Outlander Season 3 premiere recap: The start of the 20-year separation

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Photo credit: Outlander/Starz Image acquired via Starz Media Room /

Outlander Season 3 picked up where Season 2 left off. Claire and Jamie were separated by time, believing one would die in battle.

I took over Claire and Jamie part way through Outlander Season 3. Before that, I was writing my Outlander recaps over at Hidden Remote. But it’s time to get the full season up to date on this particular site.

Since rewatching the season, other elements of the episode have stood out. If you want to read my initial recap of the episode, you can here. However, this will go into other details and feelings throughout, more of a review within a recap.

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I will also separate this recap into two: focusing on Claire and Jamie’s separate lives as they started their 20-year separation in Outlander Season 3, Episode 1, “The Battle Joined.”

Let’s start with Claire. She spends the episode trying to navigate the 1940s. Pregnant with Jamie’s child but attempting to continue her marriage to Frank, she tries to fit in the best she can. Of course, her progressive opinions and views aren’t welcome around Frank’s Harvard colleagues, one of whom isn’t happy that women are now being admitted to Harvard Medical School. Of course, this is foreshadowing of things to come.

But right now, husband and wife are struggling in their own ways. Claire is clearly depressed and angry. The man she loved and adored forced her through the stones and into her own time. What he did was selfless, but that’s not the way Claire sees it right now. It’s not easy to get these sorts of emotions across on screen, but Outlander certainly tries.

Photo credit: Outlander/Starz Image acquired via Starz Media Room /

Claire’s depression spirals, as she pulls away from Frank at every opportunity. This pregnancy is her burden and she won’t let Frank near her. That’s understandable considering he looks so much like Black Jack Randall, but I still can’t get over the idea that she just never told him the full truth. At least, I’m guessing she didn’t tell him about Black Jack. If she did, then he really doesn’t understand what that could do to a person!

Throughout the months of the pregnancy, Claire becomes increasingly more irritable and accuses Frank of just wanting sex. Honestly, he just wants to get some sort of normalcy back to his marriage. He wants to be with Claire again.

After throwing an ashtray at him and forcing him to sleep on the couch, Claire wakes him up to tell him that her waters have broken. It’s time to head to the hospital, where a sexist doctor is waiting to knock her out to give birth (yes, this sort of thing really happened). When Claire awakes confused and scared (understandably after Faith’s birth), she and Frank finally have the chance to bond over their daughter. Claire is willing to let him into the family now, realizing that she’s been awful to him in recent months.

It all looks perfect until the nurse asks her where the baby, who is called Brianna in case we needed the reminder, got her red hair from. If looks could kill, the nurse wouldn’t have survived Claire and Frank’s glares.

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