Episode 810: "And the World Was All Around Us" (SPOILERS!)

Here are my reactions to Episode 810 of the OUTLANDER TV series, titled "And the World Was All Around Us". This is OUTLANDER's series finale, and I thought it was very well done!

*** SPOILER WARNING!! ***

There are SPOILERS below! If you don't want to know yet, stop reading now.

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The episode begins at night, with a pitch-dark sky gradually illuminated by a fiery cross -- the signal used for centuries by Highland Scots to call their clans to battle. All of Jamie's men are gathered there, and we hear the war cries of a number of different clans, including "Tulach Ard!" for the MacKenzies and "Caisteal Dhunaidh!" for the Frasers of Lovat.



The opening credit sequence took me completely by surprise, because we haven't seen or heard this version in a very long time. This is Raya Yarbrough's original version of the Skye Boat Song from Season 1, along with all the original images from the Season 1 opening credit sequence. What a treat to see and hear that again after so many years!

The "title card" for this episode is likewise the same as the one they used for Episode 101, "Sassenach": the blue forget-me-not flowers. I remember Diana Gabaldon saying at the time that she insisted that the forget-me-nots be included in that first episode. Later in this episode, we'll see more about that.

The next scene shows Jamie, at home on Fraser's Ridge, writing his will. This scene comes mostly from the book, but they left out Jamie's running mental commentary, which always makes me smile.

He cut the owl quill into a good point, composing his mind. The ink was fresh, smelling sharply of iron and the woody scent of oak galls. It calmed him. A wee bit.

…do hereby declare that this is my Last Will and Testament, and so swear before God.

I leave to my wife, Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp (damned if I’ll put his name in this) Fraser, all Property and Goods of which I die possessed, absolutely, with the Exception of certain individual Bequests as listed here beneath:

To my Daughter, Brianna Ellen Fraser MacKenzie, I leave two hundred Acres of Land from the Land granted me by the Cr…(well, two years more and the bloody Crown won’t have anything to say about it, if Claire and the others are right about what’s happening, and so far, they seem to be)…He muttered “Ifrinn” under his breath and scratched out granted me by the Crown, replacing it with from the land Grant known as Fraser’s Ridge.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 142, "Don't You...". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

The only part of this that I didn't care for was Jamie referring to his son as "William James Fraser". That's wishful thinking on Jamie's part, if you ask me, but it's also straight from this scene in the book, so it's not something the show writers made up.

So Jamie has put his affairs in order, in anticipation of the upcoming Battle of Kings Mountain. A sensible precaution, under the circumstances.

In the next scene, Jamie and Claire are lying in bed. Both acutely aware of the coming battle, but trying hard to push aside that knowledge as long as they possibly can.

"Just before I came down tonight--it was starting to get dark--I found two [bees], curled up together in the cup of a hollyhock, covered in pollen and holding each other’s feet.”

“Were they dead?”

“No.” He’d moved off me but was still imminent. His hair was loose, soft and tumbled, sparking red and silver in the firelight, and I brushed it behind his ear. “I thought they were, the first time I saw it, but I’ve seen it several times since, and they’re just sleeping in the flowers. They wake up when the sun warms them and fly off."

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 81, "Still Imminent". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Then Jamie quotes a bit from the Yeats poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", which has been mentioned in books and show more than once.

"That's all ye wanted, is it no? To live a quiet life with only bees for company?"
"Not only the bees, no. I don't think the quiet life was ever meant for us."

I laughed at that. There's an understatement if I ever heard one!

Jamie is in a reflective mood, with the thought of his imminent death at Kings Mountain hanging over him like a storm cloud.

He was beginning to be sorry that he wouldn’t be alive to meet William’s wife or see his children, but pushed that thought firmly away. If he made it to Heaven, he was sure there would be some accommodation made for knowing how your family was getting along without you, maybe letting you have a wee look-in or lend a hand in some way. He thought being a ghost might well be interesting.... There were a number of folk he wouldn’t mind calling on in such a state, just to see the looks on their faces....

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 142, "Don't You...". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Keep in mind when Jamie says that, he has no idea that Frank ever saw his ghost looking up at Claire's window in Inverness before she went through the stones. Claire has never mentioned it to him.

Claire wonders whether her parents were keeping an eye on her, after their deaths when she was five. I wanted to tell her, "Not really. Henry and Julia hardly ever think about you in BLOOD OF MY BLOOD." (That was one of many things that bothered me about the prequel TV show.)

Claire's memory of the blue vase she wanted so badly is based on this bit from the early part of OUTLANDER:

My gaze lingered on a shop window filled with household goods—embroidered tea cloths and cozies, pitchers and glasses, a stack of quite homely pie tins, and a set of three vases.

I had never owned a vase in my life. During the war years, I had, of course, lived in the nurses’ quarters, first at Pembroke Hospital, later at the field station in France. But even before that, we had lived nowhere long enough to justify the purchase of such an item.

(From OUTLANDER by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 1, "A New Beginning". Copyright © 1991 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

"[The] next morning, I went up to Craigh na Dun in search of a certain blue flower." [Forget-me-nots, she means.] "The rest is our history. [....] I still don't have that blue vase, but I have everything I never knew I wanted."

"I should like to sleep in a flower with you, Sassenach, holding your feet." This line comes from BEES chapter 81. I know a lot of people think it's a very romantic thing to say, but personally I just don't care for it.

In the next scene, which isn't in the book, Roger and Bree are looking over the plot of land where they plan to build a new house, after Roger comes home from the upcoming battle at Kings Mountain. Bree, of course, can't go with him, because she has a newborn infant to take care of.

"You've always found your way back to me. Promise me that this time won't be any different, because Jemmy and Mandy and Davy need their father, and I need my husband."
"And I need all of you."

"Please be careful," Bree says. "And please, bring my Da home." (Alive, preferably!)

The next scene, with Claire and Fanny, is not in the book. I thought it was overly melodramatic, and I didn't care for it. Fanny is upset because Jamie and Claire are leaving, and she's afraid that they'll die and she will be left all alone.

"This is something we must do, and we can't bring you into it. It's too dangerous."

Oddly, Claire doesn't mention that they are heading for a battle. Fanny surely knows there's a war on! But Claire acts as though she's a much younger child, as though she's a six-year-old whose delicate ears must not be exposed to words such as "war" or "battle".

Fanny starts to cry, saying that she wants to go with them, to help Claire. Again, this strikes me as the reaction of a much younger child. She's certainly old enough to understand the risks of war. But I suppose her terror of abandonment is causing this very emotional reaction.

"I just found you and Grandda. I can't lose you so soon!"

When Claire told Fanny, "There is something that connects us", I was afraid that the subject of time-travel would come up in their conversation (we saw unmistakable evidence in last week's episode that Fanny has the time-travel gene, although neither Claire nor Fanny realize it yet), but fortunately it didn't.

The next scene, between Jamie and Bree, is not in the book, and I thought Jamie was awfully generous with his praise for Frank. He acknowledges that Frank did a good job raising Bree, without the slightest hint of jealousy or resentment.

"No matter what comes, no matter how the story ends, it will all have been worth it." That sounds to me like an epitaph for the TV series as a whole.

We have, of course, seen these tearful goodbye scenes more than once over the years, and I didn't find this one particularly interesting.

Next, we see a brief farewell scene between Ian and Rachel. They exchange a kiss, but Ian doesn't say a word. He just walks away. I thought that was odd.

Another farewell scene follows, this one between Claire and Bree. I'm glad to see them both wearing slightly brighter colors than the ones we've seen them in most of this season, but I was struck by the fact that they are both wearing the exact same shade of dark green. I wonder why? It seems an odd choice, to dress them so alike, when there are other plant-based dyes available.

I'm also wondering why Claire and Bree are hugging so hard, as though they'll never see one another again. Yes, Claire is going near a battlefield, but it's Jamie who will be in the most danger. But like Ian and Rachel, they say nothing, so we don't know what they're thinking.

The next scene, where Jamie talks to the bees, comes straight from the book.

“Ye’ll take care of her, aye?” he said at last, speaking soft to the bees. “If she comes to you and says I’m gone, ye’ll feed her and take heed for her?” He stood a moment longer, listening to the ceaseless hum.

“I trust ye with her,” he said at last, and turned to go, his heart easier in his chest. It wasn’t until he’d shut the gate behind him and started down toward the house that another bit of the poem came to him. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 141, "A Bee-Loud Glade". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

In the next scene, Jamie's militiamen are gathering to march off to battle. As they ride out, we can see Jamie and Claire, Ian, Roger, Hiram Crombie, Jo Beardsley, and Buck. I was glad to see Hiram with them. He clearly has Patriot sympathies, even though he was one of the men who participated in the attack on Lodge night earlier in the season. And bringing up the rear, we see a number of infantrymen, including Aaron Whitaker and his black troops.

At one point along the road, they pass a small building, perhaps a church, displaying a "Betsy Ross" flag similar to this one. Later, they meet up with Benjamin Cleveland and his Over-Mountain Men, with the two groups together forming a much larger Patriot force.

Finally they arrive at Kings Mountain, where the militia makes camp. Jamie speaks briefly with Cleveland, who informs him that Major Patrick Ferguson's Loyalist militia has taken the high ground (not good news, to put it mildly!) Ferguson is wearing "a red checkered shirt" (more about that later) and he is riding a white stallion, so he should be easy to spot.

“All Provincials, are they?”

“No, sir,” said another young scout, quickly so as to keep Sevier from sticking his neb in. “Near on half of ’em don’t have uniforms, at least.”

“But they do all have guns. Sir,” said the third scout, not to be left out.

“How many?” Jamie asked, and felt the words strange in his throat.

“A few more’n us, but not enough to make a difference,” Sevier replied, but in Jamie’s mind there echoed another voice: Frank Randall’s.

The forces were nearly equal, though Ferguson’s troops numbered over a thousand, as compared with the nine hundred Patriots attacking him.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 145, "The Mirror Crack'd". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Jamie and Claire finally have time for a private conversation. This whole scene comes straight from the book, and I was glad to see it included here almost verbatim.

“I was sitting on the porch, just afore we left, and I had wee Davy in my arms, him sucking on my thumb, and Mandy came up the steps covered in mud, to show me a bone she’d found by the lake and ask who’d owned it. I took it, looked at it, and told her it was from the backbone of a beaver, and she looked at me and asked did I hear animals.”

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 143, "Will I Tell You Something?". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

That's an intriguing thought, but there's more. Apparently Mandy and Jem can sense each other, their parents, and Claire, at a distance, the same way Mandy was able to sense that Jemmy was "gone" when Rob Cameron kidnapped him. But they do not sense Jamie in the same way.

"She says I’m a different color in her head. She kens when I’m near her, but canna feel me at a distance.”

“What color are you?” I asked, fascinated. He made a small sound of amusement.

“Water,” he said.

[....]

“You should ask Jem if that’s what he thinks,” I said, and slid my fingers between his, pressing his fingers back to stretch the knuckles.

“I will,” he said, with a slightly odd note in his voice. “If I see him again.”

And there it was. The stone in my heart, the lump of hot lead in my viscera. I’d forgotten, briefly, worn out by the labor of the day. But the thought of what might happen on Kings Mountain was never far from my conscious mind.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 143, "Will I Tell You Something?". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Jamie turns to face Claire, his expression very serious. "If I die tomorrow, I'll ask three things of ye."

Two of his requests are straightforward: "When ye can, find a priest. Have a Mass said for my soul." (Logistically difficult, given that the nearest Catholic priest is likely in Maryland, but possible.) And the last request, "Remember me," is what we might call a "no-brainer." (As if she could EVER, EVER forget, in a million years!!)

But it's the second request that gives me chills.

“Wee Davy,” he said. “Amanda says that he’s like me. The color o’ water. He’s not the same as she and Jem are…and I think that maybe means he canna pass through the stones.”

That one came out of nowhere, and I blinked. My eyelashes were heavy with wet, and drops flowed down my cheeks like tears. His hands tightened on mine and he turned his head toward me, a barely perceptible movement in the dark.

“I’ve said this before, but I say it now again, and I mean it. If I’m dead, ye should all go back. If it should be that Davy canna travel, give him to Rachel and Young Ian. They’ll love him wi’ all their hearts and keep him safe.”

I wanted to say, “I love you with all my heart--and I can’t keep you safe.”

But I squeezed back and said, as well as I could for the real tears starting, “I will.”

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 143, "Will I Tell You Something?". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

In the show, Claire's response to that second request is much different:

"I'm sorry, Jamie, but I can't promise that. Brianna would never leave her son. And as for me, this is my home. And if, God forbid, you are gone, well, then I'd want to stay here, where I can feel you all around me, in the life that we built."

I liked that VERY much! It's exactly what I'd expect her to say in that situation. All of her family is here in the 18th century. She has no reason ever to go back to her own time, no matter what happens.

The sex scene that follows starts out boring and predictable, just like most of the others this season, with both of them sitting upright and Claire astride Jamie, in what I've come to call (half-jokingly) the "Approved OUTLANDER Sex Scene Position" -- but then Jamie gently turns her over and lays her on her back, and it turns into something refreshingly different for a change. More natural, more sensual. Considering that this is going to be their last sex scene EVER, I think that's very appropriate, and the tone of it matches the description in the book:

We made love to each other, under the layers of sodden clothing, finding little warmth save that at the point of connection. We kept on well past the point where it was clear that neither of us could finish. Our bodies slowly left each other and we clung together through the dark until the dawn.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 143, "Will I Tell You Something?". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

The next morning, with the battle imminent, Jamie has a brief word with Roger:

“Ye'll help nobody if ye’re dead, and ye may be useful if ye’re not. Ye may be God’s henchman, but ye’ll follow my orders for now. Stay here until it’s time.”

Jamie had clapped him on the shoulder, grinning, then turned on his heel and shouted to his men that it was time. Jamie had given Roger two decent pistols, in holsters, with a cartridge box and powder horn. And a large, hand-carved wooden cross on a leather thong, which he’d dropped over Roger’s head last thing.

“So nobody will shoot ye,” he’d said. “Not from the front, anyway.”

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 145, "The Mirror Crack'd". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

The troops march out, and then Jamie steps forward to give them a final pep talk before the battle. This rousing speech is not in the book, but I thought it was well done. Afterward, Jamie asks Roger to bless the troops, taking him by surprise:

“Dear Lord,” he started, with not the faintest notion what might come next, but a few words showed up, and then a few more. “Protect us, we pray, O Lord, and be with us this day in battle. Grant us mercy in our extremities and grant us the grace to show mercy where we can. Amen. Amen,” he repeated more strongly, and the men murmured, “Amen,” and put their hats back on.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 145, "The Mirror Crack'd". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

As the men march away, Jamie turns to Roger again, asking him to look after Claire, and to pray for him. Then he turns his full attention to Claire, who is waiting silently, a look of utter misery on her face. Will this be their final parting, ever?

Just as in the book, Jamie says, "Tha gràdh agam ort, mo chridhe." That's "I love you, my heart," in Gàidhlig.

Unlike in the book, Claire repeats it back to him: "Tha gràdh agam ort." This is the first time I can recall her speaking Gàidhlig in the TV show, and I thought that was a good addition.

So Jamie remembered his promise to Claire at the very end of THE FIERY CROSS:

“When the day shall come, that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’--ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”

(From THE FIERY CROSS by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 111, "And Yet Go Out to Meet It". Copyright © 2001 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

In my opinion, he's saying those words to her now in case he really should die in the upcoming battle, and I found that very moving.

They have time for one last kiss, and then Jamie gives her a smile and a slight bow, and hurries after his men.

Claire stares after them. "I feel like the Lady of Shalott," she says to Roger, referring to the Tennyson poem. Clearly she's not happy at all about staying behind while Jamie goes into what might be his last battle.

The fighting begins at last, with the Patriots struggling to climb up the hilly terrain while under fire from above. We see Hiram Crombie fall to the ground.

In the medical tent, Claire is rolling bandages when she hears the sounds of battle not far away. She quickly packs a medical bag and starts to head outside, telling Roger, "Don't you try to f*cking stop me!" He sticks close to her side as she hurries toward the battlefield.

Meanwhile, back on Fraser's Ridge, the women (and Fanny) are worried about what's happening on that faraway battlefield, too. This scene is not in the book, and frankly I thought it was unnecessary, constructed mostly to give the women something to do. Fanny seems to be an entirely different person in this scene than she was when last seen earlier in the episode. She seems suddenly much older, more mature. There's no attempt to explain the sudden change in her demeanor, but I thought it was an improvement. She sounds calm and steady, encouraging the others to "stay strong for them, or they might not come back."

Back on Kings Mountain, the battle is still underway. Buck is at Jamie's side, as they continue to fire at the Loyalists controlling the high ground.

They were close enough to the meadow now as to be able to see the enemy. He stepped out from the shelter of his tree and fired. Then he heard a faint, sharp whistle. Ferguson, that was him. Randall said the wee man hadn’t enough voice to call above the roar of battle, so he used a whistle to manage his troops. Like callin’ in a pack of sheepdogs, he thought.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 146, "The Curse is Come Upon Me". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

As the battle continues, the Loyalists charge the Patriots with bayonets fixed. Those are lethal weapons in close combat! Jamie puts aside his rifle and takes out his sword instead, ready for hand-to-hand fighting.

Claire is making her way up the hill, alone. She finds Hiram Crombie's body and closes his eyes. She stops to treat a wounded man, sending him down the hill to the field hospital. Suddenly she sees a man resembling Jamie, either dead or badly wounded, tumbling down the hill nearby. She runs to check, but it's not Jamie.

Roger, meanwhile, is helping one of the wounded, a black soldier, to get to safety. He sees Claire, calls to her to wait, but she ignores him, continuing to make her way up the hill toward the sounds of battle. Suddenly there is a loud explosion, and the impact sends Claire's medical bag rolling down the hill, out of her reach. Rather than waste time retrieving it, she picks up her skirts and starts climbing even faster.

The battlefield is very chaotic, but one moment I saw clearly: A redcoat charges Jamie, but Jo Beardsley throws a tomahawk and hits the redcoat, probably saving Jamie's life. More fighting follows, with Ian getting in his share of the killing.

Claire is still climbing, right in the thick of battle now. She finds momentary shelter, but then a redcoat sees her. Quick as lightning, she takes a pistol off the body of a dead soldier beside her and shoots the redcoat dead.

Finally we get a good look at Major Patrick Ferguson, the Loyalist commander, on his white stallion, blowing his whistle to get his men's attention. At one point Jamie fires his pistol at a redcoat who comes too close to Buck.

Claire shelters behind a tree, and all of a sudden things grow very quiet. And suddenly the cry goes up, "The British are retreating!" The Patriots begin clearing the field, taking prisoners. Claire and Jamie catch a glimpse of one another across the field. Suddenly Major Ferguson comes galloping in on his white stallion. Jamie knocks him from his horse with a swipe of his sword, and Ferguson lies injured on the ground until the Patriot troops drag him away.

Jamie calls to Claire, "It's over, Sassenach!" and they embrace, then Claire leaves to tend the wounded, while Jamie goes to celebrate the victory with his men.

At this point I had no idea where the story was going, and I had a million questions. Were they going to let Jamie just walk off the field, uninjured? What about the events depicted in BEES: Jamie badly injured, Claire summoning the blue light and saving his life, and all that? Were they going to just skip over all of that and give the story a happy ending? What about Frank's prediction that James Fraser would die at Kings Mountain? Did they actually manage to change history?

What happened next isn't in the book, but it has much the same effect, as far as Jamie is concerned.

Jamie approaches Ferguson, lying helpless on the ground, and points his pistol at him. "Do I have your surrender, sir?"
Ferguson glares at him. "I will NEVER surrender!" And then he pulls out his own pistol -- and shoots Jamie in the left side of his chest, at point blank range (!!) Blood is dripping from his mouth already, definitely not a good sign!

Claire starts to run toward the place where Jamie fell. Buck and some of the others shoot Ferguson dead, and Ian gets in a good blow with his Mohawk weapon for good measure.

I thought it was very strange that Claire spends only a few seconds actually trying to treat Jamie's wounds. Has she already concluded that he can't be saved?

“I’m…no…afraid,” he whispered. “I’m not.” A bout of coughing seized him. It was nearly silent, but the violence of it shook his whole body.

[....]

“Well, I’m bloody afraid!” I snapped, and tightened my hold on his thigh, digging my fingers into his unresisting flesh. “Do you think I’m just going to sit here and watch you die by inches?”

“Aye.” His eyes closed, and the word was no more than a whisper. His lips were white.

He sounded completely certain about it, and the fear that was swarming over my skin burrowed suddenly inward and seized my heart with its claws.

[....]

His eyes opened and I saw them look past and through me, as though fixed on something far, far away.

“For…give me…” he said, his voice no more than a thread, and I didn’t know whether he spoke to me or to God.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said, tasting cold iron on my tongue. “Jamie--please. Please don’t go.”

His eyelids fluttered, and closed.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 147, "A Lot of Blood". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Up to this point, events unfold basically the same way as the book. But what we don't see on screen is the next part, where Claire manages, through sheer force of will and an absolute determination not to give up, not to let him die, to summon the same healing powers she used much earlier this season when she saved the Cloudtrees' newborn baby girl. This is one of my favorite parts of the whole book, one of the most suspenseful moments in all of Diana Gabaldon's books, in my opinion, and it's a real shame that they couldn't find a way to show it.

I couldn't speak. I couldn’t move. Grief overwhelmed me and I curled into a ball, still grasping his arm, holding it with both hands, hard, to keep him from drowning, from going down into the bloody earth, away from me forever.

Beneath the grief was fury, and the sort of desperation that lets a woman lift an automobile off her child. And with the thought of a child and the reek of blood, I was for a split second not kneeling in Jamie’s blood on a blistering plain of surrender but on splintered floorboards by a sputtering fire, hearing screams and smelling blood, with nothing to hold on to but a wet scrap of life and that one phrase: Don’t let go.

(From GO TELL THE BEES THAT I AM GONE by Diana Gabaldon, chapter 147, "A Lot of Blood". Copyright © 2021 by Diana Gabaldon. All rights reserved.)

Instead, Claire simply clings to Jamie, screaming, 'NOOOOO!!! NOOOOO!!!" Not the same effect, at all.

Time passes. The other men leave, except for Roger and Ian. They try to persuade her to let him go, but she won't move.

Ian: "Auntie, he's gone."
Roger: "Claire, it breaks my heart to say it, but we've lost him."
Claire: "He just needs to rest. He needs his strength."

Unlike in the book, she doesn't appear to be doing anything at all to help him, medically. She's wallowing in grief and denial, but she's not trying to save him, just repeating over and over again that he needs to rest. I didn't like that at all. It appeared to me that Dr. Claire Fraser, former WWII combat nurse and experienced surgeon who has treated badly wounded men (including Jamie!) in emergency situations many times without losing her cool, absolutely let her emotions overwhelm her medical training in this situation.

Did she apply even basic first aid? Try to stop the bleeding, yell for others to go get her medical kit, try to ascertain exactly where the ball had entered or exited, treat him for shock -- anything??

In the book, Claire stays focused on the medical situation at first, only becoming desperate enough to try using the blue light when all other options have failed. Here, she doesn't really try to do much of anything medically. She essentially gives up on him, from a medical standpoint, and I found that shocking.

Sometime in the middle of the night, Claire looks up at the sky and shouts, "Where are you??" I think she's looking for Jamie -- his spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it.

The next scene is not in the book, but I liked it very much. It's the next morning, and Claire is still not moving. Roger tries one more time. "It's time to bury him, Claire." His tone is gentle, full of compassion. "I won't tell you I know how you feel, pretend there's anything I can say to make it better. That's impossible. But there are some things that must happen now, Claire. Let's take him home."

Roger leaves, and Claire looks down at Jamie's face, unmoving, and whispers, "He is home." She lies down beside him and finally closes her eyes.

The song that plays in the background, to the tune of the Skye Boat Song, is lovely, and not one we've heard before. As the camera pulls away, we can see that Jamie is lying on what appears to be a fallen standing stone. Whether that has any significance or not, we don't know.

Suddenly the scene shifts to a flashback of the scene in Episode 101, "Sassenach", where Frank sees Jamie's ghost looking up at her window on a stormy night in Inverness. They've added some new footage to it, to give us a good look at the ghost's face, to make it absolutely clear that it's Jamie's ghost. I'm very glad that they added that! I think it makes that whole scene much easier to understand.

As Jamie's ghost walks away, suddenly he's walking on grass instead of cobblestones, and we realize that he's in the middle of the stone circle at Craigh na Dun. Ghost Jamie touches the tallest stone, but nothing happens, of course. But as Ghost Jamie walks away, suddenly a small patch of forget-me-nots appears at the base of the stone, where his footsteps had been a moment earlier. (Diana Gabaldon has confirmed that this was her idea.)

I loved the montage of scenes from previous episodes that follows. Just as we saw when Fergus died, they've chosen some of our favorite moments from the whole series as a tribute to Jamie. Just wonderful!

The scene shifts back to Kings Mountain. Claire is still lying beside Jamie, and the first thing we notice is that Claire's hair is now pure white. Remember the old Indian woman (Nayawenne in the books, Adawehi in the show) saying that Claire would come into her full power when her hair turned white? Apparently that's what has happened here. Claire somehow managed to use her healing powers to resuscitate Jamie, but in the process she nearly died.

As the camera moves closer, suddenly both Jamie and Claire let out a simultaneous little gasp, and at that moment the episode ends.

Opinions vary on what that last bit means (showrunner Matt Roberts has said it's meant to be ambiguous), but I choose to believe it means they're both still alive (thank God!), that they will recover and live out their lives on Fraser's Ridge, together. So I think it's a happy ending.

I am still in Deep Denial over the thought that Jamie and Claire might die for real in A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT (Book 10), so having them both live through this works much better for me than the idea that they both died there on Kings Mountain. I choose to believe that Claire exhausted herself in the process of saving Jamie with her healing powers, to such an extent that she lost consciousness for a long period of time -- still touching him, still letting her healing blue light (or whatever it is) pass into him somehow -- and only woke at the same instant he did. (Or something along those lines.)

Just speaking for myself, I don't actually need the whole scenario presented here to make sense. I need a bit of hope at the end, to be able to imagine them recovering and returning to the Ridge to live out the rest of their lives together. The show has given me that glimmer of hope, and I'm happy enough with that.

IMPORTANT NOTE!! Be sure to watch all the way to the end of the credits for a little surprise! The final scene is a cameo appearance by Diana Gabaldon at a small book-signing attended by various members of the OUTLANDER production team. Watch the white-haired lady who comes up to Diana to get a book signed "for my daughter, Karen". Naturally I laughed out loud at that! (Before you ask, no, I honestly don't think they were referring to me, but it's a nice thought!)

HUGE thanks and congratulations to the entire cast and crew of OUTLANDER for giving us eight wonderful seasons!!
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I hope you enjoyed this recap. Look here for my recaps of all of the previous OUTLANDER episodes.

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