The Outlander Season 3 premiere told us Frank researched Jamie
In Outlander Season 4, we learned Frank had definitely researched Jamie. However, it turns out this was clear in the Outlander Season 3 premiere.
Rewatching episodes gives us a chance to see scenes differently. The first time watching Season 3, there was no doubt a lot of focus on when Claire and Jamie would reunite. Deep down we knew it would take half a season to see them reunite, but that was still the big focus. Smaller moments were missed because of it.
One of those was Frank sitting down at his desk to write to Reverend Wakefield the night he and Claire had the blazing row. Frank wanted the reverend to look into Jamie Fraser.
This was a natural curiosity about the other man
There are a lot of Outlander fans who will say Frank is a hypocrite and was unfair to Claire. In today’s world, the sort of trauma Claire went through would have led to encouragement to talk. But this was the 1940s. You didn’t talk about grief and trauma in this time.
This was a time soldiers would come back from battlefields with “shell shock” and be sent back out as soon as physically able despite many knowing they wouldn’t survive. It was just a different time.
Frank may have viewed that bottling it up was the best thing. Plus, it was only human to want to move forward. He couldn’t be in the marriage if Jamie was there, too. We see it later in Outlander Season 3 that he can’t be second to Jamie, and that’s not an unreasonable need. He wants to know his wife loves him.
But there was still this other man. It was only natural for him to think about Jamie and wonder about him. The research would have been to see if Jamie had survived. Then it would have been to see the type of man he was and the life he lived without Claire around.
Care for a cocktail? @caitrionambalfe gives the grand tour of Claire's Boston home with @etnow’s @leanneaguilera. #Outlander pic.twitter.com/Xl3NOt0SKI
— Outlander (@Outlander_STARZ) September 7, 2017
He wanted Brianna to think of him as her father
Another understandable reaction from Frank was this need for Brianna not to know about Jamie. Claire tells Roger in Outlander Season 5 that she doesn’t regret not telling Bree the truth until she was in her 20s. After all, trying to explain to a five-year-old that your father is an 18th century Highlander and time travel is real could end up really confusing. It’s not like she could have told her classmates that!
Frank needed to feel like he had this little family. He wouldn’t have any children of his own, so he needed Brianna to think of him as her only father. That naturally meant no talk about the past.
So, why would he research Jamie if he wanted Brianna to think of him as her father? It was clear that eventually he knew she would learn the truth. That’s clear in the lessons he taught her, such as taking her shooting when he didn’t shoot himself. He wanted her to be ready for the past, knowing that eventually she’d likely learn the truth. He needed to know more about the specific time and Jamie’s specific lifestyle to even considered teaching her the right things.
There is a lot of hate for Frank. Some of that comes from the hate towards Black Jack Randall. However, broken down, Frank is a simple man. He doesn’t have too many agendas, but it is clear that he certainly researched the past.