Way to break our hearts, you (expletive deleted) Outlander writers, you.
It's not like it wasn't set up. It's a time of war. Passions are high on both sides. Printshops being threatened, vandalized and/or set on fire has happened several times during the run of the series. Even Jamie's printshop in Edinburgh burned down. Should Fergus have taken the threats more seriously? Certainly. But what was the alternative? Giving up a profession that he and his sons clearly loved? Even Marsali was happy. The printshop had solved the marital problems they were experiencing at Fraser's Ridge.
Fictional deaths have certainly made me cry before, but this was a tough one. I'm crying just writing this. That last moment, Fergus on the roof looking at Marsali, was so upsetting. What made it more painful -- for me at least -- was Fergus' missing hand. Would he have lived if he'd still had two hands to get him down that rope?
(I haven't been talking about book versus series this season for complicated reasons, but I have a lot to say about it this time -- so much so that I put together a separate post. The link to that post is at the bottom of this review.)
Marsali and Bree had their best scenes together this time: the tomato assault in the marketplace, the scene in the bedroom at Lord John's. It was also touching that Roger referred to Fergus as Bree's brother. This is the family that Jamie created of children not his own: Fergus, Ian, Marsali, Joan. Fergus was Jamie's first child. Marsali draped in widow's weeds sobbing in Jamie's arms was almost too much for me.
The B plot was pretty much a second A plot and complemented it. Jamie and Claire lost a son but gained a granddaughter "dropped out of the sky." All of the threads (the lace was such Obvious Symbolism here) came together with the lurid pamphlet the reporter wrote with Jane's last message to Fanny about looking for their grandmother, Lady Broch Tuarach, and the lacemaker across the street from Master Raymond's apothecary. Master Raymond did indeed raise baby Faith from the dead, and intended to return her to Claire. What happened to Master Raymond?
At the very least, we can be comforted by the fact that Faith had a good adopted mother that loved her. Master Raymond chose his friends well. The flashback to Paris in 1744 even explained how Fanny knew the song Claire sang. Just as Jamie created a cairn for Jane so that Fanny could visit her, Fanny created a cairn for Fergus so that Jamie could visit him. Fanny calling Jamie "Grandda" was a lovely gift on her part.
The other two plot points seem unimportant after such a major death and a major reveal.
Jamie went to Kings Mountain, an entire state away, and compared details on the ground to those in Frank's book. Major Patrick Ferguson, whom we still haven't met, had the high ground, and Sevier, Cleveland and Jamie climbed that mountain. The rebels suffered minimal losses, but those losses included Jamie. We still don't know Frank's motive for writing the book, but Jamie said he now believes Frank was telling the truth.
The second was the goings on at Lord John's house where William confronted Amaranthus, who knew exactly what she was doing, and I can't really blame her. Her son is indeed Benjamin's legal heir to Hal's title. She thought Ben a traitor and wanted someone more easily bendable to her will, and that's not William. She clearly didn't know William as well as she thought.
As if that wasn't enough, William walked in on Percy's lips accidentally falling on John's, and William put two and two together and came up with John and Jamie having a love affair at Ardsmuir. John was furious at William's ingratitude (and wow, I get that) and threw him out of the house.
It's obvious what William will do next: confront Jamie. Right?
Bits:
— The post-credits vignette was what I assume is a lacemaker's loom.
— Fergus and Marsali had one last love scene, more joyful than explicit. Fergus taking off her garters with his teeth was so cute. They were clearly at their happiest in Savannah.
— Roger caught Henri-Christian as he fell from the printshop roof, echoing how he also saved him from drowning à la Moses in the river rapids in "Temperance."
— Bree's portrait of Amaranthus and Trevor turned out quite well.
— Roger told Bree that if he lost her, he would stay in the eighteenth century. Bree countered by telling him she was pregnant with their third child. Not four of them. "Five."
— Percy's reason for visiting John wasn't lip-related. He came to tell him that Captain Richardson was coming to Savannah.
— When Fergus died, Jamie woke up feeling something was wrong. And of course we had a Fergus montage. Sigh.
Quotes:
Fergus: "The pen is our sword. And we can never lay it down."
Yes.
Marsali: (re: Henri-Christian) "Dinna lie. You're proud as punch."
Fergus: "He's beautiful. Even covered in ink."
John: "Perseverance. Never was a man so well named."
Bree: "An ember from a hearth in a building full of paper."
Claire: "A granddaughter who seemed to drop out of the sky, a blessing from heaven, and a son who was taken from us too soon, a hellish reality. Such are the tapestries of our lives. Threads of shock, anger, love and affection, among the multitude of others, woven together as intricately and delicately as the most beautiful lace."
I wrote about "Book versus Series" for this episode. It got sort of long, so I gave it a home of its own.
As upsetting as it was, this episode deserves four out of four hankies. And I don't mean that sarcastically. Only three episodes to go. I hope they're not as devastating as this one was,
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
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