Outlander season 3 teaser analysis: Claire’s ‘impossible journey’

“I had been on an impossible journey. You can come back to your life, but it’s never the same. Maybe it was enough to have gone once … How many people can say they had that?”

These are the words spoken by Claire (Caitriona Balfe) in the latest teaser for Outlander season 3, which you can watch / re-watch to your heart’s content at the bottom of this article. This is basically an in-motion version of the key art that we shared yesterday, a gorgeous shot of Claire and Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) so close, and yet so far away. Their hearts are intertwined, but there is distance of great time and space. Coming back to one another will be no easy task.

For the sake of this article, what we do want to do is break down some of Claire’s mini-monologue further, much in the way that we broke down the original season 3 teaser earlier this year. This should help to further inform us of where the character’s head is at the beginning of the story this time, where she finds herself traveling back to find Jamie after realizing that he did not die during the Battle of Culloden as first thought.

“I had been on an impossible journey.”

There is a great deal of self-awareness in this thought from Claire. She recognizes the rarity of her quest, but also that for all intents and purposes, that journey was over. One of the reasons why the significant time jump for “Dragonfly in Amber” was so important was because it created further impossibilities for Claire. At that point in her life, she had given up hope that she would ever be able to see Jamie again. Maybe five, ten, or fifteen years before that, she still had hope. With this in mind, there’s a plurality between the impossibility of the first journey that she went on, and the impossibility that she’ll ever be able to go on another one.

“You can come back to your life, but it’s never the same.”

This statement can be applied almost anywhere, since it describes perfectly the many layers of change that impact a person. Claire returned from Scotland a very different woman, someone with a new love and a new sense of purpose. She was no longer the same person for Frank, but by the same token, he wasn’t the same person for her. He had his own desperation and demons that were once there. Even if she had never met Jamie and somehow found her way back, there was no guarantee that their relationship would be similar at all to what it once was.

“Maybe it was enough to have gone once … How many people can say they had that?”

In going back to the first line, this is Claire exhibiting once more a great deal of self-awareness. She realizes that there’s a certain selfishness in wanting something that is impossible to most people on two separate occasions. Yet, the heart wants what the heart wants, and wouldn’t so many others feel the same way in her shoes? She understands that she was blessed to have her journey and she shouldn’t ask for more, but yet, she yearns for it. She’s experienced that life with Jamie and cannot find a way to fully function without it.

The entire monologue is real, gritty, and honest — that’s what makes it so fantastic. It’s Claire acknowledging what happened and showing gratitude for her time back in the 20th century; yet, it’s also her acknowledging that she wants nothing more than to go back. This is the thought process that we should have for the character as we await the season 3 premiere on September 10.

What are your takeaways from the new Outlander teaser? Be sure to share below!

Meanwhile, head over to the link here in the event you do want to get some additional news right now when it comes to the show. (Photo: Starz.)