The Penultimate Pair of Episodes Brings Back ‘Outlander’s Mastery
“There is nothing lost, but may be found, if sought:” 'Outlander' Season 8, Episodes 7 & 8: “Evidence of Things Not Seen” & “In the Forest.”
“‘And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours, Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.’
The wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut tree nearby, and the scents of late summer rose up rich around us; pine and grass and strawberries, sun-warmed stone and cool water, and the sharp musky smell of his body next to mine.
‘Nothing is lost, Sassenach, only changed.’
‘That’s the first law of thermodynamics.’ I said, wiping my nose.
‘No,’ he said, 'That’s faith.’” (Gabaldon, Drums of Autumn, Ch 16, p 263)
We are coming to the end of a very long, far-flung, time-traveling journey, to be read in nine nearly 1000-page books, seen and heard in eight seasons, 101 episodes altogether. These two begin the final closure. As Season 8, Episode 7, “Evidence of Things Not Seen” begins, Jamie Fraser, sharing in, while he is dramatizing our anxiety, is climbing all over, checking out a certain lush green steep slope to see if it matches the description in Frank Randall’s book, The Soul of a Rebel: The Scottish Roots of the American Revolution. It informed Jamie that he will soon die here. We hear in voiceover, Sam Heughan and Tobias Menzies’ voices in turn, considering, retrospectively, the moment to come.
Expressed another way, the episode’s theme is “Of Lost Things,” uncannily echoing the title of Season 3, Episode 4, where, more than 20 years ago, Jamie was a groom in the Dunsany family household. He was pressured into having sex with (and, in consequence, impregnating) their older daughter, Ginevra, who gave birth to a son. William (played then by Clark Butler and now Charles Vandervaart) would no longer be lost if he would only accept his two fathers: Lord John Grey (David Berry) through informal adoption, and biologically, Jamie. Signs of what’s to come, and has been, accompany this episode of losses, poignant and tragic.
Among the poignant losses is a square of lace that Fanny (Florrie May Wilkinson, excellent in the role), whom Claire and Jamie have rescued from orphanhood, carries in a cloth napkin. She cherishes it because her grandmother made it for her, and her mother, Faith, gave it to her.
