SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “Soul of a Rebel,” the Season 8 premiere of “Outlander,” now streaming on Starz.
There’s a first last time for everything, and “Outlander” wastes no time checking a few off its list. Less than five minutes into the eighth and final season of Starz’s global phenomenon, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) draw blood to get the dreaded answer to a question they never knew to ask.
Last season, “Outlander” shocked fans — especially those faithful to author Diana Gabaldon’s books — by revealing that the Frasers’ first daughter Faith, who was thought to have been stillborn in Season 2, had actually lived. Between seasons, Jamie and Claire have learned that Faith grew up in France and had two daughters of her own. But it’s not until this opening scene, when they lure a smuggler named Vasquez (Miguel Álvarez) into a trap, that they find out what happened to her. She married a ship captain, and on one of the family’s voyages, Vasquez boards their vessel. He killed Faith’s husband and then her, throwing her overboard for attacking him when he raped Jane, their oldest daughter. He then sold Jane and their younger daughter, Fanny (Florrie May Wilkinson), to a brothel, where Jamie’s son William Ransom (Charles Vandervaart) happened to meet them last season. After Jane’s suicide, the Frasers agreed to take Fanny under their wing, only to hear her sing a 20th century song that she could only know because Claire sang it to the daughter she thought died years earlier.
Courtesy of Robert Wilson/Starz
Hearing the devastating account of the murder of Faith and the assault of her granddaughters, Claire grabs a knife and digs it into Vasquez’s back. Before the opening credits (sung this season by Scottish legend Annie Lennox), the good doctor has taken a life.
“Forgetting all about her Hippocratic oath, obviously!” Balfe says with a laugh in a recent interview with Variety.
But having lived with Claire for 13 years now, Balfe recognizes that the revelation about Faith, which isn’t in Gabaldon’s books, has had unexpected repercussions.
“That action comes out of a deep pain,” she says. “Hearing somebody talk about your loved ones like that — I don’t think you can ever justify that kind of violence, but I can understand where it came from. I think maybe Claire is more ruthless this season. Maybe.”
While Claire may have tested the limits of her pledge, showrunner and executive producer Matthew B. Roberts says killing the smuggler actually upholds her ideals. “You can rationalize it, because what this guy is telling Jamie is that he’s going to keep doing harm,” he says. “There’s going to be more harm coming to a lot more innocent people, so in a way, I think she kept her oath by protecting those people from him.”
“Outlander” premiered in August 2014, and this season is carrying the weight of bringing Starz’s centuries-spanning epic to a satisfying conclusion, without violating the audiences’ expectations built over more than a decade. No pressure, right? Spilling blood in the hunt for Faith was the show’s declarative statement that, despite pushback from some fans, this final chapter won’t backtrack on the show’s version of Gabaldon’s books.
Courtesy of Robert Wilson/Starz
“We definitely wanted to show how much it meant, and the loss that they’ve gone through, and the pain that they’ve gone through,” Roberts says. “Obviously, they’ve already been on a journey to just get to this spot. They’ve already felt the pain. If you hear this about your child, most parents would really have a hard time holding back, and the fact that Claire does it before Jamie shows how much pain she’s carried over the years. It was important to start this season off like this to show this is not going to be easy. We’re never worried about Jamie and Claire being together, but the world rips at them in so many different ways, and they endure.”
The world continues to rip at them in Season 8, even when they arrive home on Fraser’s Ridge. The community they built as a refuge for the Scots in North Carolina has blossomed without them, while Jamie and Claire weathered the American Revolution from the frontlines. When they return, they get a warm welcome from Ian (John Bell), who rallied neighbors to help build the Frasers a home after theirs was leveled by a fire. But they are also greeted with a whiff of tension from Capt. Charles Cunningham (Kieran Bew), a supposedly reformed Loyalist who now runs a powerful trading post on their land.
In some ways, Fraser’s Ridge has flourished exactly how they envisioned. “Despite this presence there that they might not be too pleased with, the fact that it has thrived is what they’ve always hoped,” says executive producer Marli Davis. “Jamie offered this land to people in need, and they’ve been able to make lives there.”
But success also breeds an inevitable power struggle. Having sworn off the war that nearly got him and his wife killed last season, Jamie is not eager to bring strife back to the Ridge with him. Unfortunately, the premiere suggests it might already be here.
Courtesy of Robert Wilson/Starz
“These immigrants have come here, and are trying to build a home for themselves,” Heughan says. “But it’s kind of rotten from the inside a little bit now, or it’s certainly changed at the beginning of the season. We don’t know yet what the intentions are of Cunningham and everyone there. But we’ll begin to see that perhaps everything isn’t as stable ground as we thought it was. For them, Fraser’s Ridge might not be a safe place, not a safe home.”
Having spent years fighting threats on multiple fronts, Balfe says Claire and Jamie will have to consider they may not be able to take on every battle anymore.
“Both of them are older now,” she says. “Especially in that time, they’ve both had near-death experiences not that long ago. I don’t think they have the same well of reserve to say they can fight everything. Every time it sort of chips away at your armor a little bit, and there’s a real vulnerability to them at this point in their lives.”
One bright spot in the premiere is the reunion of Claire and Jamie with their daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton), her husband Roger (Robert Rankin) and their two children. Having gone back to the 20th century to get modern treatment for their daughter’s heart murmur, they came to find they were safer in the past than their present. They come bearing gifts including the children’s book “Goodnight Moon” (the colorful pages of which baffle poor Fanny), a journal of medical advancements for Claire and a copy of “The Lord of the Rings” for Jamie to wrap his head around. But they also bring back the book written by Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies), Claire’s first husband, about the history of the North Carolina Scots in the revolution. Thumbing through the pages, Jamie finds the last name he wanted to see: his own, in a passage that claims he will die at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. The prophecy of sorts seems to suggest the Frasers will violate their own plan to steer clear of the war, but can it be trusted?
“What are Frank’s intentions?” Heughan asks rhetorically. “Is this Frank coming back to torment him, or is Frank trying to help him? Personally, I always felt that when Jamie sees Claire for the first time, he sees his death. He sees someone that he’s going to die for. There have been multiple times where Jamie’s faced death because of Claire or while he’s with Claire. In some ways, it’s finally happening. He’s always been prepared to die for her and for their family.”
This intel about his own future, coming from the man who is still a sore subject for Jamie, will dictate much of his story this season. To really pick at this raw nerve, Menzies returns to narrate these passages from Frank’s book and taunt Jamie’s subconscious.
“We wanted to bring Tobias back physically, but his schedule is just too busy,” Roberts says. “He was so gracious. He wanted to be a part of it and having his voice actually works because it’s haunting.”
But as Heughan points out, he doesn’t know what Frank sounds like. He can certainly infer some things, considering Frank’s ancestor was Black Jack Randall, the vicious man whose obsession with Jamie left scars of all kinds. The book jacket’s author photo is the first time Jamie learns Frank looked exactly like his abuser, adding a whole other layer to this revelation. But ultimately, Menzies’ vocal presence this season is more about Jamie than Frank. “It’s actually just Jamie talking to himself,” Heughan says. “It’s Jamie’s fears and his mental health that are brought into question this season.”
The threat of Jamie’s death in a battle they just can’t fast forward to dealing with will loom over the Frasers like nothing they’ve faced before, Balfe warns.
“It’s almost like this sort of curse that Frank puts on them, because there’s nothing worse than the idea of something that gets into your head, and Jamie just spins with it,” she says. “They’re not really sharing with each other, which is one of the worst things — or rather, he’s not really sharing with her. It’s a tough thing in these episodes for them, because they’re allowing it to poison each other, and poison their own heads in different ways.”
