Outlander Book Club: The Fiery Cross Chapter 101 breakdown

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

The chapter doesn’t foreshadow all that much. If anything, it’s more about plot development as the Frasers and MacKenzies get to Wylie’s Landing to ambush Bonnet.

I guess the only foreshadowing is that Bonnet is a smart man. He gets a sense of when traps are coming, and I guess we shouldn’t really expect the ambush to work out as planned. We’ve got to remember that Bonnet has spent a long time working on the wrong side of the law and he manages to gain loyalty through fear. That works in his favor at times.

Adapting The Fiery Cross chapter

The chapter was partly used in the series but not all that much. We did have this buildup to Jamie, Roger, and Young Ian heading out to ambush Bonnet in Outlander Season 5, Episode 10. However, the episode wasn’t just about that, and we didn’t really have this big conversation about Bonnet’s way of gaining loyalty and whether he is a man or a monster.

The chapter was combined with chapters in A Breath of Snow and Ashes. From a TV show point of view, I appreciated these two storylines being combined. The initial ambush could have been anticlimactic, but knowing that Bonnet had Bree added to the drama.

TV shows can’t guarantee that they’ll have their guest stars the following season. The Outlander writers could have taken a risk and then ended up with not being able to wrap up Bonnet’s storyline properly, or they could opt to move the storyline forward to when they knew they had Ed Speleers.

It made a lot more sense to pull it forward. Plus, it works from a TV show first POV or even for the show-only fans. Dragging out storylines over the course of seasons is annoying and can lead to unnecessary filler along the way just to keep a character on the minds of the viewers. Opting for condensing the storyline has allowed another villain gone and the focus to move onto other villains in the story.

What did you spot while reading The Fiery Cross Chapter 101? Let us know in the comments below.

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