Come sail over the sea to Skye with us this summer, as we take a trip through the stones to the first season of the television adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series. First published in 1991 with Outlander, Gabaldon’s multi-genre novels features the time traveling love story of Claire (Caitriona Balfe), a 1940s woman who finds herself out of time and place in Scotland in the era of the Jacobite rebellion. The U.S. pay TV network Starz debuted the Outlander TV series in 2014, with the show concluding its fifth season last year. In celebration of the ninth novel out this autumn and the sixth season of the TV series debuting in early 2022, we’re spending our 2021 summer vacation at Castle Leoch.
Jamie’s exiled, Claire’s arrested for suspected witchcraft. No one said the course of true love ran smooth. But during Claire’s witchcraft trial, she discovers something about her friend that rocks her world.
It should also be noted that Outlander is very much an 18+ series, with graphic violence and sexuality throughout. Spoilers within for both the tv show and the novel series.
1. Prison Of the Heart
This episode opens with Claire and Geillis thrown in the Thieves’s Hole while they await their trial for witchcraft. But the bars around them are no match for the prison of Claire’s broken trust once she and Geillis have it out and her suspicions that her friend is a murderer are confirmed. Add to that the revelation to Geillis that neither of their men are coming adds fuel to the fire. Crisis does make strange bedfellows though, as the women realize they need to bond together to at least survive the night before their trial. But their friendship is irrevocably shattered at this point, and there’s no going back. This will have consequences in later seasons.
2. Turning Tail
This witchcraft trial shows just how Claire had everything and nothing all at once in Leoch. She was surrounded by people who welcomed her with open arms . . . but wouldn’t bat an eyelash at turning against her if the price was right. But then there’s Ned Gowan. With brilliant and clever skill, he turns each of these witnesses on their ears, exposing the Swiss cheese sized holes in their story. Throughout this season we’ve seen how logic and science collide with the deeply held religious beliefs of the village, and this is the largest clash to date. But unlike earlier in the season, that science and logic takes the upper hand thanks to Ned’s clever cross-examination.
If there is anyone that Claire can possibly trust (and no one can blame her for not trusting anyone), it would be Ned Gowan, who appears to have come to court of his own accord instead of Colum’s doing. But that also leaves one wondering what kind of reaction Claire will have if she makes it out of this alive and back to Castle Leoch.
But Ned’s legal skill can only take Claire so far, as powerful emotional testimony from Laoghaire and Father Bain sway the crowd towards conviction. The only way out is for Claire to renounce Geillis and claim Geillis bewitched her. For Ned, Geillis is a lost cause as there’s always been suspicion of her witchcraft. Claire will be easier to acquit.
3. Geillis Revelation #1
There’s a fair bit we learn about Geillis in this episode. And the first of these two major revelations does endear Claire a bit to her friend. It seems that Geillis is a Jacobite, falling in love with Dougal over politics and siphoning away a fair bit of her late husband’s money to the cause. And while that’s all good, watch her face when Claire utters Nathan Hale’s famous words that he’ll say about 30 years in the future from this night: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” It’s brief, but you can see a fleeting moment of confusion across her face before she recovers with “Nicely put.” It’s our biggest hint yet (and one I didn’t notice until watching for this recap) that Geillis knows Claire’s time traveler secret. Which leads up to what I was hinting previously: Geillis is also a time traveler.
Continued belowBut there’s going to be something else that confirms this in a bit and that also damns Geillis to her fate.
4. Geillis Revelation #2
In the chaos of the conviction of Claire and Geillis (as Claire does not take Ned’s advice), Geillis utters a single year to Claire: 1968. Claire starts to put more and more of the pieces together about her friend, but it is in Geillis’s confession that she is a witch that the truth reveals itself on her shoulder: a smallpox vaccination scar. Now we know that Geillis, like Claire, is a time traveler. What Geillis called the mark of the devil to save her friend opens the door to many questions for Claire (and us viewers). How did she get here? What was her purpose in time travel? Did she travel willingly or by accident as Claire? Does she return to 1968? Does she cross paths with Claire in the 20th century, and if so, what will either of them remember? We won’t see the answers to these questions in the five remaining episodes of this season, but as I said earlier: this will have consequences for Claire and Jamie in later seasons.
Geillis is certainly over-the-top dramatic in this moment, baring her breasts and pregnant body, playing on the religious fervor of the crowd. But it works, and it buys Jamie and Claire a quick and undetected escape from the village.
5. Confession Begets Confession
Geillis’s revelation of her smallpox scar now has Jamie wondering if his wife is also a witch who just escaped punishment, which prompts Claire of her own confession. It’s less scenery chewing as Geillis’s was, but it’s no shortage of emotion as Claire builds her story from explaining a vaccine to revealing her birth date of 1919. What’s perhaps a bit surprising is that Jamie, a man of reason and education, believes her. He doesn’t fully understand it, but he does trust his wife’s word, which is the bond of any successful relationship. It does leave one wondering what kind of reaction Frank Randall will have when Claire shares this story with him. (Spoiler alert: not good.) No doubt he’s also wondering how he can use this information to his own gains, but he’s keeping that close to the vest for now, wanting to learn more while simultaneously being there for his wife in a very vulnerable moment.
For a moment, you wonder if this is the end of Claire’s story, as Jamie leaves her at the stones to go back to her time. Not just yet. She wants to go home to Lallybroch. Although she admits to feeling rather aimless now that her secret is out to her husband, she can’t deny the connection they share.
Rest assured, there will be a point that Claire makes it back to the 20th century, and will do so a changed woman. But not just yet.
The Lost Papers of Black Jack Randall (Our Afterthoughts Section)
- The events of this episode correspond to chapter 25 of the Outlander novel.
- It amazes me that Geillis did not suffer a miscarriage when she and Claire were tossed in the Thieves’ Hole. That was a hard fall.
- The final scene of the opening credits is a murmuration of starlings, something Claire comments on later in prison.
We’ll see you next week for “Lallybroch” and do let us know what you thought of the episode in the comments.
As of this writing, the first season of Outlander is available for viewing on Netflix, where seasons 2-4 are also available (except in the UK). In the UK, the show is available on Amazon Prime Video UK. All five seasons of the show are also available via Starz (in the United States).
