Outlander Book Club: Voyager Chapter 41 breakdown

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

The big thing about this chapter is setting up the story for the drama still to come. It connects the Edinburgh story to something that will happen later, allowing everything major to wrap up by the end of Voyager.

Everything to do with the traitor among them is going to come up. We know now who the traitor is, and it’s someone who hasn’t even been mentioned at this point. I do find it interesting how Fergus clearly doesn’t like Mr. Willoughby because he’s Chinese, but doesn’t once suspect him. Or at least, that suspicion isn’t made known.

I think there is foreshadowing of Claire and Marsali eventually getting along. While Claire and Fergus talk, Claire makes Marsali laugh without Marsali really wanting to. Marsali wants to be mad at Claire for everything that happened. After all, she will have heard plenty of stories about Claire, and not good ones!

However, this journey and the things still to come will end up leading to the two women getting along.

Adapting the Voyager chapter

Voyager Chapter 41 wasn’t fully used for the show. The traitor storyline was completely avoided, and this would have been due to plans later in the story. The traitor and the murder storylines both combine by the end, but the show just didn’t have time to fit it all in. It would have been odd to add something in during the voyage to never touch on it again. TV viewers get annoyed at plot holes like that.

So, instead of opting for the traitor storyline, the show created some of its own drama. The first was Jamie not immediately giving his blessing to Fergus and Marsali. I will say that I’ve never found what Jamie did on the show to be all that odd. As a show-first fan at this point, it felt in character for the Jamie that I’d come to know.

The age gap between Marsali and Fergus was large, even for the time. Marsali may have been old enough to get married but to a 30-year-old man? It’s easy to overlook that if it doesn’t get brought up, so I’m glad Jamie did mention it. People mention the age gap between Claire and Frank and between Brianna and Roger all the time, so why not between Marsali and Fergus?

As for the main drama, it was all about superstitions and the Jonah. One thing I adored about the change was the chance to hear Yi Tien Cho’s story. He was able to buy time while waiting for the rain to fall. We also got a chance to see Jamie’s need to protect the men he’d been at Ardsmuir with, something that would mean a lot later in the series.

I know it didn’t work for everyone, but it did work for me as a show-first fan. Something the writers have to do is make an episode work for all, and that’s impossible. Importantly, the show has to be accessible and understandable to those who haven’t read the books, and this episode offered some great moments for that need.

What did you spot while reading Voyager Chapter 41? Let us know in the comments below.

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