Outlander season 3 episode 9 sneak peek analysis: Marsali puts Jamie, Claire in tough spot

Well, this escalated quickly. Outlander season 3 episode 9 was already set up to be crazy, and the latest sneak peek takes that to another level.

In the sneak peek below (via Entertainment Weekly), Jamie and Claire find out that there are some unexpected guests aboard the ship — and that getting rid of them will prove to be no easy task. Who are they? We’re talking about not-so-wee Fergus (Cesar Domboy) and Laoghaire’s daughter Marsali (Lauren Lyle), a young lady who is every bit as stubborn and conniving as her mother.

The moment that Jamie Fraser finds out that these two are on board, he makes a quick decision: Sail to shore and let Marsali off as soon as humanly possible. Why? Per his estimation, the ship is “no place for a lass.” Apparently, this estimation excludes Claire — which makes sense given that she’s probably tougher than the vast majority of the ship’s crew combined.

This decision is complicated by a few different things. For one, Fergus and Marsali have been courting for some time and they were recently “hand-fasted” — basically, they were married in a rather hasty manner before getting on the ship. She wants to be with Fergus, and they also want to be aboard the ship. If Jamie is to let her off, then she in turn is going to go around and start proclaiming that she and Fergus have already slept together. It’s not true, but it doesn’t matter. She knows Jamie and knows how much guilt he has the capacity to feel. Odds are, he harbors some sort of pain towards Laoghaire and his family over what happened in “First Wife” — he may not love Laoghaire, but he also doesn’t want to hurt her or her children. He doesn’t want Marsali to damage her own reputation by making false claims — the fact that sleeping with a man would even do that is all sorts of ridiculous, but this is 18th-century Scotland we’re talking about. Jamie’s reaction to Brianna wearing a bikini is all you need to know about their imbalanced perceptions of women and virtue.

Jamie retreats on his plan after hearing Marsali’s threats, and decides at the end of the sneak peek to leave them aboard … under some conditions, of course. The biggest one is that he will stay at night with Fergus while Marsali is off with Claire … which is probably the sort of idea that he should have consulted Claire on in advance. Do you really think that she wants to be around the daughter of someone who very clearly hates her — and just tried to shoot her? Based on what we’ve seen, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree when it comes to Marsali’s feelings towards Claire.

All in all, this sneak peek does offer up great evidence that Outlander season 3 episode 9 will be all sorts of entertaining. We’re excited to dive into it more this weekend and offer up our ratings preview Sunday.

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