Spoiler Alert: This post contains spoilers for the Outlander season 8 premiere, “Soul of a Rebel,” now streaming on Starz.
Everything has a beginning and an end, and “Outlander” wastes no time checking a few off the 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 for a horrifying answer to a question they never intended to ask.
Last season’s Outlander shocked fans, especially those loyal to Diana Gabaldon’s books, when Season 2 revealed that the Fraser family’s eldest daughter Faith, who was thought to be stillborn, was actually alive. In between seasons, Jamie and Claire learn that Faith grew up in France and has two daughters of her own. But it’s only in this opening scene, where she lures smuggler Vasquez (Miguel Alvarez) into a trap, that they learn what happened to her. She married a captain, and Vasquez joined him on the family’s voyage. He killed Faith’s husband and then threw her overboard for attacking Faith while raping their eldest daughter Jane. He then sells Jane and his second daughter Fanny (Florie Mae Wilkinson) to a brothel, where Jamie’s son William Ransom (Charles Vandervert) happened to meet them last season. After Jane’s suicide, the Frasers agree to take Fanny into custody, but they hear her sing 20th century songs that Claire only knew years ago when she sang them to her daughter, who she thought had died.
Robert Wilson/Courtesy of Starz
After hearing the shocking account of Faith’s murder and assault of her granddaughter, Claire grabs a knife and stabs Vasquez in the back. Before the opening credits roll (sung this season by Scottish legend Annie Lennox), a famous doctor dies.
“Of course I forget about the Hippocratic Oath!” Balfe said with a laugh in a recent interview with Variety.
But Balfe, who has lived with Claire for 13 years, recognizes that revelations about faith not included in Gabaldon’s book have had an unexpected impact.
“That behavior comes from deep pain,” she says. “When you hear someone talk like that about the people they love, I don’t think that kind of violence can be justified, but I can understand where it’s coming from. I think Claire is probably more ruthless this season. Probably.”
Claire may have tested the limits of her commitment, but showrunner and executive producer Matthew B. Roberts says killing the smuggler actually protects her ideals. “You can justify that, because what this guy is saying to Jamie is that he’s going to continue to cause harm,” he says. “There’s going to be more harm done to 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 carries the weight of bringing Starz’s centuries-spanning epic to a satisfying conclusion without disappointing audience expectations that have been building for more than a decade. No pressure, right? The bloodshed in the search for Faith was the show’s declarative statement that despite backlash from some fans, this final chapter was not going to backtrack on the show’s version of Gabaldon’s book.
Robert Wilson/Courtesy of Starz
“We absolutely wanted to show how much it meant, the loss they went through, and the pain they went through,” Roberts says. “Obviously, they’ve already been on a journey to get to this place. They’re already feeling the pain. If you heard this about your child, most parents would really have a hard time putting up with it. And the fact that Claire does it before Jamie does it makes sense that she’s going to have a hard time over the years.” It shows how much pain there is. It was important for us to start this season this way, to show that this is not going to be easy. We’re never worried that Jamie and Claire will end up together, but the world is torn between them.” ”
In Season 8, the world continues to attack them even as they arrive at their Fraser’s Ridge hometown. The community they built as a Scottish refuge in North Carolina blossomed without them, while Jamie and Claire weathered the American Revolution on the front lines. When they return, they receive a warm welcome from Ian (John Bell). After Ian’s house was destroyed in a fire, Ian rallied neighbors to help build the Fraser family’s home. However, they are also greeted with a whiff of tension from Captain Charles Cunningham (Kieran Bew), a supposedly reformed Loyalist who now runs a powerful trading post on their land.
In some ways, Fraser’s Ridge flourished exactly as they had envisioned. “They may not be very happy with this presence, but the fact that it’s thriving is something they always want,” says executive producer Marli Davis. “Jamie gave this land to people in need and they were able to make a living there.”
But success also creates inevitable power struggles. Jamie vowed to end the war that nearly killed him and his wife last season, but he has no intention of bringing the conflict back to Ridge. Unfortunately, the premiere already hints that that might be the case.
Robert Wilson/Courtesy of Starz
“Immigrants are coming here and trying to build their own homes,” Heughan said. “But right now it’s a little bit rotten from the inside out, definitely different than it was at the beginning of the season. We don’t yet know what Cunningham and everyone there are up to, but we’re going to start to see that maybe everything isn’t as stable ground as we thought. Fraser’s Ridge might not be a safe place for them, it might not be a safe home.”
Balfe, who has spent years fighting threats on multiple fronts, said Claire and Jamie must consider that they may no longer be able to participate in every battle.
“We’re both old now,” she says. “Especially in the circumstances they were in at the time, they both had near-death experiences not too long ago. I don’t think they have the wherewithal to say they can fight it all. Each time it wears away at their armor a little bit and they become really vulnerable at this point in their lives.”
One bright spot in the premiere is Claire and Jamie reuniting with their daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton), her husband Roger (Robert Rankin), and their two children. When they return to the 20th century to receive modern treatment for their daughter’s heart murmur, they discover that the past was safer than the present. They came with gifts such as the children’s book “Goodnight Moon” (the colorful pages of which embarrassed poor Fanny), a diary of medical advances for Claire, and a copy of “The Lord of the Rings” for Jamie. But they also bring back a book written by Claire’s first husband, Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies), about the history of North Carolina’s Scots in the Revolution. Flipping through the pages, Jamie finds the last name he wanted to see. Jamie finds his own name in a passage that claims to die at the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780. A prophecy of sorts seems to suggest that the Frasers will violate their own plan to avoid war, but can it be trusted?
“What is Frank’s intention?” Heughan asks rhetorically. “Is this Frank coming back to torment him or is he trying to help Frank? Personally, I always felt that when Jamie first saw Claire, he was witnessing his own death. He was seeing someone he was going to die in. There were several times when Jamie faced death because of Claire or while he was with Claire. In a way, it’s finally happening. He was always ready to die for her and her family.”
This information about his future from Jamie, which remains a sore subject for him, will determine much of his story this season. To really hit this raw nerve, Menzies once again narrates passages from Frank’s book, mocking Jamie’s subconscious.
“We wanted Tobias back physically, but his schedule is just too busy,” Roberts says. “He was so kind. He wanted to be a part of it. And to see your voice actually work because it’s unforgettable.”
But, as Heughan points out, he doesn’t know what Frank’s voice sounds like. Considering Frank’s ancestor was Black Jack Randall, a violent man whose obsession with Jamie left all sorts of scars, he can certainly deduce a few things. Seeing the author’s photo on the book’s jacket, Jamie learns for the first time that Frank looked just like his abuser, adding a whole other layer to this revelation. But ultimately, Menzies’ vocal presence this season has been more with Jamie than with Frank. “It’s actually just Jamie talking to himself,” Heughan says. “This season, it’s about Jamie’s fear and mental health.”
Balfe warns that the threat of Jamie dying in a battle that cannot be dealt with in fast forward will be closer to the Frasers than they have ever faced before.
“It’s like this kind of curse that Frank puts on them, because there’s nothing worse than something coming into your head and Jamie thinking about it,” she says. “They don’t really share with each other, and that’s one of the worst things. If anything, he doesn’t really share with her. In this episode, that’s what’s difficult for them, because they’re allowing it to poison each other and poison their own heads in different ways.”
