Watch: Outlander Season 5 Provided Closure Amid Trauma

Keri Lumm reviews “Never My Love” for Paste—you can watch the video above or read the transcript below:

It’s over! The Droughtlander begins again, though this time we don’t know for how long. But at least this episode left us with a bit of closure.

After a whole lot of trauma of course!

The episode begins with Claire’s attack, and it is somewhat presented like Roger’s near-death experience in that we see where her mind goes. Claire imagines her family safely in the 1960s having Thanksgiving dinner together.

In the present, she finds out why the men have come after her. It is because Lionel knows she is the one who wrote the article explaining birth control methods in the paper.

They beat her, gag her, and torture her. It’s horrendous.

At one point, she thinks she will have help from a man who asks her if the name Ringo Star means anything to her. She begs him to free her, but he does not. He wants to get back to 1968, and she offers him help, but in the end he abandons her and she is brutally raped by all the men there.

Outlander has plenty of trauma, but at this point, a whole family has been raped and abducted. The odds of that happening seem very low.

Meanwhile back at Frasier’s Ridge, Roger, Bree and Jemmy are heading home. They went through the stones, but the reason they looked so surprised at the end of the last episode was because they were seeing Ian. Roger and Bree said they were both thinking of home, and they ended up back with Jamie and Claire.

When they arrive at Frasier’s Ridge, they are alerted to the fact that Claire is missing and the men are getting ready to get her back. Ian shaves his mohawk back into submission and puts blood on his face, and Roger goes along with them.

They end up killing all the men who abused her, except Lionel. He is still alive and they take him back for questioning.

Jamie carries Claire away wrapped in his plaid, much like the first season.

Claire is so happy to see her daughter, a surprise she of course had not planned on. She thought they would never see each other again, and we see Marsali with her bruised face from when she was laid out on the stone floor.

The men tie Lionel up in the surgery and Claire wants him dead, but has promised to do no harm. She thinks about it, and then when she leaves, Marasli decides she is done with him, and she kills him with a syringe.

Jamie finds her on the floor upset worried about going to hell, but as usual, he takes care of everything, returning Lionel to his brother. His brother knows that Lionel deserved it, but he still vows revenge on Jamie.

Claire and Jamie end up at Frasier Ridge discussing their love for each other and the impending revolution. The very last scene is of Jamie and Claire in bed together, nude. (Side bar. Is that a normal position for cuddling?)

We see all of Claire’s bruises, and she tells Jamie that she feels safe.

That’s it.

Since the space between Seasons 5 and 6 is sure to be longer than planned because of pandemic-related production shutdowns, it was nice to feel closure on most of the storylines. They did not leave fans with a lot of angst to carry through to the next installment.

Overall, I enjoyed this season of Outlander and can’t wait for Season 6!

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.

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