Beware SPOILERS for Outlander below!
Drama is riding high over on Outlander. In the most recent episodes, Jamie Fraser’s wife Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and best friend Lord John Grey (David Berry) were reeling from the news that his ship had sunk at sea. They were so distraught over this that they found solace in a night of passion, which was really more about the both of them grieving for Jamie than it was about any attraction they felt for each other; after all, Lord John is gay.
So Claire and Lord John had no problem putting their night together in its proper context, but Jamie (Sam Heughan) saw it differently. It ends up that he never got on that ship, and when he shows up in Philadelphia to reunite with Claire, he learns about what happens and does not take it well. He beats on Lord John and remains cold to Claire, which caught Heughan off guard. “I was surprised by his response to Claire and John,” Heughan said. “His brutality.”
These events are drawn straight from author Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander books, and she was on hand to explain why they transpire to Parade. She started by explaining why Lord John seems to accept Jamie’s physical violence towards him after he makes his confession. “It’s defiance,” Gabaldon said. “He doesn’t say, ‘I have had carnal knowledge of your wife. Go ahead and kill me.’ He says, ‘I have had carnal knowledge of your wife.’ Then there’s a short burst of conversation in which he does his best to describe why (and to some extent, how) this came about. Jamie, who starts out not believing him at all, starts to think it might be true, and with rising outrage, demands the physical details of the encounter.”
According to Gabaldon, as a dainty English gentleman, Lord John would “rather die” than divulge intimate details like that. “On some level, he may be thinking that his statement might help convince Jamie that he’s telling the truth (which he is) about how the encounter came about, but Jamie’s already punched him in the eye and looks ready to continue in the same, um, vein, so it’s more likely that Lord John’s ‘go ahead and kill me’ is pure defiance,” she continued. “It’s really all he’s got; he’s neither big enough nor enough of a brawler to fight Jamie to a draw, let alone defeat him. He’s going down and he knows it, but he’s doing it with his flag still flying.”
Lord John is alive by the end of the episode, but you have to figure his relationship with Jamie is forever altered. Later, Jamie and Claire hash things out, and while Jamie forgives her, Claire thinks his priorities are out of whack. I remind you that both Claire and Lord John sincerely believed Jamie was dead at the time they hooked up; can cheating really happen when the person being cheated on is deceased? Philosophers differ on the question. And in any case, as Claire explained, the sex was all about Jamie anyway.
“As for forgiveness, Claire knows damn well that’s not the point. By her (very practical) lights, she was not unfaithful to Jamie—he was dead. The fact that he’s now alive is (logically) beside the point,” Gabaldon explained. “Jamie actually is a logical man, and he does realize that she has a point, little as he likes it; he is a jealous man, too. But these two have always promised each other the truth—and have kept to that promise. That’s why she’s infuriated when he magnanimously (he thinks) says he forgives her — by her lights, she hasn’t done anything wrong, and how DARE he forgive her?
“By doing so, he’s out and out saying he in fact doesn’t believe her (because if he did, he wouldn’t think she needed forgiveness), and that’s breaking the first sacred trust between them–when they promised each other honesty on their wedding night–at that point, having nothing else between them.”
Outlander author explains William’s state of mind
Ever generous, Gabaldon also explained what’s going through the head of young William (Charles Vandervaart), who just found out that he’s actually Jamie Fraser’s biological son after being raised by Lord John Grey his whole life: “At eighteen, he’s still sketching out his own sense of who he is or might be, as separate from his social scaffolding,” she said. “As he sees it, everyone he’s ever trusted has just pulled that scaffolding out from under him and left him to fall.”
It seems that everyone with Fraser blood is having a freakout. How much crazier and more dramatic can things get? New episodes of Outlander air Fridays on Starz.