Outlander Season 3, Episode 10 saw Claire and Jamie separated again. This time there was the risk of mutiny and Claire had to take a leap of faith.
Thursdays have been “recap days,” as I got Claire and Jamie up to date. I like to make sure you have all the recaps in one place. Outlander Season 3, Episode 10 was the first episode I recapped for the site! I’d taken it over as the Site Expert, falling in love with the love story and the time-traveling story.
Rather than just end the recaps abruptly, I thought I’d continue in a slightly different way. After all, the last recaps have been with updated views after rewatching the episodes and gaining new viewpoints. I thought this would be the perfect chance to revisit and reassess my thoughts from the straight-after-watching recap.
Here’s the original recap for “Heaven & Earth.” I gave it a B- and I think I’ll stick with that grading now. Why? Here’s a look at my thoughts revisiting the episode.
Jamie acted out of fear and love
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I know there were many people angry at the way the Outlander writers developed Jamie’s character for this episode. The whole scene was created just for the series and didn’t fit Book Jamie’s character. However, it fits Show Jamie’s character.
We may want him to be, but Jamie isn’t perfect. He’s human and that means human feelings and emotions. Sometimes his morals and thoughts of others can go out of the window. I still love that Jamie reacted the way he did when finding out Claire was still on the ship the Porpoise.
He’d been separated from her for 20 years. Believing he’d never see her again, he’d let her go and did some drastic things when he thought she was back for him. Now that he had her back, he wasn’t going to let her go and he feared that something would happen to her. His actions onboard were exactly the type of reaction I would expect from a man so passionately in love.
At no point would he have been thinking clearly. The time in the cell would have been torturous and he wanted anyway out to save Claire, even if it meant mutiny and the risk of death himself.
Fergus being the one to calm him down
This leads me to the reason why he did calm down. It was all about Fergus. Because of the way Outlander Season 3 was done and how short the season was, we didn’t really get to see much of that bond between Jamie and Fergus develop. One minute Fergus was a young boy who had just had his hand chopped off and the next minute he’s an adult, in love with the daughter of Claire’s archnemesis.
What Outlander Season 3, Episode 10 gave us was a chance to see that bond and how it had developed. Jamie acted as a father to Fergus, giving him orders. Fergus was trapped between loyalty for Jamie and loyalty for Marsali. It took strength to say no to Jamie and risk never getting to marry the woman he loved–or forfeit his place in the family!
In the end, it was Fergus’ actions that made Jamie start to see a little sense; enough not to commit mutiny. The two are important to each other, and that’s exactly what I get from this scene the more I watch this episode.
Proof Claire needs a female friend
I’d love to see Mrs. Johansson again. When Claire thought she was alone, Mrs. Johansson was the one to help. She didn’t make a lot of sense at first, but it was soon clear what the goats needing grass meant.
The scenes between the two reminded me of the fact that Claire needs a female friend. She is made a better person when around a woman she can be friends with. She learns about new cultures and sees that women aren’t always out there to knock her down. We get positivity in female friendships, especially when we have to deal with the likes of Laoghaire.
This friendship was important for the episode, too. She was the only good thing left after Claire’s time on the Porpoise. Claire had said a tearful goodbye to Elias Pound, who was the last victim of the disease on the ship.
Seeing Claire in her element
The episode also gave us Claire in her element: as a doctor or surgeon. As I watch this episode more, I start to wonder if “Creme de Menthe” was really necessary. While Episode 7 certainly showed us the type of doctor Claire was in the 1960s, there were other storylines that could have been focused on instead. We got the nurturing and healing ways of Mrs. Fraser in “Heaven & Earth.”
She was compassionate, strict, and thoughtful at the same time. Elias learned a great deal from her, even if it was stressful and tiring for her at times to teach him. She was able to separate the stress of the situation and the expectations and education of the time when she needed to, making Elias a young man who would have been a pride and joy to his mother.
It was this development that made me so sad for Elias in the end. After all that work to follow Claire’s instructions, he succumbed to the disease. Claire did all that and he was her last victim; the one she had to soothe into death–and she did it reminding us of the wartime nurse she once was.
There were certainly elements of this episode I didn’t like. For the most part though, I enjoyed it. The storylines were realistic for the situation of the characters and the show’s adaptation of those characters.
What did you think of “Heaven & Earth?” Have your thoughts changed over the course of rewatches? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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