Outlander Returns to Scotland & Everything Is Right Again

Scotland, we’re home.

In tonight’s Outlander, Claire and Jamie headed back to the highlands after that fairly disastrous trip to Paris, and for a second, everything was great. Even though we knew they hadn’t succeeded in their attempts to stop the war, they thought that was the case, so they were just hanging out, eating potatoes, happy as clams.

Then, Jamie got a letter…signed by himself.

The Bonnie Prince Charlie had signed Jamie’s name to a letter calling declaring loyalty to the Jacobites, meaning Jamie now had no choice but to fight for the prince.

They bid a reluctant farewell to Lallybroch and headed to see Jamie’s horrible grandfather, Lord Lovat, in the hopes that he would send men in support of Charles. He offered, at first, to send men if he got Lallybroch in exchange, but there was no way Jamie was going to agree to that.

After Claire learned that Lovat had expelled his seer after she had a vision of Lovat being executed for treason, she used that—and her reputation as La Dame Blanche—to help change his mind. He made a pact with Colum to remain neutral in the war, but sent men anyway—including his son, Simon.

He was hoping that if Charles won, he would see Lovat as having supported him, and if the British won, they would only see Simon as having supported the Jacobites, leaving Lovat himself free of any charges of treason. So he’s either a genius or just a devious idiot, but either way, Claire and Jamie had achieved their goal of gaining troops, so maybe things aren’t all bad.  

With the return to Scotland came the return of a lot of familiar faces, whether we wanted to see those faces or not.

We were certainly happy to see Jenny, Ian, and the other residents of Lallybroch, but we could probably have gone quite a while longer without seeing Laoghaire again, after she got Claire arrested and nearly burned alive for being a witch last season.

Claire most definitely felt the same way, but she took their reunion as an opportunity to tell the misguided young lady she was taking the high road and not inundating her with all the insults she wanted to throw at her, but was instead just going to contemplate forgiving her, and yet again remind her that Jamie would never be hers.

She did, however, let up a bit when Laoghaire promised she had been working to get over Jamie, and was willing to help get the younger Simon on their side.

Oddly, there were a couple of Laoghaire-related moments tonight that made us dread some of the events of season three just a little bit less, but we’ll talk about that later.

The rest of tonight’s episode mostly just felt like a breath of fresh air, no matter what was happening. We hadn’t realized how uncomfortable we were in France until we left it and came back to the version of this show we originally fell in love with. Paris was an adventure, but this is more like Outlander.

Finally: did everyone else just melt into the floor at seeing Jamie comforting Jenny’s baby, especially after what happened last week? Our hearts, they hurt!

Outlander airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Starz.