Hi and welcome to K Let's Talk, the podcast where we breakdown
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Let's talk, this will be my Outlander Season 8 episode 3
review titled ABS Fraser Eye. As always, if you are looking to
avoid spoilers from the books or the TV show, please do keep on
scrolling. So this episode opens with a
shot of insects pinned to a board and plenty of beetles,
which is foreshadowing to Amaranthus and the clothing that
she had made for Ben and then gifts to William to wear.
And the clothing has all of the beetles in North America on it.
So we can see many beetles and then we zoom in on the Hercules
Dynasties tedious beetle, which she and William talk about in
the episode. Then we cut over to see that
we're back on the Ridge at the trading post and find Fanny and
Brianna together there. Fanny is looking at a pretty
comb and Bri asks her if she would like to have it.
But Bri is approaching this from a place that Fannie doesn't
understand. She, like her sister Jane, isn't
able to comprehend what it's like to own things or even have
the ability to buy things. So even though Bree is giving
her this very kind gesture and offering to purchase it for her,
we remember in last season Jane explaining to William that she
has no concept of coin or money. The same can be applied to
Fannie here. Bree is then alerted that her
post has arrived and so she leaves Fanny by the table to
think about whether or not she wants the comb to go get her
news and mail. And that is when Fanny is
approached by two men who start to insinuate that they can tell
what Fanny is and that she grew up in a brothel and is from a
brothel. But we see her be very firm with
them and they start to press, but she calls the man a toad
faced foot licker and he's obviously offended.
And we see them get into this disagreement and Brianna
returning to Fannie in the background.
And instantly we can tell that Fanny is upset, but she tries to
downplay the fact that the men had bothered her.
The scene allows us to set eyes on these two men because they
will be a visual callback and a narrative callback later on in
this episode. And it also makes it clear to us
as viewers that Brianna also recognizes these men and then
sees them interacting with Cunningham as well.
Because that information eventually makes its way to
Jamie. Fanny doesn't want Brianna to
get involved or to confront the men because she wants to address
it directly. So instead, the two of them
leave. And again, it helps us to piece
together that Cunningham is up to something and Bree is now a
witness of it as well as Fanny. Back at the Ridge, Claire is
writing in a book when we see Jamie approach her with a letter
that we learn is from Lord John Gray.
And instantly we as viewers can tell that he is upset by this
and asks Claire what John could possibly want of her.
And Claire clarifies that he is in Savannah with William and he
actually wants Brianna. He's asked Brianna to come and
Commission a portrait of Amaranthus and Trevor, which is
different from how it plays out in the books.
He actually asks her to come to paint a portrait of a altogether
different person named Alfred Brumby and his new wife in the
book. And when Claire says she will go
and ask Bri if she'd like to go to Savannah, Jamie says no, you
won't. Which kick starts their
argument. And again, as a detail from the
book, we're actually in John's point of view as he writes the
letter to Jamie himself, asking if Brianna would come to
Savannah to paint the portrait of Alfred Brumby's new wife.
And he consults his brother Hal about it.
And in that conversation he actually admits to Hal that Bri
is William's half sister and they had met briefly years ago.
It's actually under his brother Hal's advice that he mentions
William in a letter to Jamie because Hal recognizes that
Jamie will send her if he knows that William is there.
All these men know what it's like to be a father, and Hal is
confident in Jamie's care for William being just as strong as
John's care for William as well. In the book, it's actually
dialogue pulled from chapter 35 when Claire and Jamie have this
exchange and Jamie says no you're not.
Claire's actually telling Jamie she's going to write to Lord
John, and he says no, you're not.
So it's a little different in the show version.
And that takes place after they receive a letter learning that
Denzel Hunter has been captured and is being held prisoner.
And in the book, Denzel is married to John's niece Dottie.
So Claire wonders if she's going to be able to get any more
information about Denzel through John's knowledge of where Dottie
might be. And so Claire turns and asks if
Jamie is seriously saying no to her and if he'd care to rephrase
that because she's clearly not going to listen.
So the show has clearly woven in dialogue and story beats from
other, more minor subplots in favor of this being an argument
around Lord John to sort of condense that timeline and
storyline. Claire asks if he's seriously
not going to allow her to go and talk to Bree.
And it reminds Jamie that this doesn't involve him.
But Jamie has clearly not been able to come to terms with her
marrying and sleeping with Lord John.
So it all bubbles over in this really great scene between them,
which calls back to their fight when Jamie returned back in
season 7. Jamie doesn't mean to be
involved with Lord John Gray at all, but he is forced to be
because of what happened between him and Claire.
And so when Claire starts to defend herself by saying that
Jamie already knows what happened, he counters by
explaining that in more crass terms.
He can't get over the fact that Lord John took her in the way
that he did. And we can see from a little
shot around the corner that Fanny is listening to this
conversation in the other room. When Claire asks Jamie, I
thought we were done with that. Jamie delivers this great line
from the source material where he says, did I not tell you once
I'm a jealous man? I begrudged every hour you spent
in another man's bed. I meant it, I still mean it.
And you'll do what you damn please, God knows you always do.
But don't pretend that I don't know what I feel about it.
As Jamie leaves, Claire points out that he's unable to avoid
John forever because so long as he's tied to William, Jamie will
be tied to him, too. And that's when Jamie yells out,
Damn William. And Fannie overhears that when
Fannie asks what William has done to upset Mr. Fraser, Claire
insists that it doesn't have anything to do with William.
But Fannie makes it clear she heard the entire conversation
when she says she understood what Jamie had said.
And we get this great shot of Claire reacting to those words.
I really enjoyed how organic this all felt.
And Fanny makes it clear that she's worried that this means
that Jamie and Claire will have to bring her back to the brothel
because so long as Jamie is mad at William, he won't do what
William asked, which is take care of her.
Claire makes a point to correct her and insists that she'll
never have to go back there because Jamie and Claire want
her. And even though Jamie and
William are the same, that means neither of them will do anything
against their will. And Jamie promised to keep Fanny
safe. And he keeps his word, and so
does Claire. This felt like a nice return to
the main plot of the book, where Fanny potentially being Jamie
and Claire's granddaughter isn't a part of the impetus behind
their closeness towards her. And in the book, Claire also
explains how Jamie had to let Lord John take care of William
because he had gone to prison and how John had raised William
as his son because neither of them thought Jamie would ever be
released and John didn't think that he would ever have children
of his own. That moment in the book is also
when Claire tells Fanny that she had fought in the war too and
had seen very bad things. And that dialogue was actually
used in episode 2, so we see that it got moved around and
repurposed in the show. Back in Savannah, we see William
at Lord John's home, which in the book is number 12 Oglethorpe
St. in Savannah, and he tells John that Ben is not dead
because his body was not in his grave.
And once again we see that Lord John Gray is choosing to be far
more pragmatic. And in the book, this
conversation happens quite early on in the story.
And William is actually telling Dennis Randall Isaacs, who is
the son of Mary Hawkins and Alexander Randall Blackjack,
Randall's brother, about finding Ben's grave with another man in
it. Dennis first appears with
William in Quebec in An Echo in the Bone and then again in
Philadelphia and written in My Own Hearts Blood.
And in the book version of the scene, William recalls thinking
that he was once a friend before Dennis had left him in Quebec.
And at this point in the story, William had been chased by a
group of rebels after he had won a card game the night before,
and they'd beaten him to a pulp, taking back their money.
And then they were all collectively captured by the
Redcoats, which is when William announced his title.
And Dennis confirmed that William was, in fact, who he
said he was. And in that correspondence, it's
revealed that Dennis is also looking for Captain Richardson
and tells William that he has turned his coat and has been
making threats towards Lord John, which is a subplot that I
do suspect we will see in this season.
But in the show, this conversation is used to map out
what the storyline will be for William's search for Ben, and
establishes that John does not subscribe to the idea that Ben
could be alive. At this point, John is unable to
make great reaches like William is, and suspects that William is
simply looking for a sense of purpose here.
So despite the fact that John is unwilling to subscribe to the
notion that Ben is alive, he decides to meet William halfway
and explains that if Ben were to have escaped from the camp, he
would have given word to his commanding officer and that
officer is currently in Savannah.
John, as it happens, will be dining with General Provost at
his luncheon and could introduce William to that officer and he'd
be able to make inquiries. But it's a double edged sword
because William can tell that John is also trying to get him
back into society. In the book, Dennis is actually
the one who writes to John and asks him to bring William
specifically to the luncheon. So again, they've rearranged
that story quite a bit and I am curious if they're going to
include Dennis Randall Isaacs in this final season of the show.
He's not a super important character, but it is kind of a
fun Easter egg that he is the grown son of Mary Hawkins that
we saw way back in season 2. Back at the Ridge, Claire and
Bri are in the kitchen discussing John's invitation to
Savannah to paint this portrait and we get this humorous moment
between Claire and Brianna when they are discussing Lord John.
Brianna doesn't understand why Jamie and Lord John are in a
disagreement at the time, and Claire has to explain to her
that she had married Lord John and why she had to marry him and
everything that happened around those circumstances.
But to Brianna, it seems like something that Jamie wouldn't be
upset about, given that John was protecting Claire.
And that's when Claire gives it up and admits that they had
slept together because they were drowning in grief and alcohol.
Brianna is naturally shocked by this information, but she
chooses to make a joke about it and how she might have to call
John Da now. And Claire and her are, you
know, having a humorous moment. But she makes it clear not to
joke about that in front of Jamie.
Then back at the trading post, we see Cunningham at Crombies
and Jamie ends up confronting him about the two officers that
we saw at the top of the episode.
Cunningham claims that they are his son's comrades and they had
brought back some of his son's belongings to him, but Jamie can
very clearly tell that he is lying and that something else is
going on here. This is the first time that we
see Jamie looking at this weapon, and again, this is
foreshadowing visually and narratively to the end of this
episode because he can tell that there's something odd about this
particular vehicular weapon, and he makes it clear to Cunningham
that he will not tolerate any actions that would threaten the
Ridge or its settlers. Jamie, for all his faults, gives
people the benefit of the doubt for a lot longer than I think
sometimes he should. And in this situation, I think
he has more faith in people, specifically Cunningham, than
maybe is advisable. He gives warnings, but he hasn't
chosen to intervene yet. And he tells Cunningham that the
men upset Fanny, and that is his way of pointing out that it's
starting to affect other people in his personal life, and he's
taking notice. I really love the actor who
plays Cunningham because he has this really beautiful delivery
of these lines where you can tell it's so insincere.
And he says to Jamie that he'll tell them that behavior is, you
know, unacceptable. Should he see them again?
And that's when you can tell he's ushering Jamie out and
promptly ending anymore of Jamie's prying.
And it's a really well executed scene because with the acting,
the facial expressions, the pauses, all of those details,
you can tell that something is afoot, especially when
Cunningham closes the door and pauses here for a moment and is
contemplating his next move on this chess board between him and
Jamie. Back in Savannah, we see William
changing when Amaranthus enters the room.
And I think this is so funny because such a visual call back
to Jamie when we saw him with his shirt off and his long hair
not tied back, or even in Blood of My Blood when we saw his
father in the same state without his shirt on.
It's really trying to bridge the gap between William and the rest
of the Frasers and how he is indeed a Fraser.
And that's when we see Amaranthus enter the room with
the waistcoat that she had embroidered for Ben and she
notes that William looks to be of similar size.
This is when she explains that all of the beetles on the
waistcoat can be found in the colonies and they are all
anatomically correct. So again, this is a visual call
back to to the opening of the episode when we got the title
card and we can see an up close shot of this beautiful
embroidery detail. The costume department of this
show is one of the best on television and I think that this
is really another beautiful example similar to Claire's
wedding dress, where we get to see that shine.
In the book, William actually wakes up to the waistcoat in his
room along with a suit from Lord John.
So the show is using this scene to establish the attraction
between William and Amaranthus. And in the books, John makes a
point to refer to Amaranthus as William's cousin quite often.
But William is very attuned to Amaranthus and her advances on
him. They do that with her gliding
her hands over his shoulders and looming in his room longer than
she should without a chaperone. So the show is keeping it very
simple and straightforward here so that we can't ignore the fact
that they're queuing that up for us in the book.
Lord John is actually a witness to it a number of times.
So I do wonder if we're going to get him setting eyes on the two
of them interacting and picking up on this attraction between
them like he does in the story. When William asks her why
beetles, Amaranthus explains her background to him and how her
father is not noble. He's actually a naturalist and a
bookseller, and her grandfather was a botanist.
She also explains that that's where her name, Amaranthus comes
from, which means pigweed. And this conversation was taken
from an earlier one in the book between William and Amaranthus.
And it's sort of intermingled with the conversation they had
in the last episode when they were outside together.
So they moved it here to help imply that the two of them are
growing closer and have that sort of commonality between them
of not having family that is truly nobility.
Which will come up later in the episode when William admits to
Amaranthus that he is a bastard. And again, the show double s
down on making it clear that there's an attraction between
them because William saying it's a beautiful name is a show
edition. Back at the Ridge, Bree and
Roger are pitching the idea to Jamie that they go to Savannah
with the secondary mission of getting weapons.
And Bree, knowing that she has a letter of safe passage from Lord
John, is thinking of using the Frenchman's gold to pay for
those weapons. This is all coming in light of
the news of the battle coming to the mountains that they had all
read in Frank's book. And in the book, Jamie worries
that using the gold in any capacity might tip people off,
and he knows that gold is worth something everywhere, so once
people know that you have it, they all want it.
In the book, Jamie hasn't touched the gold himself because
he doesn't feel it's truly his, but also because he doesn't want
to use it directly. So he often shaves it down,
turns it into Nuggets, rubs dirt on them, and then passes them
through multiple men that he trusts in different places and
never in the same place twice. And so it slowly gets turned
into cash bit by bit. And so Jamie is immediately
dismissive of that idea in the show.
And we do get a little tiny hint of that musket ball making later
on in the episode between Rodger and Fergus.
But ultimately Jamie shoots the idea down and he's dismissive of
it. And that's when Claire decides
to go and speak with him directly because she doesn't
want Jamie to punish Brie or Rodger simply because he is
still angry about John. And this is when we get a really
big confrontation between Jamie and Claire and a pretty faithful
adaptation from the book where this scene takes place in
chapter 37. And we follow it quite closely
throughout this scene. The main difference is that this
conversation takes place outside in the book while they're
walking. And in the show, they're
obviously in their room. But the dialogue is basically
one for one. And I really love being able
able to see it all play out on screen so closely to how I
envisioned the cadence and the line delivery while reading the
story. And not only is it a beautiful
moment of prose in the book, but it also offers a lot of humorous
moments between the two of them as well.
And also a lot of visual callbacks to earlier seasons
between Jamie and Claire, especially this one where we see
him untying her laces like he did during their wedding.
And the show even goes so far as to have the exact same camera
blocking for this shot to make sure that that visual pair RLL
is obvious to us. Their interactions throughout
this scene reminds me very much of when they were younger and
they had this sort of naivete about their relationship dynamic
and neither of them really knew what they were doing.
And it feels akin to that in a very satisfying way as a show
watcher and a book reader. Especially because we can tell
that even after all this time, Jamie is still a jealous,
jealous man when it comes to Claire, and his love for her
will always rear its ugly head in these ways.
But it's also a really tender moment between the two of them,
and I thought it was a highlight of the episode for Sam in
particular and his acting choices.
What I particularly love about this scene between Jamie and
Claire is that it takes them a while to get to the root of the
argument itself. And a lot of that is because
Jamie is guarding the truth very closely, and he doesn't want to
admit it to Claire for a number of reasons.
And so even though it often presents itself as though Jamie
is angry at Claire herself, he's often angry at the situation and
how irrational he feels with his reactions being so strong.
And that's been consistent throughout the course of their
relationship. And I really love how many
visual callbacks we get with the camera blocking in the scene,
having the two of them sitting this way on the bed.
And then there are other visual callbacks littered throughout
the conversation between the two of them.
But this fight feels very much like one of the fights that they
would have had in Season 1 or Season 2.
And that is a testament to both Katrina Balf and Sam Heun's
acting and how they can both fall back into that cadence that
they had even when they were young, because the actors and
the characters have grown older. And so much of the way that
their intimate scenes are shot and acted out are different,
both for the characters and for the actors.
Ultimately, for me, the highlight of this entire scene
is Sam's acting here because he conveys so effortlessly both the
longing and the upset that he has in his heart over the
situation and how scared he is that what he's worried about
might manifest and actually come true, which is that John will
come between Claire and him in their marriage bed.
And even though Claire feels that that's an impossibility,
it's something that she's able to recognize as a very real fear
instilled very deeply in Jamie. This intimacy scene is used in a
number of ways. First of all, there's a lot of
visual callbacks to earlier scenes in the show.
We get a lot of camera blocking that represents that.
But we also can tell that in addition to the use of an
intimacy coordinator on set, their sex life would have
changed as they aged. And these scenes are shot as a
way to reflect that. And I really love the camera
work for the moment between the two of them here because it
reminded me of a scene in Season 4 when they first came to
America. So again, the camera blocking is
used very effectively here to draw a lot of parallels to when
they were younger and show us that even though the nature of
how these scenes are shot on screen for us, they have
maintained the level of intimacy throughout the course of their
relationship, friendship. And it's the way that they still
come back to one another when there's a disconnect in their
relationship. I really loved the camera work
for the moment after when Claire asks if they've gotten that out
of their system now and Jamie's face here is just so tender and
open. We get the line from the book of
Claire asking did I break the skin and Jamie saying you do
that every time you touch me, Sassanac.
One part that's been omitted from the book is that Jamie
actually speaks in Irish Gaelic and delivers the line.
My body is out of my control. She was the half of my body, the
very half of my soul. The next day we see Jamie and
Claire out on the porch and he finds Claire out there holding
Frank's book and he has this funny line about going to bed,
fighting about her third husband, waking to find her
reading a book written by her first.
The two of them start to think through Frank's book and what
his motive might have been for writing it, and they both know
that Frank had no reason to love Jamie, if anything, he'd hate
him forever for taking Claire from him.
Then we get this great narrative call back to when Claire told
Blackjack Randall the day of his death and how she used that to
torture him and wonders if perhaps Frank is doing the same
with his book. And I loved the line that Jamie
delivers that no one can be tortured with the truth as well
as a lie. Clear then expresses that she
can no longer tell what's real anymore, and that's what's
worrying her. And we can tell that Jamie is
feeling the same way about this situation.
He's been mulling over this book for many chapters by this point
in the story, and we've seen him talking to other people on the
Ridge in the show about it. So you can tell it's weighing
heavily on both of their minds. That's when Claire leaves and
Jamie picks the book back up. And we can hear Frank's voice
again saying, you know, it's real in your heart.
You know, what's written is the truth.
The shot of Jamie looking out over his land and hearing that
voice in his head was used in the trailer.
And I had a feeling that he was thinking very heavily about the
future and what to do about it when I saw the trailer
originally. And I think the use of Frank's
voice is a great way to convey his own thoughts, even though it
sounds like it's, you know, Frank literally saying those
words to Jamie. It's meant to be reflection of
Jamie's thoughts and feelings about the subject matter.
It's just manifesting in Frank's voice.
At the luncheon, we can see William approaching a man named
General Leslie, and he starts to ask after Benjamin.
William makes it clear that he finds it very hard to believe
that Benjamin would have perished at the camp that he
visited, and Leslie informs him that the only information he
received was one letter after they were captured and he has
not heard anything more about them since.
To William, that feels like a dead end.
And then Leslie asks if William would be able to speak to what
he saw at this camp, and William agrees.
He's asking because he's trying to figure out what the
conditions of are the prisoners at these camps.
And then General Leslie refers to Lord John and references
speaking to him because Lord John has experience with
prisoners. And that's when William realizes
and learns that Lord John was at Ardsmere Prison in Scotland 25
years ago. And so this is yet another piece
of the puzzle to William's parentage being slotted into
place. The dialogue itself is taken
from chapter 44 in the book, and it actually takes place with a
man named Preston, not General Leslie.
When we cut back to the Ridge, we get a scene from the books
that I wasn't sure we would see when a young girl approaches
Claire, asking if she would be willing to help her mother who
is attempting to deliver her baby but having difficulty.
In the book, the girl's name is Agnes Cloudtree and she and her
family are Cherokee, whereas the show has changed their name to
Whitaker. This takes place in chapter 54
in the book and much of the scene plays out exactly like the
book version of events. Claire telling Susanna that
she's having twins, which surprises her and trying to get
her up and moving so that she can move them in the womb.
We also get this quick shot of Fanny, who's bringing honey
water to Susanna and again reiterates to us that she's
become a quick study and has interest in medicine and helps
Claire with a lot of her patients.
That's when we cut back to the luncheon and we see William
approaching the table to sit sit down beside John, and instead we
see Percy sit down. This look between them again is
pretty charged, and this conversation is a really
effective info dump because Percy reveals that he is looking
for a Claudel Fraser who owns a print shop in town, and that he
had written him several letters already and is trying to get in
touch with him. John is very surprised to see
him again and learn all of this information from him that he's
offering up so candidly. Like the fact that Claudel was
born in Paris in a brothel, then taken from the brothel by a tall
redheaded Scotsman named Tracer. Then under the table, we can see
that Percy is putting his hand on John's thigh.
So again, these two have a very long history between the two of
them. If you've never read Lord John's
novellas, I highly recommend them.
They're fantastic and Percy is woven deeply into John's story.
Percy makes it clear that he wants John to contact Fergus
this and connect him to Percy, and John says he will consider
it only because he had helped with William last year.
But John also needs help finding Captain Richardson, and he knows
that Percy is the person to help with that.
And so the two of them agree and they share this look between the
two of them. And again, it does a great job
conveying that complicated past between the two of them because
John had once loved Percy, but he can admit now that he neither
likes nor trusts him. Back at the Ridge, we see Aaron
Whitaker show up at the Big House and we get a more flushed
out conversation between the two of them than we do in the book.
Because in the book Mr. Cloud Tree is outside and he is drunk.
And in the show, the Cloud Trees are instead the Whitakers, and
they're a free family that do not want to involve themselves
with white people because they believe it to be dangerous.
Jamie points out to Aaron that his wife needs to let Jamie's
wife help her, and so he is resolved to allow it to happen,
even though he has such little trust in white men.
Jamie insists that no one will ever know that they were at
their house, and Aaron agrees. And so Jamie invites him out of
the room for a dream of whiskey so that Claire can do her work.
And that's it's when we cut back to Savannah again where we see
William presenting something to Amaranthus, which she is clearly
expecting to be a present, but instead finds him presenting her
with Ben's uniform and belongings that he recovered on
his journey to New Jersey. Her face very quickly falls.
So you can tell that something's going on here.
So we as viewers alongside William can tell that she's not
particularly thrilled with William presenting Ben's uniform
to her, and William clarifies that he went on his own and
brought it back for Trevor after Amaranthus insists she didn't
ask him to do this for her. We can see her touching the
uniform with this sort of hesitation.
And again, I think it's great visual foreshadowing for a much
larger plot that we aren't Privy to yet.
And she brings it to put it with the rest of Ben's belongings,
and she's visibly uncomfortable by this.
And that's when William spots the figurine that he had gifted
Ben at the top of episode 2 in the drawer.
I do love that we get this overhead shot of all the other
things that Ben claimed as his belongings because it gives
insight into him being a real, fully fleshed out person.
And when William asks to see the figurine, Amaranthus explains
that Ben had gave it to her before he left for the raid so
that she'd be able to give it to Trevor.
This is the only thing so far that has made William pause and
rethink his theory that Ben is alive.
And we can see that Amaranthus is trying to move away from this
subject matter. So she quickly takes the
figurine back, closes the drawer, and invites William
outside on a walk. That's where we get these
beautiful shots of beetles. So again, foreshadowing to their
conversation and finches, which again get brought up in this
line of dialogue that Amaranthus delivers from the book.
And she explains that her father taught her that finches learn
songs from its parents. So if you take an egg from one
nest and put it in another one some miles away, the nestling
will learn the songs of the new parents instead of the one who
laid the egg. William tells her that her
waistcoat was a huge hit at the luncheon and they start to have
the conversation about all of the different beetles found on
the waistcoat. And that's when we can see her
using it as an excuse to again cross a line and a boundary and
touch William with her hands on his chest.
This is when she points out the Eastern Hercules beetle and it's
a reflection again from the top of the episode and it's
significant even though the dialogue here is slightly
different with William saying Tedious the ruler, whereas in
the book he says Tithian, the rebel.
Amaranthus then draws a comparison between the Beatle
and William and how he does not intend to live his life to
please other people's expectations.
This up close shot of the embroidery is just so beautiful.
I really hope that they put this outfit on display somewhere
after the show wraps because I was so glad they gave it its due
on the show and we actually got to see an up close version of
all of this beautiful embroidery.
And William in the book and in the show is shocked by how
direct Amaranthus is. But he notes that she's always
this direct. And in the book, he asks her
what she means of expectations. By this point in the book,
Amaranthus has already offered to give William an heir to his
title so that he wouldn't have to renounce it.
And she's proposed that William marry her.
And once she gives him a son, he can leave her as a Dowager
Countess of whatever estate he goes home.
And there's a lot of back and forth about it.
Instead, the show has them kiss here, and we skipped that part
until a later episode. So again, they're really trying
to push the fact that there is a love story brewing between the
two of them in the show, and that Amaranthus is a little bit
more calculated than I think people understand at face value.
Back at the Ridge, Claire successfully delivers the first
baby, which is a boy, and realizes that the other baby is
upside down. After they have Susanna push,
the baby is born, but it's unmoving.
We don't hear crying, and we learn that it's a girl and
Claire knows something is wrong. And that's when we see her carry
the baby to the table by the window and start to perform CPR
to try and revive her. And Jamie is watching all of
this from the doorway, and he can tell that the baby is gone.
But Claire is unwilling to give up on this child.
And we see her start to get really emotional.
And that's when we get a lot of context from the books that I
wasn't sure that the show was going to dive into regarding the
blue light healing power that Claire has as she's holding this
baby in her arms. It reminds her very deeply of
holding faith. And we get these flashbacks from
Season 2 of Claire in Paris, both audibly with the dialogue
overlay and then visually with the Raven and the blue light.
And we see the shot of Claire holding Faith and singing the
song to her from Season 2. And that's when in the present
moment we get this up close shot of Claire's hand and the veins
running through her hand. And the camera work here is an
interesting way to convey this magic because we almost see her
veins vibrating in her hand and then also in her neck.
Master Raymond's voice over talks about Claire's aura and
how hers is blue. And in the book he also mentions
Jamie's aura being red and he tells Claire to call out for him
while the two of them try and save her life.
So they haven't yet touched upon Jamie's red aura and they don't
have Jamie holding Claire's shoulder like he is in the book
while she breathes new life into this this baby.
But we're able to then hear the baby cry for the first time and
Claire is in shock and confused. She doesn't understand what she
did. So she hands the baby to Jamie
to give to Susanna. And in the book, Claire has
Jamie's hand on her shoulder. Like I said, for strength and as
she comes into her full powers, she leans on him to revive the
baby. So again, the show is having her
be able to do this without him touching her and no one in the
room can understand how she was able to accomplish this.
Jamie as well. We can tell that Jamie has a lot
of thoughts about what is happening to Claire because he
has recognized in her a face that she makes often that he
registers as her knowing she's unable to do anything else.
And again, this close up that we get of Claire's face is a great
way of conveying that she doesn't understand what happened
herself. The decision then to cut to the
shot of the moon is really clever because it's not only a
visual callback, but it's also a narrative 1 to the prophecy that
Claire learns about herself in season 4 and how she will come
into her full power when her hair is fully white.
Part of that prophecy includes a Raven eating, swallowing the
moon. In the show, they have Jamie
confront Claire about what happened and he explains it
doesn't make sense that she was able to do what she did and he
asks her to give him an explanation even if it doesn't
make complete sense to her. And in the book, while she was
healing the baby, she had thought about Roger telling her
about Doctor McEwan and how he had healed Buck.
And then she also thought about Melva, Christie's baby boy, and
how she was unable to save him, but she had felt a blue spark in
her hands that dwindled and then died.
And so she explains to Jamie the lore around Master Raymond and
everything that she felt in Paris.
Claire starts explaining how she felt in Paris after Faith was
born and then died, and how Claire was so ill and was dying
herself. And she admits that at one point
she wanted to die. And Jamie's face here is just so
heartbreaking because I don't think he's ever heard her say
words like that before. Master Raymond had come and put
his hands on her and she felt within her a light pale blue
light that spread all through her bones and it felt as though
he had burned the infection out of her.
And that is what she tells Jamie.
She felt again, stronger from her own fingers going into the
body of that baby, and then she was able to feel the heartbeat
again. That's when Jamie tells Claire
again that she is a brilliant healer and that he's witnessed
it himself multiple times, but he's resigned to tell her that
he didn't see anything blue. He watched her try and save that
baby. He knew she was thinking of
Faith and so was he. And his facial expression in
this scene is really poignant to me, and Claire's too, because
she can tell that what she felt was real, but it's so beyond the
possibility of reality that even to her, she's kind of resolved
to the idea that she's making it up or that something's tricking
her. Claire then brings up Master
Raymond and how perhaps that was how he was able to bring Faith
back to life. So again, we're getting the
possibility of Faith being alive again in the show and Jamie
questions why he wouldn't have returned their daughter to them
if he was able to revive her. Claire points out that he was on
the run, he might not have been able to even if he wanted to,
and she starts unwrapping her hair and asks Jamie what color
her hair is. He tells her the beautiful line
of all the colors of the earth before he approaches her and
when she turns we can see that she has more white in her hair
now than she did before. Jamie tells her it's the color
of moonlight all around her face.
The visual and narrative call back to the prophecy that Claire
learns about in season 4 and how her hair will be fully white
when she comes into her full power is another item from the
books that I wasn't sure we were going to get in the show.
But I am glad that they're including it, because I feel
like the show has largely veered away from a lot of the magic
that Claire herself is involved in in the original source
material. And so to have that be
reintroduced in this final season helps me to wrap my head
around how they might. Conclude Jamie's ghost storyline
because introducing more of this magic is a really great way to
use the magic as a way to explain his ghost.
And it will be very important in this Kings Mountain storyline
that we've been teasing for the first 3 episodes of Season 8
because Claire having these powers is going to be pivotal
for that scene in particular. Then we see Jamie bring Fanny
out to a Karen that he has made for her to come visit whenever
she wants to speak with Jane. And this scene was really,
really sweet between the two of them.
Jamie tells Fanny that he wishes he'd known Jane and that she
would have been welcome to live with them on the Ridge as well.
And he encourages Fanny to talk to her more often and come to
this place and put a stone on the Karen every time she speaks
with her. And we see Fanny tell Jane she
loves her so much and misses her deeply.
And Jamie tells her that this is her in Jane's home.
And they share this really beautiful hug between one
another that was really, really sentimental and sweet.
Fanny in the story is struggling with her grief.
And I think that it's going to continue to be an important
narrative thread throughout this season.
And using her as a way to dig up more information about the faith
storyline makes sense to me narratively as well.
And while they are hugging, they hear a gunshot ring out and
Jamie tells Fanny to stay put as he goes to investigate.
And that's when he finds Cleveland alongside a wagon.
And the two men that we had seen earlier in the episode were
found smuggling guns onto Jamie's property.
Cleveland calls out Jamie for not realizing what's happening
right under his nose and tells Jamie to step side.
And that's when Fanny appears. She tells Jamie who the men are.
And that's when Cleveland almost serves as kind of a proxy for
the audience to point out to Jamie that things are happening
because he's being so passive. He can be angry about the
situation all he wants, but he's not actively doing anything
about it. And that negligence is now
showing up in real time on his property.
And so Cleveland leaves with the guns, yes, but Jamie first
starts to search their bodies For more information, and that's
when he finds a letter inside the boot of one of the men.
He's able to find what he was looking for, which is something
to tie Cunningham to the greater mystery of what's going on right
under Jamie's nose. And Cunningham is naturally
curious, but Jamie warns him, get off my property.
Leave this business to me. We can watch Fanny observing all
of this in real time. And we know she's a very
observant young girl. And so again, all of this will
come up later on. And she's not being shielded
from a lot of the realities of the Ridge because she's around
first and foremost to witness it.
But she's also a lot smarter than I think people give her
credit for. So Cunningham leaves but says
I'm taking the guns and Jamie immediately heads to the trading
post. He walks right past Crombie into
Crombie's trading post and shuts the door on him and that's when
we see him lock the door and confront Cunningham head on.
To me this is one of the best scenes of the season so far
because Jamie and him are toe to toe.
I think these actors are really great opposite one another, and
the characters are super compelling against one another
too, because Cunningham is such a snake of a person and the
actor sells it so well. Jamie tells him that the two men
that had visited him are dead and shows Cunningham the letter
that is presumably from Cunningham's uncle and Jamie
knows he has no kin. So that's the first crack in the
facade that Cunningham has built while on the Ridge.
In that letter, the Uncle Eldon starts talking about AB's Fraser
Eye, a subspecies of balsam fir, and Jamie plays dumb until he
tells Cunningham that he knows the letter isn't about trees and
arms. This scene reminded me a lot of
the raid scene and the first time that Jamie actually meets
Lord John Gray. I felt like his line delivery,
the way he crowds Cunningham over the desk, all of that
seemed very much in line with his behavior when he I was
younger and he performed that raid.
We can also tell just from the acting choices here that
Cunningham knows Jamie's a lot smarter than he first presented,
and he's starting to piece together this plot quite
quickly, which is when we see him glance over to the wall and
look at the barrel of the gun that we saw him holding earlier
on in the episode. So again, that's a visual call
back to earlier on in this particular episode, and
Cunningham looks at it at the same time.
And the acting again is just so perfect because I do not believe
for a second that Cunningham is actually worried about being
discovered here. But Jamie doesn't know that, and
so he takes the weapon down and finds the code and cypher, if
you will, to read the letter. Cunningham then gets up from
behind his desk and walks around so that he's in front of Jamie,
who's moved over to this other table to read the letter with
the cypher. And as he sits down in this
chair, we can see him exhale and close his eyes, and he's very
much resolved to the fact that Jamie has figured out what's
going on. We see the cipher over the
letter and Jamie reads out loud, provide update on Fraser's
Ridge. Additional arms coming soon.
Progress is slow in Rowan County, in need of new recruits.
And we see Cunningham hunch over, almost like he's in
disbelief. But he's acting.
The actor is acting like someone who is acting, if that makes
sense. And he says to Jamie very
casually that it's very impressive, Mr. Fraser.
And you are right, that letter is not about trees.
I assume it is from my commander, Major Patrick
Ferguson. And that's when Jamie realizes
that Cunningham is still working for the British, and he is in
charge of turning loyal southerners into a loyalist
militia. Jamie is obviously furious, as
Cunningham so openly admits that he's been raising a militia
right under Jamie's nose and that he has been gone for a long
time, so he's missed all of this happening on his land.
And it's clear in this scene that Cunningham is not worried
about Jamie being a serious threat to him or his plans at
all. And he makes the argument that
more people on his land are willing to switch sides than
Jamie has realized, but also that Jamie and him are probably
more aligned politically than Jamie would like to admit, too.
Jamie says, speak plainly, Sir, for I do not understand.
And Cunningham, again, moves very strategically.
It's like they're playing chess in the scene with how they move
around each other. He moves beside the door and
then tells Jamie that he would be better to protect his land
and the people on it by aligning with Cunningham and the British
than fighting against them. If they can quicken the end of
this war by letting the British win, then Jamie and all the
people on the Ridge are going to be able to keep the land that
had been gifted to him and maintain the life that they had
been leading. And that's only possible if the
British win. The smug look on Cunningham's
face is so perfect because it Tees up everything we need to
know about the ensuing battle, both literally and
metaphorically, between these two men and how Cunningham is
really going to go toe to toe with him quite easily.
He's not intimidated by Jamie in the least.
And as we watch Jamie leave the trading post with this new
information, we get another one of Frank's voice overs and he
rides back to the big house with Frank's voice telling him, I
told you Fraser, it's coming. The pieces are falling into
place. Just as I wrote Each day brings
you closer to Kings Mountain and closer to your history.
The last line in particular is fascinating to me because even
though Frank is writing this from the future, at the time
that Jamie is having this thought, it's his future, not
his history that they're talking about.
So the line of it's bringing you closer to Kings Mountain and
closer to your history I find really fascinating.
And again, it's such an interesting play on words that
gets you thinking about the time loop that Jamie and Claire exist
within. When one of them dies, does it
all just restart and they find each other again?
That's a theory that a lot of people who read the books and
watch the show have contemplated.
So I do hope that all of this ties into Jamie's ghost in some
way, and that we wrap it up in a satisfying way in the show
version.