I’m so grateful that Outlander is my can’t-miss show again. I hold it up as one of the better books-to-screen adaptations, so I never fault season two for being less engaging than season one, because that’s true to book two versus book one. Book one / season one are all time travel, adventure and romance. Book two / season two are battle strategy, trauma recovery and trench foot. But book three is a return to what made the story’s beginning so gripping, and so far season three is right in step with that. 

Episode three of the third season is a welcome sprint through the next significant parts of Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire’s (Caitriona Balfe) separation, following Claire rapidly through med school and the early years of her career as a surgeon while her marriage to Frank freezes over and explodes. Woven throughout is Jamie’s time at Ardsmuir Prison. I think we probably have one episode left before reunion time, but the journey there has been engrossing so far. 

By the end of episode two, Frank (Tobias Menzies) and Claire were sleeping in separate beds. When we catch up with them a few years later in episode three, they’ve evolved to living separate lives and staying married only for the sake of sharing a home with, and custody of, Brianna. Frank has been seeing at least one woman discreetly, while Claire has been consumed by first her studies and then her work.

We connect with the tense twosome at key moments in the years between Brianna’s early childhood and the year she turns 18 and graduates high school. After that graduation, Frank tells Claire he’s ready for a divorce and that he intends to move back to England to accept a job at Cambridge and encourage Brianna (by this point played by Sophie Skelton) to go with him and enroll at Oxford. A furious Claire is willing to let Frank go, but she will not let Jamie’s daughter leave with him. Frank walks away from their heated argument over it, leaving the house with car keys in hand, and Claire gets a call from the hospital to come in immediately to perform a surgery. 

Later, Claire is reassuring her patient’s husband when her friend and colleague Joe Abernathy (Wil Johnson) seeks her out to let her know that Frank has been killed in a car accident. She rushes to his body, caressing his still face and whispering to him that she loved him very much once, and that he was her first love. 

Meanwhile, Jamie has been at Ardsmuir for a while by the time we rejoin him. He’s kept constantly in shackles, but he has risen to become a liaison between the prison’s governor and the prisoners. Happily, Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) did survive Culloden and has been at Ardsmuir ever since. He’s in terrible health, but he’s there among the men who treat Jamie like their chief and have given him the honorary title “Mac Dubh.”

Lord John Grey (David Berry), whose life Jamie spared when he was 16, leading directly to his own life being spared later by the young Lord’s older brother, is appointed the new governor of the prison, and over the course of the next few years he and Jamie become friendly.

Sam Heughan David Berry Outlander

During this time, a delirious Scot comes wandering through the moors near the prison, ranting about a treasure of gold that the English believe France sent to Bonnie Prince Charlie. Lord Grey asks Jamie to translate the man’s gibberish, which is being delivered in a mix of English, French and Gaelic. When he does, the man lists Jamie’s dead relatives and then says that the gold was cursed by a white witch. This gives Jamie hope that somehow, Claire has returned to him. He escapes from prison to investigate the possibility, and when he comes up empty-handed he returns to Ardsmuir. 

Although Jamie offers Lord Grey the opportunity to kill him when he returns, the young Lord refuses and the two instead become closer friends– until Lord Grey makes an unwelcome pass at Jamie over a game of chess. 

Eventually, Ardsmuir is closed down. Most of the prisoners, including Murtagh, are shipped off to the Colonies (America), but Lord Grey takes Jamie away separately. Partly as penance for his mistake of trying to get fresh, and partly because Jamie is a different tier of criminal than the others, Grey has arranged for him to become an indentured servant for Lord Dunsany. He delivers him to Dunsany’s estate in the Lake District, Helwater, where he’ll serve as a groom. 

Even though I have given you the “on paper” version of this episode, the magic in Outlander is the moods created by the performances and the settings. I hope you’re giving yourself the gift of watching!

Read my Outlander Season Three recaps HERE!

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