In Outlander‘s Perfectly Paced Season Premiere, Claire and Jamie Are Still Together in Spirit

Outlander is back, and it’s as wonderfully exhausting and draining as you want it to be. Full disclosure: Book 3 is one of my favorites. But the TV series is not the book, and there are already things that I like better.

The season begins as you would expect, with Jamie on the battlefield at Culloden Moor. He looks mostly dead and in need of the chocolate-covered pill from The Princess Bride.

While he lays there in agony, he keeps flashing back to the battle as the English come around killing people who are moaning in pain. As the camera lifts, we see someone resting on his chest like a lover, and (of course) it’s Black Jack Randall.

He’s dead, but he died in violence and nestled in Jamie’s arms. He loved him and hated him and ended up, I think, in a way he would have liked.

Just when you’ve had just about enough of watching Jamie suffer, the episode shifts to Claire and Frank. I love the pacing throughout, and I hope the rest of the season continues this way. While they are each dealing with their own loss, Claire’s life, while sad, is not the same level of tragic as Jamie’s.

She may not be in love with Frank like her life with Jamie, but Frank is desperately in love with her. Even though the love is one way, it’s there. No one is actively trying to end her.

Claire is dealing with her grief alone, but sees a bird out the window that makes her think Jamie is there; Jamie sees a rabbit on the battlefield and thinks of her. Even separated, they are together in spirit.

Another jarring shift takes us back to Scotland, where things go from bad to worse for Jamie as he sits in a shack, unable to move, when the British come in and announce their plans to shoot everyone in an hour’s time.

As they shoot everybody, one by one, you await the worst for Jamie—but he’s once again miraculously saved when the soldier that wants to kill him can’t because of the boy he saved last season.

This serves as further proof that “no good deed goes unpunished,” and while Jamie wants to die since Claire is gone, he cannot.

Back in Boston with all the modern conveniences, Frank and Claire are not happy because she cannot warm up to him. Nothing is going well and Frank decides to write the reverend to find out more about Jamie.

In the end, Jamie ends up back at home with Jenny and Ian to care for him and Claire gives birth in a haze of drugs.

Everything seems fine for Frank and Claire, who seem to make amends, until the nurse comes in and says the thing people alway say about children with red hair, “Oh, red hair, where did that come from?”

Keri is a professional chatterbox who loves watching TV & movies, reading about pop culture, and gawking at any craziness on the internet. You can follow Keri on Twitter.