Outlander season 6 premiere: EP on Claire – ether storyline
Over the course of the first episode, we learned that Claire was using the ether to effectively knock herself out. This was a way for her to numb herself from the nightmares and the pain she was feeling following the assault on her at the end of season 5. This is not something from the source material, and instead a way to physically show how Claire is faring internally. Doing this is a risk, and a potentially dangerous one depending on the situation. How this progressed could prove both fascinating and also frighting at the same time.
In explaining this choice tonight in an Entertainment Weekly interview, here is what executive producer Maril Davis had to say:
“We were all searching for something, a throughline for Claire … We did not feel we just wanted to drop it. Season 6 picked up nearly immediately after season 5, and it’s still so fresh and raw in all of our minds. It felt like … we’d be doing Claire a great disservice if we did not address it in some fashion.
“When that came up to use the ether … What we loved about it was it’s not addictive, but there is an addictive quality to numbing the pain. For Claire, who wears her heart on her sleeve, that’s a pretty big statement for her to want to numb the feelings she’s dealing with.”
What Claire may need to figure out is a different way of dealing with her trauma and working through it; we can’t say it will ever leave her. Yet, we also think she understands that she can’t continue to go down this road forever. All of this may be a new experience for her, given that she always has excelled at compartmentalizing. This is just a situation that is too raw and too painful to just ignore or store in a box. It can come back out at just about any moment.
What do you think about the enormous Claire twist at the end of the Outlander premiere?
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(Photo: Starz.)