Outlander Recap Season 7 Episode 3 “Death Be Not Proud”

As the third episode of Outlander opens, rather than immediately showing viewers the aftermath of the explosion at the Big House on Fraser’s Ridge, as seen in the climatic ending of the previous episode, we watched a delivery van travel along a road surrounded by the lush green fields of Scotland. When the van came to a halt outside a familiar home, the driver placed a chest at the doorstep, and written on that chest was the name Jeremiah Alexander Ian Fraser Mackenzie (that would be little Jemmy, the child of Roger and Brianna).

And in the opening sequence, we watched as a young toe-headed boy answered a very green telephone, and then saw several children playing in a yard. That familiar house none other than the manse where Roger was raised by his uncle, nee his adopted father, which later became the property of Fiona Graham, the granddaughter of Mrs. Graham, and her husband. Fiona presented that chest to Roger and Brianna, who clearly made it back to their own time, and even made it back to Scotland. Fiona also provided the good news that little Mandy was doing well, and with that she left Roger and Brianna (who is sporting bangs now – thank you 1980s) to learn of the contents inside the chest.

Upon opening the chest with his pocket knife, the couple found a treasure trove of letters and even a musket ball inside the chest, and as Brianna began to read the first letter written by Jamie to his beloved daughter, dated 1776, they learned that her parents survived the fire – and with that we are temporarily transported back to the moments before the Big House erupted. Wendigo Donner’s men were out cold on the floor (because of the ether) while Jamie quickly ushered Mr. and Mrs. Bug out the house before turning to pull Claire from the doorway of her surgery. As they ran for their lives, Wendigo fell to the ground, matchstick in hand, and just as the house exploded, Jamie and Claire jumped off the porch steps. As Roger and Brianna continued to read the letter, the past was played out. Ian, Lizzie and one of the twins along with other residents on the Ridge, came running as the house was engulfed in flames. They attempted, albeit in vain, to save the house but the fire grew uncontrollably and they watched as everything they had went up in flames. “Enough,” Jamie yelled, “enough, it canna be saved; there is nothing more we can do.”

Given the date of the letter – April 1776 – Brianna actually saved her parents’ lives – which was the very reason why she had gone through the stones all those years earlier, with Roger hot on her heels to find her. “So we actually did it; we saved them; we changed history,” she said with excitement to Roger. But back in 1776, the Frasers and their friends worked through the wreckage of the Big House to try to salvage anything they could. Claire found one of her medical journals that was somewhat scorched and a few pans while Jamie found his trunk that contained his kilt and clothing from his home in Scotland. While they had very little left from the fire, they had each other.

Ian also found something in the rubble, the portrait of young Willie – “Lord John’s lad” – and presented it to his Uncle Jamie. After some wistful looks and a brief conversation, Jamie figured out that Ian knew the truth. Ian admitted that he had figured it out before, he knew that William was Jamie’s son. He even mentioned that William’s stubborn streak reminded him of not only his mother Jenny but also of his uncle. “He’s a Fraser, sure enough,” Ian said. Jamie told Ian that William could never know the truth, and Ian told him that “you need Fraser blood to know. I will never speak of it to a soul.”

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A short time later, Lizzie and one of the twins brought them some supplies and clothing, and even offered to help carry what was salvaged up to Roger and Brianna’s old cabin; but they did have some sad news to share. They couldn’t find little Adso – the small kitten that Jamie had saved in Wilmington. Claire was sure that he would turn up somewhere.

It was then that Mr. Bug could be seen walking through what was left of the Big House. That was when Jamie stepped out from behind the rubble to confront the old man about the gold that was discovered in his wife’s yarn bag just before the explosion. “I guess you’ll be wanting to explain this, Mr. Bug,” Jamie said, but Mr. Bug responded “I dunna owe ye an explanation about anything.” As Ian watched the two men quietly speak about thieves on the Ridge and how the gold came to be in the Bugs’ possession. Mr. Bug explained to Jamie that it was his Aunt Jocasta and “her bastard of a husband” who were the thieves. He went on to explain what happened when that gold first came to the shores of Scotland. “There were 3 of us when the gold came ashore from France. Dougal Mackenzie took one third and Hector Cameron another. I was the third man, tax man to Malcolm Grant, who sent me.” Clearly, it was the lost Jacobite gold that was sent to help with the Rising but was received too late. So Grant, Mr. Bug’s employer at the time, used it for the good of the clan. He claimed that Hector Cameron, Aunt Jocasta’s first husband, fled with the money; he only had to take one look at River Run – Jocasta’s grand home – to know where the money from that gold went.

Mr. Bug admitted to Jamie that every time he went to River Run he searched for that gold. He looked everywhere and then it came to him that Hector Cameron would have never parted with that gold unless he was dead. That was when Mr. Bug found the gold inside Hector Cameron’s burial crypt. So whenever he went to River Run, “piece by piece I took back what that man stole from Scotland.” Mr. Bug went on to state the men he pledged his oath upon – his clan leader, the King across the waters and even to Jamie himself, but the only oath that he believed he needed to keep was the one he made to his wife. Despite Jamie asking him where the gold was, Mr. Bug told Jamie it was hidden somewhere he would never be able to find. And with that Jamie gave Mr. Bug the gold back and told Mr. Bug to take it, his wife and himself and leave the Ridge and never return.

Later that night, Ian and Jamie watched as Mr. Bug dug in the rubble of the Big House, assuming that he buried the gold right under their noses; but as Jamie approached the figure in the dark demanding they speak, the figure raised a gun and fired at Jamie. That’s when Ian let fly one of his arrows. Seconds later they discovered it was actually Mrs. Bug in her husband’s clothing digging for the gold. She died and Ian was heartbroken and then Jamie found the trunk filled with gold under the floorboards of the Big House.

Claire tried to comfort Ian the next day. He shared that he wanted to find something to do to make it right. Claire asked him “Are you breathing, Ian.” “Aye,” he answered. “That’s all you have to do for now,” his Auntie told him. Then Claire had to take her own advice to do the same thing. Despite plenty of searching, there was no sign of Mr. Bug as Claire prepared his wife’s body for burial. Then we saw the procession for Mrs. Bug’s funeral with a surprise appearance by Mr. Bug, who asked Claire to sing in order to have a proper ceremony. After the ceremony, though, Ian approached Mr. Bug offering a life for a life, but Mr. Bug said that was too easy. He asked if Ian would trade his “hound” – his dog Rollo – and, of course, Ian said no. It was then with malice in his eyes that Mr. Bug said “when you’ve something worth taking, you’ll see me again; that I promise ye.” And with that Mr. Bug left.

As the days went by, they tried to lay their burdens behind them. Mr. Bug never returned and they all tried to move on. While walking arm and arm, Jamie pointed out a patch of land to Claire that he thought would be a good spot for their new home to be built. Given what happened to Mrs. Bug, the couple talked about where they would be buried. Jamie told Claire that he would probably be drowned, burnt or left to rot on some battlefield. He told her “dinna fash (just) leave my body for the crows.” But when she asked him if he wanted to know what she wanted done with her body, he said he could never think of her as dead, anything else but not that.

But before they started building their new home, he had been thinking about Lallybroch. She was surprised by that revelation. He said there was something he needed to do. He shared that he made a promise to his sister, long ago, that he would bring Ian back to her; although the man he had become was definitely not the lad who left. He didn’t know what they would make of each other – Ian and Lallybroch – but with the war looming over them, if Ian was to go back now was the time. So it was settled, they would leave in a few month’s time. He also had a promise that he made to himself: he would never face his son across the barrel of a gun.

The next morning, after listening to Jamie’s quiet prayer to his God the night before, he told Claire he had another dream about her time but this one was about “our lassie and the bairns.” He shared that he saw them walk up to the front door of a house with Roger Mac, and a “wee brown-haired woman opened it.” He watched as they walked down the hall, seeing that Mandy was a wee bit older and she was well and he said that Roger Mac called the woman Fiona. “Were they happy?” Claire asked. “Aye,” he replied, and then he explained that he watched as Jemmy went over to a humped box with a club on top with a piglet’s tail and he picked it up. That’s when Claire explained to Jamie that it was a telephone. “You can talk to people through it, across long distances. I wish we could call them,” she shared.

In the next scene, we saw Jamie, Claire and Ian making musket balls from some of the bars of gold, and we could hear Jamie say they would hide the rest. They talked about how Ian was feeling about going home and shared how they all felt about “going home.” Then we saw Jamie and Claire taking the rest of the gold to a hiding place that Jamie and little Jemmy had found when they were out hunting. It was their secret place that they agreed they would never tell anyone about, not enough Jemmy’s parents nor Claire. It was “the Spainards Cave” – as they called it – a dark, dank cave with a colorful occupant – the skeleton of a man in armor with a necklace with Spanish writing on it. Jamie then hid the box of gold in another wee cave within the larger one.

A montage of scenes was then shown of Jamie speaking with some of the men from Ardsmuir who live on the Ridge asking them to take care of things while they are gone. Meanwhile, Claire was shown teaching Lizzie about herbs and cures so she can learn how to tend to the people on the Ridge as well as Lizzie and the Beardsley twins watching over the spot for their new home.

It is then that we bounced back to Roger and Brianna in the future, reading one of the letters where Jamie explained about the gold – without actually saying those exact words – but sharing that “Jem knows the place.” Roger and Brianna tried to reason out the code for which Jamie wrote, especially the part that involved their son. As Roger reached for another letter, Brianna said she didn’t want to read them all at once because once they were done, “mamma and da would really be gone.” Roger made mention they would be heading back to Boston, but before they left Brianna had a place that she wanted him to see.

But before that visit, we went back in time, again, to Jamie and Claire where he gave her a new blade to keep close to her since the one he gave her before was lost in the fire. As was tradition, according to Jamie, they both pricked their thumbs to ‘christen’ the blade, and Claire uttered the words from their Gaelic vows, “blood of my blood.”

Then it was back to Roger and Brianna driving up to what was left of Lallybroch. The once grand home was chained and boarded up, but Roger pulled out a plank at one of the windows “for a wee look” only to be surprised by a couple of birds who were startled by the interruption. Roger then commented that he would have loved to have seen Lallybroch in his heyday, and Brianna told him he would have loved it. As viewers will recall, Brianna got to see the legendary home during her journey to find her parents.

Back in time we saw Kezzie helping his child to walk while Lizzie – who was clearly pregnant again – and Josiah were talking to Jamie and Claire. Lizzie was emotional – not just because of her pregnancy – but because of not only Roger and Brianna leaving, but now also Jamie and Claire. Jamie shared that “we will come back, Lizzie; we don’t know when, but we will.” And with that they bide goodbye to the unusual “couple.”

Back at Lallybrock, Brianna was staring off into the distance, clearly hoping to see her parents – or at least the ghosts of her parents. It was apparent that she and Roger were happy there – in their own time – glad that Mandy was healthy, but she was clearly missing her parents, deeply. “I want to see them too,” Roger said. As they walked back to their car, someone pulled up in a car behind them. That person turned out to be the real estate agent, who retrieved the downed “To Be Sold” sign that was knocked over by the “bloody wind.” And, ironic or not, the selling agents were listed on that downed sign as Dick Cameron and Co (perhaps distant relatives of Aunt Jocasta and her husband?). The looks on Roger and Brianna’s faces said it all. [They just might be the new owners of Lallybroch soon, and perhaps they will have to seek out that secret for which Jamie wrote them about.]

Then as Ian, Jamie and Claire ventured through the woods on their way to Wilmington, Claire yelled out for them to stop. She heard something. That something turned out to be little Adso (the family cat), who had not perished in the fire at the Big House after all, but had clearly been hiding out in the woods. After whispering to the cat, Claire sent Adso on his way home. And while Claire cried for all that had been lost, she asked Jamie, “We will make it back here one day, won’t we.” He answered her saying that he thought he “would never see Bonnie Scotland again,” and yet that was where they were heading. So he assured his wife that they would return to North Carolina one day. And after several reassuring kisses, off they went on their next adventure.

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