Outlander season 3 episode 7 review: Jamie’s secret; trials by fire

One of the real joys that comes with watching television, (at least for us) is the rush that comes with feeling surprised. With Outlander, this is the reason why we opt against reading the books before seeing the show. We find it useful to judge the series on just it’s television merits, and the closing minutes of Sunday night’s episode “Crème de Menthe” proved to be a delightful surprise.

How so? Well, the closing minutes of the episode contained a big reveal — Jamie Fraser, is a married man twice over! While he may be happy that Claire is back, there is another woman out there that he’s married to — and he hasn’t told her.

If you’ve read the books, try to separate that from your brain for a moment and picture the scenario in the following way: You find your great love from the past and pick up where you left off with them. Then, you find out later that they were harboring a secret so big as them being already married. The assumption here is to assume the worst, since withhold thing this sort of information would break many people.

To think, all this time we’ve been so complimentary of Jamie for the honesty that he has shown Claire! It’s so easy to become fixated on the end of the episode that you can forget about everything else in a split-second, including the other big reveal: The Print Shop burning to the ground. Poor Young Ian found himself in the midst of a terrifying fire as Jamie’s efforts to run a smuggling operation came home to roost. While his past is now back in his life, most of his present is now up in flamed and yet again, he must find a way to start over. Our suggestion? Try a more honest business — or at least an honest business that does not require you to have your life on the line.

Due to some of Jamie’s smuggling ways we should’ve viewed this as a warning sign that Jamie was a man inundated with dishonesty. His entire business was based on secrets and he refused to tell Older Ian the whereabouts of his son. (On a side note, isn’t the duo of Young Ian and Fergus fun? Someone needs to give John Bell and Cesar Domboy a buddy-cop movie once this is over. Even the photo above is delightful,) This dishonesty from Jamie here was a concern from Claire; it was a bridge too far since it was causing a painful reaction from a father when there was no immediate reason for him to do this. Was he really protecting Young Ian? Our viewpoint is more that Jamie was embarrassed about what he was using Young Ian for so he didn’t want to admit to it.

Claire shows her strength

At the start of the episode Claire almost killed her attacker at the center of the cliffhanger last week, and through much of the early portion of this episode she did everything that she could in order to help save him. Suffice it to say, that did not quite go according to plan — he didn’t make it. Yet, in the process of getting the proper medicine for him she ran into Archibald Campbell, a man looking to head towards the West Indies who also just so happened to have a sister (Margaret) who is in need of help.

While this scene in the episode was reasonably short, there is something of importance to hearing the West Indies entering the conversation. Even as a non-reader we know what that means in terms of the voyage to come! Smart on the series to begin dropping some hints regarding that already.

CarterMatt Verdict

Outlander season 3 episode 7 did not contain a signature scene a la the Print Shop that we had in “A. Malcolm,” and nor did it have a heartbreaking goodbye. This was nonetheless a very entertaining episode with a good bit of humor, Claire and Jamie learning more about each other, and then a shocking reveal near the end that could have big ramifications for later on this season. A very good episode in our books.

What did you think about Outlander season 3 episode 7?

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