Outlander Recap: “Through a Glass, Darkly”

Last night, after waiting through Droughtlander (the many months between new episodes), the hit series Outlander aired its second season premiere episode on Starz.

Of course, like all other die-hard fans of the series, based on the international best-selling novels by Diana Gabaldon, I watched the advanced screening of the premiere early Thursday morning, but I just HAD to watch the actual season premiere at its regular time.

At the time of this writing, I have now seen the season premiere a sum total of 6 times and each time I have had goosebumps and a deep longing to see how everything plays out.

From the first scene of Claire opening her eyes lying at the base of Craigh Na Dun with her voiceover “I wished I were dead, and if I’d kept my eyes shut, I could’ve almost touched the edges of oblivion, but I’d made a promise and had to keep it. Even if it meant living a life I no longer wanted,” I was enraptured with how the story was going to continue. I was even more moved when her voiceover continued with her saying, “He was gone! They were all gone! The world I’d left only moments ago was now dust.”

As any fan of the show knows either from reading the book on which the second season is based (“Dragonfly in Amber”) or from the countless articles, recaps and reviews that have been written on the premiere episode, the season premiere opens very differently from the first pages of the second book.

In the book, Claire and her grown daughter are in Inverness and the year is 1968; however, in the premiere, Claire is shown in Scotland in the year 1948 – two years after her disappearance. Her reaction to being back in her own time was heart-wrenching especially her screams at Craigh Na Dun and then her weeping on the paved road in front of the man who discovered her walking alone, dressed in 18th Century clothes.

As expected, the opening sequence is different too showing new images of Claire and Jamie’s life in France as well as an alteration to the theme song. This isn’t Outlander of season one, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The next scene found Frank arriving at the hospital were Claire was being treated. He clearly was marveling at her return, but also extremely grateful. He clearly still loves his wife, but her reaction was quite extraordinary too. She was momentarily shocked but remarkably calm to see him until he reached for her and she had a flash of evil Black Jack Randall (Frank’s descendant).

Over the course of the next 40 minutes (or so), we watched as Claire scoured the records owned by Reverend Wakefield, looking for any reference to Jamie’s death at the Battle of Culloden; Claire sharing stories of Jamie with Mrs. Graham; Claire finally opening up to Frank, telling him the whole truth of her journey back in time, ending with her revealing that she is pregnant with Jamie’s child.

We further saw Frank lash out at the news – at least he trashed the Reverend’s storage shed and did no harm to Claire – and quite unexpectedly accepted Claire’s current circumstance. In fact, he has only two conditions for Claire:

1. That they “pick up where they left off” as husband and wife and child, no longer chasing the ghost of Jamie; and,
2. That for as long as Frank draws breath on this Earth, she will stop her research on Jamie and that she “must let him go.”

In fact, it was Claire who made a promise to Jamie. She says to Frank, “I promised him I would. He made me promise that I would let him go so I will accept your conditions.” And with that we saw Frank burn her Highlander clothes and, in the next scene, they are disembarking a plane that has landed in Boston (where Frank took a job at Harvard) and as she reaches for Frank’s hand on the last step, we flashback to 1745 La Havre, France where Jamie is reaching for Claire’s hand as they disembark from the boat.

The rest of the episode was focused on Claire and Jamie laying the groundwork for their undercover personas in the hopes of stopping the Battle of Culloden. Jamie reached out to his cousin Jared, who not only runs a wine business in Paris but also has the proper connections to the Jacobites.

But, it would seem that Claire cannot help herself in making enemies wherever she goes. Before they are even in France for a full month, she earns the ire of Le Comte St. Germain, a powerful French businessman, who loses one of his ships and cargo to smallpox. Why was Claire to blame for any of that? She, of course, ran to the aid of several men being carried off the ship, who were on the verge of death if not already dead. As it turned out, they had smallpox (and we know that Claire is immune thanks to her vaccination) and the only way to rid the port of the deadly disease: burn the ship and all of its contents.

We will have to wait a week to find out what happens next; and oh what an adventure it is going to be.

Outlander will return with the next episode of its second season on Starz on Saturday, April 16 at 9/8c.