SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
This wouldn’t be Outlander without Jamie’s illegal activities putting Claire’s life n danger and her being threatened with rape. So I guess that it was, in some ways, the perfect way to end their reunion episode? Everything’s back to the status quo.
Percival really, really means that he is to get a larger chunk of Jamie’s whiskey smuggling profits and he’ll do anything to get it. Up to and including hiring random brigands, whose job it is to find Jamie’s hidden casks. Fortunately for Claire – although she didn’t need him at that point – Jamie returned to his room just in time to find one of said brigands passed out on the floor with a head injury. Unfortunately for Jamie, Claire was adamant on saving the man’s life, even though he’d just tried to rape her.
I was with Jamie in letting the man die. The only reason, to me, to have saved his life was to keep him alive in order to find out who had sent him and why. But Jamie figured that all out on his own so keeping him alive was unnecessary. In any case, despite Claire’s best efforts, the man died anyway and right under Percival’s nose. Or rather, above his head, since he’d arrived at the brothel in the middle of the confusion and searched its basements for the casks Jamie had already had moved and sold.
Claire is a better woman that most. That’s something that can be said about her time and again. Doctor or no, oath to protect life or no, most people would have just let the man die. One, because he’d have attacked them and two, because that’d be one less of Percival’s lackeys to worry about. Sure she blames herself for getting Jamie into trouble, but had she not been there, his secret stash of casks would have been discovered. So really, the life she saved was her own husband’s.
But Percival was not deterred.
When his second brigand was shown to be in the same tavern as Fergus and Young Ian, I immediately suspected that the girl that Young Ian was interested in was somehow involved and a lure to trap the two. But that didn’t make sense since the brigand was a new hire and Young Ian had been eyeing the girl for a long while. Still, when he took her back to the print shop, I was incredibly uneasy and knew that something bad was about to happen. Especially since that scene was intercut with Jamie and Claire arguing about his lying to Ian Sr. about the whereabouts of his son.
I seriously thought that Young Ian was about to die. The brigand shot at him and then he was trapped in the print shop as it burnt down. Plus, Jamie was talking about how much safer he was with him and everything. If fiction has taught me one thing, it’s that when characters make declarations like that, they’re proven to be dead (pun intended) wrong. Which sort of did happen, but without the dead part. If Young Ian had died, my only consolation would have been that he didn’t die a virgin.
Thankfully, Jamie arrived at the print shop before the fire got too bad and had he presence of mind to remember that Young Ian would have been inside and went in to save him. Despite Jamie having main character plot armour (we know he’s not going to die), I was just as worried as Claire was for his life. Which is a testament to how good this show is at creating tension and suspense, even when you know a character will be safe.
The good thing about the print shop burning down is that all of Jamie’s seditious pamphlets are now gone, so Percival no longer has a heap of evidence to use against him. The few that the brigand managed to steal, however, may serve to be enough since as we saw when Robert produced one of them, Jamie’s name is all over it. So Claire and Jamie are forced to, once again, relocate. At least this way Claire gets her wish of moving out of the brothel.
I haven’t read the book for this season as yet (I’m waiting until it’s finished airing), but the internet is such a wonderfully spoiler filled place, that I know that Jamie and Claire will head off to Jamaica at some point this season. So I’m guessing that after they return Young Ian to Lallybroch, that is where they will be headed. I assumed they would be on their way there soon since Archie Campbell said that he was taking his sister with him to the West Indies.
Outlander has proven itself to be a show in which everything and everyone is important. And even if our introduction to it or them is brief and fleeting, they come into play in a key role later on. I think the Campbells will be more important than just a teaser for their travelling to Jamaica. Particularly because Margaret Campbell is a “seer” and Claire is a “dame blanche.” The siblings, I think, will be significantly involved with Jamie and Claire when they go to Jamaica. Especially when it comes to the wealthy person they are going there to serve.
One thing that Jamie and Claire will most definitely need to iron out before leaving for Jamaica, is the fact that Jamie has another wife. He can’t just pick up and go to another country with Claire now that we know that she’s in the picture. I need to know who she is and how that happened. Didn’t he just say that he didn’t fall in love with anyone else while Claire was gone? Does he have another child with this new wife of his? I suspect that she’s Mary McNab.
Random thoughts:
- Young Ian is a really good haggler.
- Fergus is the best wingman.
- Young Ian made the same mistake that Jamie did lol.
- Archie is clearly taking advantage of Margaret.
- Ha! Jenny and Ian don’t know that Young Ian works with Jamie.
- Those pamphlets were not well hidden.
Outlander airs Sundays at 10 PM on Starz.
