When “The Bakra” aired last year, I criticized the lack of critical context around Geillis’ rape of Young Ian. One such example is brought up early in the premiere: the rape of Young Ian, and Jamie’s own history of sexual assualt. We’ve seen these characters tormented again and again, as often if not more so than they have been able to live happily and with some semblance of peace. Loved ones can help you move on from traumatic experiences, but they can’t completely shield you from pain. No doubt that fear is a metaphor for something larger (though, yeah, the sea is frakking scary): a fear of drowning in this new land with its often unkind rules, so far away from the support systems of community and family that can cushion so much of that potential pain in an ideal situation.īut, if we’ve learned anything from Outlander, it’s that even love and family and support can only go so far in a cruel world. In one of the most interesting and later ironically tragic scenes of the episode, Claire and Bonnet bond over their fear of drowning, one that Claire has felt since she almost drowned last season and that Bonnet says has haunted him for his entire life. Claire and Jamie risk their lives (or at least their freedom) to bring Bonnet to safety and, when a soldier injures Bonnet with his bayonet, Claire uses her medical knowledge to heal the vulnerable stranger. Jamie isn’t able to save Gavin from the noose, but he does save a man who was meant to hang beside him: Stephen Bonnet, an Irish pirate who clearly appeals to Jamie’s grief and sense of powerlessness over having just lost a close friend. Outlander Season 4, Episode 1Ĭlaire and Jamie have very often been strangers in a strange land, but Outlander fully commits to the framework of an immigration tale in its Outlander Season 4 opener, one I hope continues as the season does. When we catch back up with Claire and Jamie in “America the Beautiful,” the wife and husband have been in Colonial America for four months now, and they have found happiness, but they have also found pain.įor one, their friend Gavin Hayes is about to be hanged for killing a man in self-defense.
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