Outlander Finale Recap: Did [Spoiler] Not Die in Season 2 Like We Thought?!
Mother Hildegarde, may we have a word?
Outlander‘s Season 7 finale delves into a matter touched upon in Diana Gabaldon’s later novels and hotly debated by a subset of the book fandom: Could Claire and Jamie’s daughter, Faith, somehow have survived?!
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In the Starz series, the girl’s traumatic birth took place in Season 2, during the Frasers’ Paris stay. While Jamie was in prison for dueling (long story), Claire went into labor with their first child. She wound up giving birth at the charity hospital where she’d been volunteering (alongside the facility’s supervisor, a nun named Mother Hildegarde). The already fraught experience turned truly tragic when the child, a girl, was stillborn. Claire named the baby Faith, then nearly died of childbed fever in the days that followed. Master Raymond, an apothecary she’d befriended during her time in France, visited her one night and saved her life, seemingly through supernatural means. (But our narrator Claire was also out of her mind with grief and illness at the time, so who even knows what actually happened? Read Caitríona Balfe’s thoughts on the matter here.)
Raymond pops up again in this week’s finale; Claire thinks he visits her in person as she’s convalescing in the battlefield hospital, but Jamie’s insistence that no one else was there makes it seem like she dreamed the encounter. And that’s the first piece of a puzzle that unfolds, and that an overcome Claire thinks she’s solved, as the episode continues.
“I think Faith lived,” she says to Jamie, her eyes full of tears, right before the hour cuts to black. “I think our daughter lived.”
Could it be? Read on for the highlights of “A Hundred Thousand Angels.” (And when you’re done, make sure to watch our post mortem interview with Sam Heughan here and get Season 8 scoop here.)
‘I DECIDED NOT TO DIE’ | After Claire’s surgery, Jamie watches over his unconscious wife in a corner of the church-turned-hospital; the Hunters wait nearby. Big Red rambles about how he wishes he could give her some of his blood; she’s clearly told him about modern-day blood transfusions. “Surely our blood would flow one into the other. My blood kens yours like its own,” he says sweetly, if not scientifically. “Blood of my blood, Sassenach,” he whispers. “That’s what we said, and that’s the truth.”
Shortly after, she comes to. “I decided not to die,” she whispers, pained, not opening her eyes. “Good,” Jamie says, relieved. “I could, though,” she continues. “This is bloody terrible.” They go back and forth a bit: She says she wouldn’t want to put him through what she went through when she thought he was gone, he recalls how she yelled at him for nearly getting killed at Saratoga. Their shared relief — and history — is lovely, as is the moment he drops a grateful kiss on her forehead.
She slowly mends. A week later, when she’s feeling good enough to be cranky but not strong enough to pee by herself, she’s embarrassed that Jamie has to help her hover over the bucket by her bedside. He (correctly!) points out that she has done FAR more disgusting things in the name of helping him heal, but that doesn’t make her feel much better. When she wants to check her urine for blood, worried that her kidney took too much damage, Jamie immediately fetches a candle so she can see what’s up. She immediately tears up, and Jamie fears that she sees something troubling. But her pee is clear — she’s just moved by how well he understands her, and how she thinks, and what is important to her. She asks Jamie to lay down next to her on the bed, partly to keep her warm, mostly to love her and be near. She tremulously says she wants to go home to Fraser’s Ridge; he promises they will as soon as she’s feeling well enough. And while I know we all love the panting-while-Murtagh-knocks-on-the-bedroom-door version of these two, there is something so deeply beautiful about this iteration of them, as well.
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BONJOUR, MONSIEUR | That evening, the weirdness gets underway. While Claire is sleeping, Master Raymond approaches her bed, wearing a hood. He tells her it’s not time for her to die, then announces that he’s there to ask her forgiveness. “For what?” she wonders. “Someday, you will know,” he answers cryptically. As he kisses her hand, there’s a blue-hued vision of wings taking flight. “We will see each other again,” he says as he goes to leave. “Have faith.”
When Claire wakes in the morning, Jamie is dozing in a nearby chair. He’s been there all night and hasn’t seen anyone else enter the building. An agitated Claire isn’t sure exactly what’s up, but she tells Jamie about Raymond’s visit/her dream and how he was with her when she lost Faith. “He said once that he would see me again, that we would all see each other again,” she says, eyes welling, because GOD THIS WOMAN HAS BEEN THROUGH A LOT THIS WEEK. “Do you think, when I die, do you think I’ll see her? Do you think I’ll see our daughter?” she wonders. Jamie knows exactly what she needs to hear, and he gives it to her, though he’s starting to get teary, too: “I ken you will. That’s what makes death easier to bear. That’s what Murtagh meant when he said it doesna hurt a bit to die.”
UNFINISHED BUSINESS | Lord John arrives later. “I came as soon as I heard,” he says, holding Claire’s hand as he takes a seat by her bed. When she tries to examine his eye, he chides her: “You should be resting, my dear.” Jamie, who is now within earshot, doesna like hearing the endearment from his Current Least Favorite Redcoat and makes his feelings known. “You should be resting, Mrs. Fraser,” Grey amends.
As the two men go about their ridiculousness (JUST SAY YOU LOVE EACH OTHER AND GET OVER IT), Claire rolls her eyes so hard she practically pops a stitch. When Jamie says he doesn’t want to rehash what happened in Philadelphia, she closes them in annoyed resignation. Then she decides she’s going to steer this conversation, thank you very much. “I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for everything you did for me,” she tells John, taking his hand again. “You saved my life.” He is touched. “We saved each other’s,” he corrects her. Then he kisses her hand and bids her goodbye with a pointed “Mrs. Fraser” again (ha!) while Jamie is all angry brows and folded arms in the corner.
She’s doing better (read: dressed and flirting with Jamie) when William arrives: “I need your help” with a “life-or-death” matter, he tells his father. Jamie knows the teen is only there because he has no other option, but that’s OK. When he points out that William has never asked him for anything, Claire blesses it: “Go.”
THE SAD BALLAD OF JANE POCOCK |Let’s back up a minute. William asks Lord John for help finding out where Jane is being held; when he gets the information, it’s grim. She confessed to the murder, and because martial law is in effect, there’ll be no trial: She’s to be executed. “Do you love the young woman, William?” Lord John asks. “There is something about her. I can’t explain it,” he replies.
Using the information Lord John procured about Jane’s whereabouts, he and Jamie break into the home where she’s being held… to find that she’s slit her wrists, preferring to end her own life than to be hanged for murder. “I can’t leave her like this,” William says, crying as he holds her lifeless body. Jamie helps him array her on the bed and take off her shackles, then Jamie cuts a lock of her hair “for her sister.” William is having A Lot of Feelings and feathering her temple reverently, but Jamie sees lights approaching and has to be the voice of reality: They’ve gotta go — now.
Back at the hospital, Jamie tells Claire what went down, then informs her about Jane’s younger sister, Frances (aka Fanny). William brings the grief-stricken girl to meet them. Jamie wastes no time in giving her Jane’s hair and telling her she can live with them (which is nice but a LOT all at once, no?). At Frances’ request, Jamie says he’ll call in a favor to claim Jane’s body.
‘ARE YOU SORRY FOR IT?’ | When they’re alone, William asks his biodad for another favor: “Tell me how I came to be. I want to know what happened.” While Jamie refuses to go into detail, because ew, he does let William know that he didn’t force Geneva to do anything. That said, “She was very young, and it was my fault,” Fraser says. “Are you sorry for it?” William demands. Jamie confesses that although he will do penance for his role in Geneva’s death for the rest of his life, he can’t denounce what happened. “No,” he says, gently touching William’s face, then laying a hand on his shoulder, “I am not sorry.”
William is almost crying. Jamie’s not far behind. “I will never call you father,” the younger man says, then turns and walks away.
ROLLO CROSSES THE RAINBOW BRIDGE | What’s going on with everyone else, you wonder? Roger and Buck are about to leave Lallybroch when they run into Jem, Mandy and Brianna coming up the drive. Everyone has a hug-and-tear-filled reunion; even Buck gets in on the group hug. Later, Bree and Brian Fraser talk about how much he reminds her of his late wife, Ellen, for whom he built the manor. She thanks him for letting them stay a while; later on, Roger and Bree discuss in which time period they’re going to settle.
Meanwhile, one night in bed, Ian puts forth the idea of going back to the Ridge with his aunt and uncle. He’s worried Rachel will miss Denzell too much, but she’s on board. “Is it a place where we could be happy? A place where we could raise our family?” she wonders; he understands the hint and joyfully realizes that she’s pregnant.
The celebration is cut short the next morning when Ian wakes and realizes Rollo has died during the night. Ian starts to weep, burying his face in the dog’s fur while Rachel rubs her husband’s back in sympathy. “He waited, I think, until he kent you were here for me,” Ian tells her, forlorn. She nods and says she’ll accompany him to bury the VERY GOOD PUPPER, because “I married him as well as thee.”
A SHOW OF FAITH | OK, back to the main event. The Frasers find out that Jane has been buried in an unmarked grave in a pauper’s field, news that devastates Frances. As Claire tries to console her, they talk about the girl’s memories of her sister and their mother. Eventually, she pulls out a locket that holds a locket of her mother. The mom’s name, which is engraved on the back? “Faith.”
Claire’s a little affected, but it’s a coincidence, right? WAIT. When everyone’s about to leave to make the return trip to North Carolina, she finds Frances singing to herself inside the church. The song: “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside,” which she says her mother used to sing to her. A flashback reminds us that that song is the same one Claire sang to infant Faith as she held her tiny, lifeless body. And a little digging shows that the song wasn’t written until 1907 or recorded until 1909 — how could the grieving little girl possibly know it?
So Claire is freaked and nearly overcome when Jamie enters the church and asks what’s up. “I think Faith lived,” she says to Jamie. “I think our daughter lived!”
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Grade it, and the season as a whole, via the polls below. Then hit the comments with your thoughts!
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