I have grown more and more discontent and disillusioned with the final season of Outlander the closer we come to the end. We are seven episodes deep, and I’m afraid that only a badly rushed conclusion could tie up all the stories we have left. Only three episodes remain. Worse, some choices this season have been genuinely bizarre, including the shocking death of a major character and the introduction of a storyline that would have been better left out altogether.
Spoilers through Season 8, Episode 7 of Outlander on Starz follow. Ye’ve been warned, Sassenach, dya ken?
Before we go further, I should note that I have not read the novels this series is based on by author Diana Gabaldon. They’re on my to-read list. Sometimes I come to these adaptations fully versed in the source material, and sometimes it’s fun to come in blind. I do, however, know about some of the changes made including one big change this season. While I am not against making changes – often an adaptation from page to screen requires alterations – it’s always risky. Sometimes, a change that might seem rather harmless has broader implications. George R.R. Martin described this as the “butterfly effect” when he wrote about changes in adaptations to his novels in both Game Of Thrones and House Of The Dragon.
As for Outlander, I have several primary criticisms of the final season, some of which are more broad strokes and some more specific. Some of these problems began prior to the season starting, but the ripple effects of Season 7 are still being felt in Season 8, and some have only cropped up recently. Let’s look at these one-by-one and in no particular order.
The Rift With Lord John Grey
In Season 7, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) learns terrible news: Jamie (Sam Heughan) has died at sea. In her grief, she continues spying for the rebels, but she’s caught. Lord John Grey (David Berry) comes to the rescue, proposing marriage in order to insulate her from the Crown’s punishment. They wed, but the marriage is one of convenience. Grey is gay, after all, and Claire is still mourning. Well, they’re both still mourning and during one night of particularly intense weeping and drinking, with Claire seriously contemplating suicide, they end up having sex.
When Jamie shows up, alive and well, it’s a bit of an awkward reunion. In the show, we don’t actually see her or Lord John tell him that they were married in order to protect her from being hanged, but we can assume it occurs offscreen at some point. Lord John does, however, reveal that they slept together which ends in Jamie viciously beating him and then leaving him to the rebel soldiers who happen upon them. I was fully prepared, at this point, for Jamie to learn that his dear friend (who had saved his wife’s life while he was away) was set to be hanged by the rebels and go to rescue him. Instead, Jamie simply doesn’t care.
What we get, episode after episode, is Jamie acting petulant and jealous and never once considering anything from either Lord John or Claire’s point of view. At no point does he seek reconciliation. At no point does he feel remorse. It’s frustrating because of how hypocritical he is, claiming that he would never do the same when he quite literally had sex with multiple women – and fathered William (Charles Vandervaart) – when Claire had gone back through the stones to her time.
The last thing I want in the final season of this show is to find myself disliking one of the leads. Jamie can be stubborn and pigheaded, but I’ve never disliked him so much before. I don’t even blame him for his initial overreaction, especially since Lord John did provoke him, but his inability to see his own wrongdoing and his refusal to lift a finger to help Lord John really rankles. Even if he has a change of heart in these last few episodes, it’s too little, too late.
How Do You Solve A Problem Like William?
Speaking of William, he’s been a bit of a problem child for awhile now. There are two things about William’s storyline that bother me.
First, William has grown almost as tiresome as Jamie this season, perhaps even more so. Ever since he learned that Jamie was his father, he’s been brooding and impulsive, and the revelation that his adoptive father is gay only made matters worse. Again, I don’t mind this storyline, I just dislike how extended it’s become. We’re almost at the finish line, and William is just an incredibly dreary character to spend time with. And we spend a lot of time with him.
Second, William’s troubles with the opposite sex are a bit exhausting. In Season 7, he fell for Jane (Silvia Presente), a prostitute he happens upon after learning the truth of his birth. He doesn’t want to sleep with her at first – honor and such, and his fear of siring a bastard – but ultimately he relents. Offscreen, she kills an officer and is arrested. When he goes to rescue her, she’s killed herself. He takes her sister, Fanny (Florrie May Wilkinson) to live with Claire and Jamie (something we’ll touch on more in a minute).
His second love affair begins after the death of his cousin, Ben (Alex Bhat) when he meets Ben’s purported widow, Amaranthus (Carla Woodcock) a beautiful but secretive woman. They fall for one another, only to learn later that Ben has faked his death and gone turncoat, now a general for the rebel army. Worse, Amaranthus knew about it the whole time.
Not only is William unlucky in love, both the women he’s fallen for have been relatives. One by marriage, the other by blood. We learn later that Jane was the daughter of Faith who, in a wild turn of events, is the daughter of Claire and Jamie who they thought died in infancy.
The Faith Storyline Requires Too Big A Leap Of Faith (Among Other Problems)
And so we come to perhaps the most egregious subplot of them all. Not only does the Faith-was-actually-alive storyline mean that William was sleeping with his niece, it just adds a whole lot of unnecessary story to an already complex plot. We have to resolve all these threads in just a few more episodes, but the writers felt it was necessary to bring Faith back from the dead and plop one of their granddaughters in Claire and Jamie’s lap.
This is a massive coincidence, for one thing. The likelihood of them finding one another like this is preposterous. I can live with that – this is a magic-laden romance, after all – but the rest of the story is just a little too much.
For one thing, even though they explained the song Claire heard Fanny singing which first alerted her that she might be Faith’s daughter, it still rings a little hollow. Faith “died” soon after birth, and while Claire may have sung that song to her a couple times, I find it deeply unlikely that the apothecary would have heard it, let alone remembered it well enough to teach the French lacemaker the words.
That Faith survived at all seems like a pretty flagrant setup for Claire’s growing powers, which we witnessed with the recent stillbirth scene in which the Claire midwifes for the black woman and effectively resurrects the stillborn baby. What setup, you ask? Clearly Jamie will die in battle just as Frank (Tobias Menzies) writes in his detailed history of the Revolutionary War and Claire will resurrect him with her magic healing powers. Or at least that’s my prediction.
To make matters worse, I find the entire Faith storyline rather bleak when it ought to be happy. If you’re going to go to all this trouble bringing their daughter back from the dead, why have her killed off by vicious pirates? Why have Jane commit suicide before she can find her grandparents? Why have William sleep with his niece? I know this show can be very bleak, but I for one have had enough of all that. It’s the final season. Give us some stakes and let our heroes overcome them without all this misery. Which brings us to my final critique . . . .
The Unnecessary Death Of Fergus Fraser
In Episode 7, Fergus (Cesar Domboy) and Marsali (Lauren Lyle) receive a threat at their printing press. It warns them of fire and they laugh it off like all the other threats. There’s not much they can do, though they’re a bit more sanguine about the whole thing than I would be given the circumstances and their four young children.
Shocking absolutely nobody, other than Fergus and Marsali, arsons put fire to their shop and home and when they go to escape, they realize that two of their boys are on the roof (perhaps when receiving death threats, instructing the children not to sleep on the roof would be a wise precaution!) Fergus goes to the roof and starts lowering them down on a rope. The youngest falls, but Roger (Richard Rankin) catches him (Roger has become a much more likable character over the past couple seasons, by the way. Credit where it’s due).
With the second boy lowered slowly, oh so painstakingly slowly, to the ground, Fergus stops and smiles down at his wife. The floor falls out from under him and he crashes into the inferno and burns to death horribly.
Setting aside the frustration of how slow everything was here, I’m just baffled at this decision from a writing and narrative standpoint. As I’ve been informed, this is not what happens in the books. The youngest child dies in the fire instead. Frankly, at this point in the show, I would have just had them all escape. There is no real point to killing off Fergus this late in the story. It doesn’t push the story forward in any meaningful way. Marsali is widowed and her children are without their loving father. Fergus had shaken off all his demons and was finally on a good path filled with love and family.
Yes, death is realistic in this setting with so much political tension and violence, but is it good for the show? A good character death in a story always matters for reasons beyond the death and the shock value. In Game Of Thrones, the death of Ned Stark is a major catalyst for everything that comes after. The story is fundamentally altered by his betrayal and demise. So many other stories are set in motion. It was shocking, but it served a deeper purpose. Fergus’s death is just wanton violence designed to elicit a buzz on fan forums and social media. It’s a pointless, senseless, goofy ending to a character who deserved better. You might call it heroic, sure, he saved his family, but I just think it’s cynical.
Ultimately, Season 8 seems to be introducing way too much new stuff without the room to tie up all the other loose ends from previous seasons – including the ghost from the very beginning of the show.
Okay, What About The Good Stuff?
This is a lot of complaining, I realize, but I’ve enjoyed plenty of Season 8. The conflict between Jamie and Captain Cunningham (Kieran Bew) has been intriguing and exciting in turns, and I thought the episode where Cunningham tries to ambush Jamie outside the Masonic Lodge, only to have his plans thwarted, was really fantastic and exciting.
I’ve also enjoyed the adventures of Roger and William MacKenzie (Diarmaid Murtagh) – bastard son of Dougal McTavish – quite fun, though I suppose most of that was in Season 7 (they blur together as I watched them back-to-back).
I’ve never been a big fan of Brianna (Sophie Skelton) but I enjoyed her interactions with William, not that they did much good, and I’m glad that so much of the extended Fraser family has made their way to Fraser’s Ridge, which is as it should be. I’m also glad that Young Ian (John Bell) found happiness with his new wife, the Quaker, Rachel (Izzy Meikle-Small) even if it means we have to hear the word “thee” more than anyone should ever have to in a modern television series.
I wish I could say I was enjoying Claire and Jamie more, but so much of this season has been them at odds after Season 7’s conflict. I am glad they’ve taken in Fanny and found some purpose there, and I think Jamie is handling the rebellion on the Ridge fairly well, though the men who tried to kill him probably should have all been hanged. It does look a bit weak, even if he’s put their wives in charge.
With just three episodes to go, I can’t imagine this will end on a satisfying note, however. All these problems aside, it just doesn’t seem like there’s any possible way to wrap everything up. I admit to a little bias as well. I always hoped they’d make their way back to Scotland and live happily ever after at Lallybroch, surrounded by wee bairns and men in kilts.
What do you think of Season 8 so far? I definitely don’t think it’s reached Game Of Thrones or Stranger Things levels of awful, but it sure isn’t what I hoped for. Let me know on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
P.S. In the trailer above they repeat something oft-repeated in this series: We cannot change the course of history. But I think it’s been made pretty clear that they actually can. And almost certainly will (or at least prove that history, as it was written, was wrong).