Outlander Recap: "Dragonfly in Amber"

The finale episode opens with a shot of a b&w telly: Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel flirting with John Steed in The Avengers. It’s 1968! We’re in a new era and Roger Wakefield, adopted son of Reverend Wakefield, all grown-up and bearded, is delivering the toast at his father’s wake. Remember that kindly man who gave Claire and Frank shelter after her return from the past? Well, the son is quite profoundly sad about his passing for, oh, maybe ten seconds or so when something catches his eye. Someone, rather. It’s the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen and the red hair is like a sign announcing her as Jamie and Claire’s daughter. The show’s casting call actually specified that Brianna should be incredibly beautiful and, boy, they sure nailed it! She’s the kind of girl you fall in love with at first sight, even though it’s your own father’s wake. (Reverend Wakefield was an understanding man. He’d probably be happy for the kids.)

An older version of Claire, with a smart Jackie-O blowout and just a touch of grey, moves in a more controlled, somber way. Truth be told, Caitriona Balfe is just far too young and beautiful to believably have a daughter Brianna’s age. Still, there’s a marked change in her manner. A kind of slower, sad, matronly air about her. Perhaps, now that she’s a surgeon, there’s even a little more authority, though she was never really lacking in that. Whatever it is, it makes the mother/daughter dynamic work.

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Who’s the mother and who’s the daughter? Without that grey streak, you’d never know.[/caption]

Eager for the company, Roger invites the two to stay overnight. Claire, eager to chase old ghosts, agrees. And then we’re back to the early morning of April 16, 1746! And you know what means: The Battle of Culloden. Jamie practically begs Prince Charlie, officially the worst person in history, to retreat. The British will surely destroy them! But the cocky, entitled shit won’t be moved. “Mark me!” the price replies, as the worst person in history, often says. It’s happening. Cumberland’s army is marching.

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Culloden is even more tragic because you survived it.[/caption]

Back to 1968: Brianna and Roger, both historians, visit Fort William, the very place the father she’s never known was almost flogged to death over 200 years ago. No wonder she gets the creeps. Meanwhile, Older Claire visits a dilapidated, ruined Lallybroch to torture herself. Nostalgia and regret waft around her like a perfume. Twenty years later, she’s still mourning. Throughout this episode, Older Claire finds new ways to salt her woulds—looking up documents, walking along the muddy battlefield to talk to Jamie’s ghost. Makes you wonder about her and Frank’s marriage. “Did you love him?” Brianna asks her mother, full of uncertainty, and Claire looks back as guilty as a bank robber. It’s a safe bet Frank and she were not the happiest couple in the greater Boston area.

At Roger’s university, Brianna runs into a firebrand Scottish activist preaching for independence and, holy hell, it’s Geillis Duncan! (Sidenote: Nicola Sturgeon could really use this one. If she has been involved in the 2014 campaign, Scotland woulda certainly voted Leave. Or else!) She’s called Gillian Edgars now. It’s before she went back in time, before she met Claire, before she burned as a witch. “Where is our Bonnie Prince Charlie today?” she asks, handing out pamphlets. She and Brianna argue over the Scottish character of James VI and Queen Anne. (These little history discussions set in modern age are just delightful! They give the show an almost meta pleasure the characters drop little historical bits. When Claire looks at a mannequin of Prince Charlie and calls him a fool, knowing that she speaks from experience makes it quite the burn.

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Vote for an independent Scotland! Or I'll murder you![/caption]

Back to 1746: Speaking of that royal prat, there’s only one way to stop Culloden now: Kill that pretentious wimp! (Hey, if it means never hearing the phrase “Mark me!” again, I’m all for it!) Sadly, Dougal, the Jacobite warrior from hell, overhears the plotting and it’s a fight to the death. With Claire’s help, Jamie drives a dagger straight into his uncle’s heart. The baddest highlander ever is dead. I’ll miss him, even if Claire won’t. And then, dammit, Rupert walks in! What, are Jamie and Claire gonna kill him too? Before killing the prince? That’s a lot of killing. Too much, even. Jamie knows what he has to do now. Two hours, he asks Rupert. “Just give me two hours!” He sends Fergus off with the deed to Lallybroch to Jenny and her son.

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You can't kill me! I'm the passionate spirit of the Highlanders![/caption]

In between the awkward, endearing flirting of history geeks, Brianna and Roger search through Reverend Wakefield’s papers to find a newspaper clipping about Claire’s disappearance—her three-year disappearance! Sadly, because Claire was foolish enough to teach the girl math, Brianna knows Claire was already three months pregnant when she reunited with Frank. The jig is up! It’s all coming out now! Claire spills it all to her daughter (and, for some strange reason, their new friend Roger). The whole damn time-travelling, kilt-dropping affair. To which, Brianna basically says, “You’re nuts, mom!” Before you call Brianna a brat for wishing her dead, what would you say? Think about it. Claire’s lucky Brianna didn’t lock her up and call the headshrinkers!

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So my options are to either believe you have time travelled or to think that you're crazy? Tough choice.[/caption]

While the kids are out having a wee scotch, Claire finds one of Gellish’s nationalist pamphlets with her picture and puts it all together. Being Claire, she tries to save her witch friend. First, she finds a drunk, broken husband named Greg—men who marry this woman just do not do well—and then Gellish’s notebooks, filled with formulas on time travel and sketches of Craigh na Dun.

It’s all happening fast now as both storylines head to those damn rocks. 1746: Jamie sends his men home to save them. “I’ll not have my kin die for nothing!” he says, just as Colum knew he would. He’ll get Claire to safety and then come back to honorably die on Culloden with Murtagh. 1968: Claire tells her daughter and Roger about Geillis/Gillian and wonders if she can even save her without hurting Roger. His ancestor is the Geillis and Dougal’s baby, but, luckily, he’s got a pretty easy, breezy attitude about time travel. “How can I not be born? I’m here! I can’t just evaporate.” Though it’s nice Claire is finally—finally!—considering the consequences of messing with the time stream, they brush it off quick. They’re off to save the witch!

The argument we all knew was coming is settled with, perhaps, one of the strangest moments in two seasons of Outlander. When Claire argues that they should stay and die together, Jamie surprisingly counters with the life of their child. “You have not been a day late in your courses in all the times since you first took me to your bed but it’s been two months now.” Wait, what? He’s been…keeping tabs on her menstrual cycles?! Is that really a thing husbands really know about? My god, the things I find out from this show!

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It's not creepy that you're tracking my cycle. It's not creepy at all. It's not.[/caption]

It all ends at Craigh na Dun. In 1968, Geillis sets her drunk husband on fire for some human–sacrifice–fueled time travel. She’s off to see the Jacobites! In 1746, Jamie declares his love for Claire and, because it’s Outlander, they even have a quickie! A superfast half–a–minute–long shag right at those stones as battle noises begin in the distance!

Brianna believes everything now. (Aren’t you sorry you told your mother you wished she was dead?) But there’s one last revelation. Roger’s father did some research. One Fraser survived the battle of Culloden and yeah, they know it was Jamie. “I have to go back,” Claire says as the sun rises, really suddenly, through the stones. The light shines though and hits her beautiful blue irises and all the time-travel magic and history fades away into a passionate moment in Claire’s eyes, and I think, “So pretty!” Outlander often has that effect. Man, Jamie is gonna be so psyched in season three when he sees how well his still-smoking-hot wife has aged.