel Bree and says to Jamie, “I knew it was you, my father, I’ve been dreaming about you, I love you.”
“You too mama,” she says to Claire. “ Oh no. The monster, don’t let it take me. Help me help me.”
Archie shows up just then to claim his sister - otherwise known as his meal ticket. There’s a shouted conversation about the prophecy, the 200-year-old baby, and the Bandaway cave. Yi Tien Cho comes to Margaret’s rescue and takes Archie down. There’s more ecstatic dancing, drumming, a chicken sacrifice, and the dancing slaves seem to descend on Archie in a sequence i couldn’t quite follow. Meanwhile, Claire finally puts the clues together. The Bandaway cave is a place like Craig Na Dun, a portal where time travel is possible, and Geillis is going to use it to travel back to 1968 where she plans to kill Bree.
The Magical Cave
Claire and Jamie take off for the Bandaway cave, conveniently just up the hill from this flurry of action. Lo and behold it has stones on top that look eerily like the ones at Craig Na Dun. Claire hears the hum that accompanied her last time-travel escapades. She realizes she might not be able to control what happens and she may disappear, but for the sake of their daughter, Jamie urges her forward. “We lost Faith,” Jamie says of the stillborn daughter they buried in Paris. “We will not lose Brianna.”
Sure enough, Geillis is in there with Ian, who’s all trussed up like a sacrificial lamb. She’s got a photo of Brianna filched from Claire, some gems from her treasure chest, and she’s drawn some pictures in chalk. It's a smorgasbord of mumbo jumbo. While Jamie wrestles with a very tall slave named Hercules, Claire and Geillis argue. “You owe me a life,” Geillis tells her. “We are the chosen you and I. We have a responsibility to change history. I gave up my child for the cause you must do the same.”
The women’s argument becomes physical. Claire grabs a machete and swings and down goes Geillis, her head hanging grotesquely off her neck. Everyone stands there stunned for a minute trying to process the fact that Claire is a stone cold killer (I know I know, she was protecting her daughter). Then Jamie frees Hercules (literally) and unties Ian. Claire seems drawn inexorably through the portal - a pool of water in the cave - until Jamie pulls her back.
Outside, Claire is in shock and realizes that the body she had examined on Joe Abernathy’s desk in 1968 - a partially beheaded caucasian woman discovered in a cave in Jamaica - was Geillis and when she’d held those bones, she’d been examining her own murder victim.
Preposterous is a polite word for this whole sequence. The whole thing had the finesse and subtlety of a soap opera that has strayed desperately into weird territory in hopes of keeping it’s audience. I felt like I was watching a lost scene from that season of Days of Our Lives when Marlene was possessed by the devil. Even the scenery was cheesy - turns out it’s hard to credibly fake the inside of a cave.
Back on the Ship
Cut to Claire and Jamie's cozy cabin a few days later, where our heroes are daydreaming about their return to Scotland. (More subtle foreshadowing!) Because we have a long Droughtlander to prepare for, the show is going to give us one more session of sweet sweet boat sex. This scene is charmingly narrated by Jamie, who seems to have learned the power of dirty talk at some point in the last 20 years. He tells Claire in only-on-premium-cable detail exactly what he’s going to do to her once they’re back in their bedroom at Lallybroch (so much foreshadowing!), all while doing it to her in their cabin onboard the ship.
When our lovebirds wake up, there’s a storm at sea. It all escalates rather quickly. Jamie is above decks trying to steer into the wind, while everyone else is huddling below in the hold. Claire heads above decks to help with the wounded - “I am still this ship’s surgeon” she barks at a worried Ian. There’s a lot of staggering around, some driving rain and breaking waves. Claire and Jamie are clinging to the side of the ship when the mast breaks and Claire is washed overboard.
This whole sequence is slightly more credible than the cave scene but it is so very hard for a TV show to make a storm at sea look believable. It made me long for the Scotland scenes of season one, filmed on location in medieval structures whose patina and weight you really can’t fake. Take me back to Castle Leoch.
And now we’re back where this episode started: Claire sinking peacefully into the ocean, feeling death wash over her. Jamie, of course, jumps after her, cuts her free of the ropes, and pulls her to the surface where they cling to a bit of debris. Eventually they wash up on a sandy beach. A small blond girl in a bonnet is playing and she runs over to poke Jamie’s body. He wakes up and crawl to Claire. They cling to each other, convinced they are the only survivors of a shipwreck.
The girl’s parents walk over and introduce themselves. They rest of the Artemis has run aground nearby, with survivors, and it turns out everyone is now in Georgia. Claire and Jamie may have survived their ordeal but they are far from home, stranded in America just a decade before the Revolution. The end.
Looking Ahead
Will we finally learn happened to Murtagh in the new world? Will Jamie and Claire ever make it back to their beloved Scotland? Will Jamie and Claire find the energy to keep having as much sex as they did in their 20s? All these questions remain unanswered.
My biggest wish for Season 4, however, is that the show re-centers itself in Jamie and Claire’s relationship and in building a narrative not powered by the threat of murder, disaster, or time travel. Outlander’s main problem this season stems directly from the loyalty it pays to the books. The show owes a great deal to the fans of Diana Gabaldon’s vision, who transferred their affection from the book series to the television one. But too much loyalty can make a show dutiful.
Good sense would suggest the show’s creators should tone things down, maybe even skip whole sequences that are too hard - or ridiculous - to pull off onscreen. But I don’t think any such concession will be made, and I fear Outlander will keep dragging us from one cliffhanger to another.
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