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Let's talk This will be my Outlander Season 8 episode 7
review titled Evidence of Things Not Seen.
As always, if you are looking to avoid spoilers from the book or
the TV show, please do keep on scrolling.
So the episode opens with Jamie walking up a mountain with
Frank's voiceover explaining that it's the autumn of 1779 and
Kings Mountain presented A serene Vista that was
reminiscent of Culloden Moore. Right away, we as viewers
understand that Jamie has read this passage in the book that
Frank wrote and is thinking about his words as he ascends
this mountain. As Frank makes a connection of
Kings Mountain and Culloden, Moore being a serene Vista
before Cullodens historic bloodshed.
I personally found that to be a stretch because having visited
Culloden more myself, it is a very, very flat bog and this is
a mountain. Frank goes on to say.
As history would record, this tranquility was nearly the calm
before the storm of iron and fire.
Major Patrick Ferguson and his loyalist militia established
their stronghold at the summit. Commanding the high ground
below. The over mountain troops
gathered, their resolve firm as the earth beneath them.
Many rebels were picked off as they climbed up the
mountainside. The battle was swift and fierce.
290 loyalists, including Ferguson himself died and only
28 of the rebels fell. This is when we see Jamie
pulling out the book and saying out loud the words including me.
Jamie then stands on top of this mountain overlooking the land
below and we hear this Gallic song beginning to play.
The lyrics say Farewell to Lock a Bar, which is the name for the
region in the western part of the Scottish Highlands.
When we get. This really beautiful wide angle
shot where we can see just how high up Jamie is actually
standing on the top of this mountain.
It gives us a visual as to what this battle would have even
looked like given the terrain, and it also puts Jamie at this
very visually important location, standing atop a
mountain. In many ways, we know that he is
trying to mentally prepare for the fact that he may be slain
during this battle, and him going through the motions and
walking through everything that Frank is laying out is a way
almost for him to practice visualization.
It's at that point that we get the title card for the episode
which says evidence of things not seen and we can see here
that a lacemaker is starting to make some black lace and that's
followed by an image of the black lace being rolled out on a
bed. This is obviously foreshadowing
2 events that will happen later on in the episode surrounding
Fanny and her grandmother and Jamie and Claire and their time
in France. We then jump over to the big
house and Jamie and Claire are talking about Jamie's experience
standing at top of Kings Mountain reading Frank's words
and seeing the place himself. Jamie admits that this all makes
sense to him and that Frank's words appear to have a lot of
merit. Then the show does something
that has bothered me a few times this season, which is repeat
dialogue to make sure that we as viewers don't forget the very
specific message that the show wants us to know, which is that
Jamie and Claire don't know why Frank wrote the book. 7 episodes
in, they still don't know why Frank wrote the book if it was
meant to torment them or warn them.
I understand that when you're working with a big ensemble like
this and multiple storylines, that you have to remind the
viewer of small plot points that might have happened seasons ago
or years ago in the past, or very far in the pasts of these
two characters. But they have repeated this
sentiment every episode of this season, and to me, that feels
like very lazy, repetitive writing.
We then jump over to Fergus at his print shop in Savannah and
we see him teaching his boys how to print a printed page and
Henri Christian expresses interest and wants to try but he
is afraid of disappointing Fergus because he is different.
Fergus has made a stool for him to use and we see him and German
roll out the paper and successfully print the page
without smudges, and Fergus tells them both that one day the
print shop will be theirs and that the pen is their sword.
This again is being used as a narrative callback setup because
we know how this episode will end and it's establishing early
on that both the boys have an interest in the practice of
printing, but ornery Christian in particular has more of an
interest than German. This scene also reaffirms to us
that Fergus has become very, very fond of Henri Christian,
which you'll remember in the previous season he was initially
very much rejecting of him. They have made a point to show
us different instances of him and Henri Christian becoming
very close with one another and that their bond is very, very
tight. That is when we leave the print
shop and we see the finished portrait of Amaranthus and
Trevor and find William looking at it in the living room.
We can see right away that he is upset, and when Amaranthus
approaches, he tells her that he has found Ben and confronts her
for knowing that he was not dead, and also informs her that
he has risen to the rank of general.
Amaranthus owns up to knowing that Ben is alive, but claims
that she could not dissuade him from joining the army.
And this is when we get to the crux of their argument with one
another. Because rightfully so, William
feels incredibly betrayed by both Ben and Amaranthus.
She calls out that the Grays are very stubborn and tells William
that it was only after she expressed what exactly the
repercussions would be for Trevor to Ben to have a father
who was a traitor that he decided to fake his own death.
This whole scene takes place in chapter 118 of Go and Tell the
Bees that I'm Gone, and almost all of the dialogue is pulled
directly from the source material.
She admits that she wanted a coward, a man who would avoid
conflict and peril. William then asks if she thought
that that might be him, and she says that she did at first,
because John had mentioned that he had resigned his Commission.
But she saw the truth of William quickly and knew that he was not
like that. You can see right away how much
that affects William, that her first inclination of him was
that he may have been a coward. This is when she spots the
bruise on his cheek and William tells her that he must tell Lord
John and Uncle Hal that Ben is alive and Amaranthus doesn't
want him to do that because she's afraid that they will hang
Ben. And that's when William can see
that she is still in love with him despite agreeing to marry
William. That's when she starts to
backtrack and argue that nothing has changed, they can still get
married. And it's at that point that Lord
John enters the room and catches them with Amaranthus's arms
wrapped around William. In the book, it's made very
clear that Lord John has been watching these two very closely
and has inferred from that that the two of them are growing
close to one another. This is just another instance
when he catches them in the act that kind of reaffirms his
suspicions about them and he informs the two of them that Hal
is on route from London to learn of Ben's death.
And that's when William tells John that Ben is actually alive.
And at the Continental camp, John can see how upset
Amaranthus is and apologizes to William for not believing him
that Ben might still be alive. And that's when he starts to try
and console Amaranthus because he recognizes that she must be
incredibly shocked to hear this news.
He tells the two of them that he had been dreading telling Hal
that his son was dead, but Amaranthus wants to tell him
news and John decides to fetch Brandy instead.
We know because we were just Privy to the conversation
between Amaranthus and William, that she is afraid that if
people find out Ben is alive, it will impact their son Trevor and
also her because she was in on the lie.
To her credit though, she recognizes that William is not
going to keep the secret from her.
He is upset about discovering that Ben is alive as well, and
that also Amaranthus had lied to him.
And it puts their impending wedding in jeopardy as well.
So it's a bigger mess than simply finding out that Ben is
alive now that her and William have entangled themselves with
one another. And I think that she is playing
the long game here, knowing that she'd rather get ahead of this
news than have it come from William.
She'd rather it come directly from herself.
Back in Savannah we see Brie and Marsley walking town briefing
each other about Fergus being the son of the Comp Saint
Germain and how Fergus does not want to be a pawn and fears that
this is a way to undermine the rebel cause.
Bree agrees that John has claimed Percy to be a slippery
person, and Marcely starts to imagine how that wealth would
change their lives. And so she asks when Roger and
Bri are going to leave, and then is out in the open when Bri
divulges all of their plans to meet with the rebels tomorrow to
give them gold and get rifles. I did not like this because in
no way would Brianna do this out in the open in public.
And yet here we are, having this scene take place in the middle
of this open forum where anyone could hear them talking, and
it's at the same time that Marsley has a tomato thrown at
her for being the printer's wife and is warned to tell her frog
of a husband to mine what he prints.
This, of course, is our first bit of foreshadowing into what
the core climax of the episode is and the key conflict
surrounding Marsley and Fergus moving forward.
At the Cairn, Claire and Fanny are beside the water and Fanny
is holding a Locket that says Faith on it that we saw in
season 7 and she asks Jane if she minds if she wears it.
Feeny's conversations with Jane are used as sort of info dumps
in the series and she expresses in this scene how much she
misses Jane. But also, it's a way of showing
us her trinkets and the things that she has kept close and on
her person that belonged to Jane at one point.
And that serves as the perfect vehicle to introduce something
that serves as connective tissue that's not used in the books.
And in this instance, it's the lace that we saw in the title
card. Fanny is afraid that she has
lost a piece of lace on the journey to the Fraser's Ridge,
and she reveals to Claire that her grandmother had made it
because she was a lacemaker in Paris.
Claire in the book books makes a point to not ask Fanny too many
questions because she does not want to reintroduce trauma and
pain surrounding the death of her parents and her journey over
the ocean theoretically to America when she was young.
And so she really doesn't poke and pry into Fanny's past.
But she was old enough to remember certain things and in
the book she brings them up on her own here.
One of those things is that her mother lived in Paris when she
was a girl. They would visit there
sometimes. And her grandmother lived in
Paris and made lace. Claire is asking her name and
you can see that she's now trying to connect the dots.
So again, this show only change is being used as a vehicle to
further emphasize this Faith storyline and reaffirm another
piece of the puzzle that would suggest that not only did Faith
live, but lived in Paris, existed in Paris, grew up there,
and then would go back with her own daughters.
Back in Savannah at Lord John's home, we see Amaranthus owning
up to knowing that Ben was alive and John is rightfully upset.
This is when William actually tries to defend her actions and
John starts to point out that becoming a widow has been quite
lucrative for her. That's when she snaps.
She rightfully asks John if he has ever had to be hungry
before, because she has, and she would never allow that to happen
to her son if she had any say in it and wanted to prevent him
from having the same fate. And so in her anger, she throws
her drink into the fire and walks out of the room, which
leaves William and John alone to digest this news.
John very quickly admits that he was a little harsh and then
confronts William and says that he knows that William and
Amaranthus are are close because as we the viewers just saw,
William was angry with her but then was very quick to defend
her. And John is not unaware of that.
He sees it happening in real time too.
But now that we know that Ben is actually alive and Amaranthus is
indeed not a widow, he sees this as something he needs to warn
William about because it is now at this point very improper for
him to entangle himself with Amaranthus given that she still
has a husband. This is when William counters
that he has no interest in entangling himself with anyone
who deceives him. And we get to another key
element of the storyline here, which is that both William and
John are at an impasse with how to handle the news of Jamie
being his father. And it's something that is still
a very deep wound in William, that he has not yet found a way
to heal and that John cannot heal for him.
And that means that every time that John parents him because he
is his parent, William rebels against it and lashes out in
anger. And we see that happen multiple
times in this episode, this one being the first example of that.
We then jump over to see Marcely cleaning her clothes when Fergus
approaches their house and spots a letter in the door.
It ends up being another Riddle and it says Lady Bird, Lady
Bird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your
children are gone. But the word bird is spelled
BURD. Fergus then recites another one
who killed Cockrobin? I said the Sparrow with my bow
and arrow. And so we get very quickly the
sense that this is not new for them.
They've been receiving these letters for quite some time now.
That's when we see Henri Christian again trying to learn
how to print and Fergus imparting more wisdom on him
before he runs inside. And the two of them, Fergus and
Marshall, are left smiling at how proud of him they are.
This, of course, is meant to again, establish that really
close bond between Fergus and Henri Christian, which I think
would have felt more effective if this took place in an episode
outside of this one, because all of these scenes with them
together seem very strategically placed in order to have big
impact in the same episode. But for me, a lot of the times
when you're trying to build a narrative impact like this or
something that we can grasp onto and feel really deeply, it has
to be established over a long period of time.
And the show, given the condensed nature of this final
season, isn't doing that. And so it does feel almost like
product placement to stick these scenes in where they are because
the conversation that follows is in service of establishing that
narrative and it feels more like info dumps or context driven
dialogue rather than realistic dialogue that would take place
between Fergus and Marceli here. Her saying that she does not
want idle threats to scare them away from something that brings
her son so much joy is so specific.
It doesn't feel like natural dialogue that the two of them
would be exchanging here. But the scene does allow us to
see them be flirty with one another and Fergus references
their future children, which Marsley jokes is him trying to
populate the entire colony. We do ultimately get this really
beautiful scene of the two of them together in their bedroom
with all the eager kids running around outside the doors and her
having to lock it so that they can have a moment alone.
And it's such a great parallel to how we saw them in Season 3.
Their relationship still has that fire and passion even after
all of this time with all of their kids running around
upstairs. And it's a really beautifully
shot scene between the two of them where we can see that they
still have that chemistry. And it's also laced with plenty
of humor between the two of them, too.
And I thought that the way it was shot was just really
beautiful, beautiful, quick, intimate scene between the two
of them that again establishes that the two of them are still
so, so in love even after all of this time and all of the
children that they have had together.
Back at the big house, Claire tells Jamie about the lace going
missing with Fanny and how it was made by Fanny's grandmother,
who was a lacemaker in Paris. Jamie says he remembers A
lacemaker across from Master Raymond's apothecary, and while
he was walking by, he had heard a child's cry.
And the two of them wonder if it's possible that that was
Faith. Claire says that she thinks
Mother Hildegard chose the name Faith because she wanted Claire
to hold on to her Faith in a moment when she was so scared to
lose Jamie. And the show.
Kind of twists that narrative idea to encapsulate not only the
faith of it all, but also this impending worry she has about
the Battle of Kings Mountain and her questioning how she's able
to have faith that everything will go OK when they don't know
what the outcome's going to be. Jamie then delivers a line about
the unseen threads behind them. They're woven by a hand far
greater than our own and asks Claire to hold on to him.
And Claire then says always. Like almost every scene we've
had between Jamie and Claire in Season 8, this narratively felt
like it was in service of other storylines and didn't feel like
a tender, quiet moment between the two of them.
It once again is setting up narratively the date storyline
of it all, and to me it feels like a lot of these moments that
we are really desperate to have time with Jamie and Claire ahead
of this battle that's been looming is quick and also
completely in service of. Everything but their.
Relationship Back in Savannah, we see poor John outside
drinking when he is approached by a horse and carriage, and
inside we see Percy Beauchamp emerge.
John very quickly asks why have you come, and that's when Percy
says he has information for him. This is the first time that
we're properly reintroducing the Captain Richardson storyline
because it's been a few episodes since that has come up.
Percy tells John that Richardson was seen boarding a ship in
Charlestown and intends to make his way to Savannah, which is
all excellent news. After their business is done,
this is when Percy starts to flirt with him again and brings
up the day of their parents wedding and says that he
remembers everything. If you have not read the Lord
John novellas, I highly highly highly recommend that you do
because they're fantastic. But also, the storyline between
John and Percy is so dense and complicated that it would be
very hard for me to encapsulate exactly the nature of their
relationship in this video. But John sums it up perfectly by
saying that he's. Tried very hard to forget it
all. That's when Percy starts to
lower drop a bit with his dialogue, and the music implies
John's memory working to recall those moments, and Percy tells
him he wanted to go slow, but John was very hungry for him
back then. Percy points out that there was
a time when John loved him, if only he was honest with himself
to admit it. And that's when he kisses him.
And John kisses him back, perfectly timed with William's
entrance. One of the lines that I really
liked in this scene between John and Percy is that John calls him
perseverance. Never was a man so well named.
Perseverance means a continued effort to do or achieve
something despite difficulties, failures or oppressions, which
is so appropriate for this situation between the two of
them. And it's also great
foreshadowing for what is going to come in the storyline between
Percy and John. It's going to be different in
the show than it is in the book. So I think that's important to
note here. And again, I would encourage you
to go and read the Lord John novellas because they're really
fantastic. John, for the first time, is
being honest with himself when he chooses to kiss Percy back
and admit with his actions that there was in fact a time when
John had loved Percy, and it's in the exact moment that John
allows himself to feel that that William walks in and sees them
kissing. John obviously tries to play it
off like it's nothing, but William is clearly flustered by
the entire interaction and chooses to say the most cutting
thing that he can think of in this moment, which is that he
thought there was nothing worse than having a traitor for a
father in Jamie. But now he is seeing what John
is, and that is worse in William's opinion.
And that's the moment when Percy takes his leave.
Keep in mind that for William, this is John who essentially
puts bumpers up in his own life in order to prevent William from
stepping out of place or talking out of turn, and he carries
himself with such honor and nobility.
And so for William to find him in this position is really
unnerving for him. And for months now, William has
been mulling over the information that John was the
warden at Ardsmere Prison, where Jamie was kept, and how he could
connect the dots between the two of them.
And then John being entrusted with William's care after Jamie
leaves, it's clear that William wants an answer to that.
So he confronts John about it. And John counters by saying that
he and Jamie were friends and they had gone through great
lengths to protect William and tells William to never speak to
his own father that way again. And that is when William
counters by saying he does not have a father.
The acting in this scene in particular I think is some of
the strongest of this episode. I really love any scene in
between these two, and I think that there's a really great job
done to convey just how deeply William actually loves John
because he would not be affected in this way or this much if that
love for John was not there. William lashing out in this way
obviously is in large part due to the shock of what he's walked
in on and what he's now discovered Lord John to be.
But I also think that this scene in particular in the acting
surrounding it, does a really great job of subtly implying
that William's anger stems mostly from how much he loves
John, and this realization that maybe John didn't raise him out
of pure love. There was something deeper going
on that once again puts William in this dicament where he
doesn't feel like anyone wanted him truly.
You can understand then that if William were to believe that the
circumstances surrounding John adopting him and taking him from
Jamie were suspicious in any way, it would imply then that
William was not wanted by either of the men that he views as
father figures. He cannot hear from John in this
moment how deeply he is loved and was wanted by him, and that
him raising William was out of that love.
He's unable to hear those words and feel them 'cause he's so red
with anger right now. Back at the big house, we see
Claire putting honey in jars when Jamie tells her of a letter
that came from Ian, who had stopped at the brothel where
Jane and Fannie were raised and had collected information about
them, along with some notes that the man took while speaking with
Jane before her death. So this is a way to tie us back
to a scene that we saw a partial portion of in Season 7.
It also introduces A flashback narrative where we get to go
back into that room where the man was interviewing Jane and
fill in some of the gaps from that conversation.
And they're using that again to beef up the storyline with
Fanny, Jane and Faith. Jane tells him of a strange man
coming into their grandmother's business and asking her to look
after a baby. And he had said that if he
didn't come back to find a lady Brock Torok, which is Claire,
her grandmother then went to find this lady was sent to the
House of a wine merchant, but was told that the lady had
already left the country. And so her grandmother raised
her meaning Faith. And when Faith grew up, Jane and
Fanny's mother had learned that the woman lived in the mountains
of North Carolina. And all of their family,
including Jane and Fanny, were on their way to find her when
their ship was taken by pirates and Jane and Fanny's parents
were killed. This narratively ties back to
the opening scene of the season where Jamie and Claire are
talking to that pirate. So it closes the loop on that
storyline. But it also is an example of how
the showrunners are trying to find weak points, so to speak,
in the original source material where they can insert
information and find ways to make it work.
So the mysterious ways in which Jane and Fanny's parents died on
the boat, they can now provide a story to plug that narratively
into this greater overarching one that they're building around
Faith. And so they're creating this
character, which is going to be this woman that ends up with the
baby and holds that baby for Master Raymond and raises it as
her own and happened to be a lacemaker across from the
church. Somehow that woman in France
would have been able to give this faith child any context
about where she came from, who her parents were.
We have no idea how they were ever going to discover that Lady
Brock Turok ended up in North Carolina.
I guess the show's not going to give any sort of context to that
either. So we're just supposed to
believe that that's the case. And Jane told this writer that
she wanted Fanny to know she was at peace with dying and that
none of this was Fanny's fault. That God owes Jane and will help
Fanny to find this woman when she's gone so that she has a
chance to be safe and loved. I'm selfishly glad that we got
more Jane on screen because I think this actress did a great
job with her. But I also think that it's
important to remind viewers that this is now a confirmed relative
of Claire's, which means it's a confirmed relative of Williams.
And as much as they're trying to connect Claire and Faith and
Fanny and Jane together, it also connects people that shouldn't
be connected. So it's, to me, just a very
messy approach to this storyline.
I've said from the beginning that I can understand why for
the shock value, the show would want to introduce this
connection, but I just don't see why it needed to be there.
Because when Claire and Jamie realized that Faith was coming
to find them when she died, there is no payoff.
It just feels like there's no point to it because she's dead.
All it does is cause more pain for Claire and Jamie.
And once again, we've gone the entire season with them speaking
in ways that only further other storylines.
We haven't had a single conversation between the two of
them that hasn't been in service of another storyline.
That's when we go back to Savannah and we see smoke coming
through the door and a fire starting at the print shop where
Fergus and Marsley and the children are sleeping.
This is a scene that I have dreaded seeing on screen because
it broke my heart when I was reading the book, and it plays
out so differently in the show in a way that I really still
have not been able to wrap my mind around.
Fergus tells them all to leave the house quickly wakes the boys
up, but they're not in their beds and Marshley says that they
must be upstairs on the roof because they always like to go
up there. And so Fergus goes up on the
roof and finds the boys. And that, to me as a book
reader, is when I started to get nervous, especially when we see
that the stairway that he goes through ends up engulfed in
flames. Brie and Roger arrive fully
dressed when they see the house burning and Marshley looks up
and she's covered by a blanket by someone out in the street and
we see Roger go to help with the water.
Fergus ties the boys with rope to try and get them down from
the roof, tells them to be brave and lowers them down slowly and
we see Andre Christian refuse to leave his side because he wants
to stay with his father. And again, this is another point
in which the story is trying to beef up the relationship between
these two. Because if you've read the book
then you know that the outcome of this scene ends with Andre
Christian's death. And the show does play on that
when we see Fergus lowering the boys by the rope on the roof and
asks them to be brave and ornery.
Christian does in fact fall. This is when we get this shot
that was in the trailer of Marceline screaming.
But in the show, we see that Roger ends up catching him so he
does not fall and die. We can see the relief on
Marcely's face and I for a moment believed that we were in
the clear. But then the show had to go and
break my heart. As soon as I realized that this
scene was not going to play out the same way as it does in the
books and Roger catches Henri Christian, I immediately started
to fear for the worst. And unfortunately, that was
confirmed for me in the scene that follows.
The fact that this scene ends with Fergus looking directly
into the eyes of his wife and Marcely seeing him and making
eye contact with him before the roof collapses and Fergus Falls
through and right into the fire. It just felt cruel to me.
And the one thing that I would say is a relative bright spot of
this change is that Lauren Lyle, who I've long believed to be one
of the strongest actors on the show, gives an unbelievable
performance in the moments that follow this.
She is so underrated. I think she deserves all the
flowers in the world. And as an actress, I would have
to imagine that digging into this was very satisfactory for
her. But as a fan of the show and
someone who has read the books, I just could not understand what
the goal of this was. Other than shock factor and
shock factor for us as viewers. Sure, but why did we need to put
Marceline through this? Her losing her child in the book
sets off a series of events between her and Jermaine that we
are now no longer going to get in the show.
Which that's its own separate argument, but you have literally
ripped this woman's heart out of her chest and are going to end
the series with that notion in mind.
I just don't understand why she didn't deserve a happy year
ending. And when Jamie wakes up to the
sound of her sobbing and instantly knows something is
wrong and he says something's wrong and then tries to fall
back asleep and can't again. Yeah.
You could use this as a way of pointing out that Jamie still
has his powers. I don't know how you want to
spin it, but it just felt like an empty narrative decision that
didn't need to be here. Fergus has long been one of my
favorite characters. I think he's one of everyone's
favorite characters. And as someone who reads the
books and he is still very much alive, I I just don't know why
he had to be the low hanging fruit here.
Why did any of these characters have to go through with this
painful loss? I don't know what it's setting
up in the long term. It doesn't feel like it's
setting up anything. And similarly to how I feel
about the Faith storyline, it felt like they were going for
shock factor without weighing the possibility that maybe for
once in the end of this. Show we just.
Wanted a happy moment back at Lord John's.
We see Bri and Roger sitting on the couch and Bri asks Roger if
anything were to happen to her, would he stay in this time with
the kids or. Would he leave?
And Roger confirms, you know, you just lost your brother,
which means for us that Fergus is dead.
Roger says he would stay because that's their home, their whole
family is there, they belong there.
And when he says the four of them belong there, that's when
Bree corrects him and says the five of us and tells him that
they are pregnant. Now it might just be me, but I
feel like the two of them slept together days ago, so I don't
know how she would know already that she is pregnant.
So this again feels like a continuity error to me because I
don't think they've been in Savannah that long.
They just reunited with one another after Roger came back
from the continental camp. In that reunion is when
theoretically, she would have become pregnant.
How so soon after would she know that she's already pregnant?
When Bri goes into the room where Marceline and the children
are staying, she sees that Marceline is on the floor
looking at the kids in the bed. And again, what a moment for
Laura and Lyle to showcase her acting chops.
She broke my heart in this scene.
Everything about her performance is so nuanced and so raw and so
human and I feel wrong almost saying that.
I'm glad the show gave her this opportunity to showcase her
acting prowess because I don't think narratively it needed to
happen. But I really hope she gets
nominated for something for her work in this in this scene, and
even in the episode that follows this, because she really, really
nails it. Bree tells her that Jon can get
her another room, but Marxley admits she's afraid to let the
children out of her sight ever again.
And when Brie joins her on the floor, she tells her to sleep
and that she'll watch over her children.
And that's when Marshall admits that someone had left them a
note in that poem. Or the Riddle that we read, It
was about a fire. And at the time Marsley and
Fergus laughed about it because they would get them from time to
time and they would always choose to make fun of them.
And that's when we get one of the most beautiful lines of
dialogue in this moment, which is when Marsley says, after all
these years, I didn't can where I ended and he began.
And now there's barely anything left of him, not even a body to
hold, just ashes and bones. And Bree tells her that he is in
every single one of their children and she will always
have him with her. And that's when Marsley breaks
down further. And again, just wonderful,
wonderful acting from Lauren Lisle.
She's truly phenomenal. I can't wait to see what else
she does because I just think she's so unbelievably talented.
And the emotions in this scene I think are worthy of the loss of
Fergus. But I don't feel like the scenes
in the aftermath really hammer home just how big of a loss this
is. We don't have enough time to
breathe with this loss, in my opinion, because of how rushed
this episode and this season has been.
The two of them, though, I think did a really wonderful job of
conveying just that bone deep pain that she's experiencing in
this moment. And the two of them are at this
impasse because Bree doesn't know how to support her in such
an unbelievably raw moment, and Marsley doesn't know how to go
on existing at this point. The way it ends, with Marsley
screaming out and almost silently crying, I, I can't
emphasize this enough. I think this is the one scene of
this season so far where it affected me viscerally.
And kudos again to Lauren Lyall for that.
Back at the Big House, we see Fanny reading the letter from
Jane and this is when Jamie and Claire decide to tell her that
their home in Scotland is Brock Thurrock and that they believe
that they are her grandparents. They lived in Paris for a bit
and when they were there they had a child named Faith.
They thought she had died when she was born, but now they think
that she lived and that she was Fanny and Jane's mother.
Again, we get this info dump where we can tell that the
writing is trying to fill in all of these gaps that in the book
don't exist. And so the dialogue here felt
kind of clunky for me. It was very much like a nympho
dump kind of moment. And we are almost in the same
position as Fanny where we're just being like bombarded with
all this information and trying to connect these dots and make
it all fit properly. And I feel like as Fanny does in
the book where she ends the scene saying she'd like to go to
her room now, I kind of felt the same way.
Fanny admitting that she feels Claire staring at her with tears
in her eyes and asking her why that is opened up this
opportunity for Claire to say, sometimes when I look at you,
you're so beautiful, like Faith must have been.
It makes Claire think of all the things that she missed and lost.
And it hurts a little. I go back again to what is the
point of putting Jamie and Claire through this pain of
realizing their daughter lived and they missed out on all that
time. We've had that happen already
with Jamie and William. We've had that grief happen with
them over the loss of faith. Why are we doing it again?
Fanny playing Devil Defecate asks how would her mother have
known the song that Claire sang to her if she was only a baby?
And they admit that they don't know.
So that Tees up the end of the episode when we get that
question answered. This is also when we circle back
to the lace from the title card, where Claire explains she had
something made very special of lace, a veil, and she believes
that it was made by Fanny's grandmother.
And again, the show goes back to season 2 and finds anything that
they can recontextualize. And in this case, it's what
Claire was wearing when they were in the churchyard at what
they believed to be Faith's grave, and making that the
connective tissue between these storylines.
Claire says she'd left that veil in Paris, but it makes her happy
to think that she had had something of Fanny's
grandmother's, because Fanny is a part of her just as much as
she is a part of Claire. Then we get this line of
dialogue about family being like lace, fragile and delicate, full
of holes and gaps, but strong threads that are hard to tear
apart. I feel like the sentiment for
that didn't land fully for me. And while Fanny doesn't
downright reject this, I think her overwhelm is a mirror to how
the viewer feels because I felt overwhelmed with all this
information and trying to figure out if I could buy into what
they're selling here. The scene ends with Jamie and
Claire holding each others hands because they realize that Fannie
is overwhelmed as well and Jamie admits perhaps they should have
waited. Back at Lord John's house we see
the kids making the bed with Brie and Marsley is asleep on
the floor and that's when Andre Christian tries to wake her.
He tells her that they have to go back to the print shop and
bring news to the people and Marsley tries to tell him that
he needs to go and join his siblings, they don't need to
work today. So again this is reaffirming
once again that Andre Christian wants to take up the mantle and
run the print shop. Marsley is now a widow with all
of her many children and has to figure out what.
She's going to do next with them and where she's going to live
and Bree tells her she will always have a home with them at
the Ridge. But it's also when she brings up
the offer from Percy Beauchamp again and Marsley knows that
despite Fergus not wanting it, it's something she has to
consider. This storyline and having her
entertain this offer is something that again, is only
really happening in the show. And Bree being the one to tell
her that despite Fergus not wanting to take this gold, he
would have wanted Marcely and the kids to be taken care of
more than whatever argument he was making in favor of the war.
And Marcely wanting to live alone and away from her family
as a widow is the only thing that to me makes zero sense in
this equation. Yes, she wants to be supported
and have money, but she could have that by moving to the
Ridge. So I'm really not sure what this
angle is with the land and the Percy of it all.
It doesn't need to happen in order for Marcely to relocate
with all her children and be supported.
Back at the Ridge, Claire goes looking for Fanny and she's not
in her bedroom and we see her at the Karen again and Jamie and
Claire both go to find her. There they apologize to her for
telling her too soon about her mother, and they know that she
might not believe them without any proof.
But Fanny says she does believe them.
But for Fanny, the bigger problem is that she loses
everything and everyone she loves, her whole family.
And now, since Claire and Jamie are part of her family, she's
worried that they will leave or die or go away too, and she'll
be alone. Obviously, with Jamie and Claire
being aware of the Battle of Kings Mountain and Frank writing
that Jamie dies in that, that's a bad omen for them to hear.
Especially Jamie, who would feel tremendous guilt knowing that he
very well might be adding his name to that list of people who
Fannie loses. Jamie then says God tells us
that faith is the evidence of things not seen and asks her to
have faith in them. So again this is when the title
card comes in, evidence of things not seen.
We then get another big time jump when we see Claire and
Jamie watching Bree, Roger, Marsley and the kids return to
the Ridge. And this is when we get a
voiceover from Claire, which we haven't had in a while and she
says no. Two people experience physical
pain the same way. Perhaps the same is true for
emotional pain. But their collective love of
Fergus was reflected in the agony of our shared loss.
Their grief was alike. The wild look of suffering in
Marcely's eyes was the same she saw in Jamie's, and they're in
her own. While I loved the dialogue here,
I personally felt like the acting.
They didn't look sad enough, and I think that when you're talking
about a nauseating ache and disbelief that gnaws at you
until you're numb. Brianna doesn't look that way
here. Claire nor Brianna looks that
way here. Marseille does.
But I would have to imagine that Jamie, although he's trying to
be brave and strong for her, would fall apart or at least be
angry or confused or shocked or anything.
I think this, again, is evidence of why you can't rush a
storyline like this that's meant to have a big impact.
Because what little we've seen of Fergus in this entire season,
none of what he was saying or doing felt exclusive to him as a
character. All of his lines of dialogue
were, again, to push the plot forward or beef up another
storyline. And none of it felt really like
we were living with that character as a person.
And so when we lose him, the the thing that holds weight is all
of the moments we spent with him in earlier seasons, none of the
moments we spent with him in this season.
Which perhaps leads to why I find the acting here to be
slightly wooden and also the framing of it.
Because you can literally see in this scene when Jamie is
standing with Marsley and trying to console her, that Claire,
Roger, Brie and the kids, they're out of frame behind
Jamie and they're all shuffle over to the left to get in
frame. So again, it just feels like it
was so rushed together and none of it felt sincere.
In the next scene, Jamie is making a coffin.
And again, there was lots of contemplation when the trailer
came out as to whether or not this was Andre Christian's
coffin. Now we find out that it's
Fergus's and this is the moment when he finally releases his
emotions and we start to get flashbacks of him meeting Fergus
for the first time and this reaction when he is so upset
that he has to pause and collect himself.
That's what I wanted in that moment with him and Marcely.
As we start to get these flashbacks of Fergus over the
course of the story just reminded me how much I loved
young Fergus. He was so sweet and so funny.
There was just Sarah reason or need for him to be killed.
All of these moments when he just added so much to the
dynamic between Jamie and Claire.
He was the child that neither of them were able to raise because
they lost faith and Jamie had to leave William.
He gave the two of them so much purpose.
He made them a family, He made them parents.
He loved Claire like a mother. He looked up to Jamie like a
father. Through them, he met the love of
his life in Marseille, and he was supported by them
wholeheartedly as he began to raise his own family and become
a father himself. He had gone through so many
emotional struggles in Season 7 that the two of them supported
him through. He built a life with someone who
he loved all the way up until the very end of his life.
And so, yeah, I think that you have this moment where you can
mourn this character. And again, the show is ending,
and so the storyline ends for this character, but it just
failed for me because it was so not needed.
Sam's acting in this moment when he's reflecting on all these
memories of Fergus, I think is far more impactful than the one
before when Marsley and the kids show up in the front of the big
house. And in this scene, Fanny
approaches Jamie and tells him to come with her.
They have made Fanny, who I actually like as a character, a
lot, and I love the actress, too.
They've made her almost like this savior character in some
ways where she has come in and is tasked with kind of hearing
all of the the hurt and heartbreak in this family as
though she doesn't have her own to deal with.
She is now acting wise beyond her years and coming to the aid
of Jamie in this particular scene to try and heal something
within him. And so when she brings Jamie to
this Cairn that she has made and started for Fergus, it's again a
full circle moment for when Jamie had started one for Jane.
And she says to Jamie that even though Fergus is not with them
anymore, perhaps Jamie can find him there.
That's the moment when she decides to call him Granda.
Jamie looks at her and is clearly impressed with how
mature she is, how insightful she is, how thoughtful she is.
She pulls out a rock for him and adds it to the pile.
And we do get this moment where you can see that Jamie is
realizing that she's really accepted the fact that they're
family and that they're related and is OK with that.
So when he takes this rock from her hand, it's it's almost more
of a transference of acceptance. Here we watch Jamie add that
rock and smile and thinking of Fergus, he thanks Fanny.
And we see in his facial expression the pain dissolve
into a sort of acceptance where his face softens and he's able
to smile a little bit thinking about him.
And that's when he thanks Fanny and she takes Jamie's hand.
And so again, they're pushing this faith storyline so hard
that it almost makes me resent Fanny because she's being
inserted into these scenes that should be sacred moments between
the original core characters. Which is too bad because I
actually love Fanny as a character.
And I don't think that it's good writing if you end up resenting
the presence of a character in a scene that she should
theoretically be entitled to be in.
But it feels forced upon me. Which is reinforced by this
entire flashback of when Master Raymond left Faith with the
woman in Paris in 1744, where he says it's a matter of urgency.
He must leave the city for a short time, and she's the only
person he trusted. This random woman who makes lace
that happened to be across the street?
I just don't have any part of me that buys into that narrative.
Yes, Jamie was in prison and Claire was very sick, but it's
not like he couldn't have waited for Claire to be less sick and
leave this baby with Mother Hildegard.
So we get to see this Faith child very much alive and the
woman who ended up ultimately raising her and Master Raymond
saying her name is Faith. And then we find out that the
reason that Faith knew this song is because Claire sang it to her
and Master Raymond teaches it to this woman.