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Outlander Book Club: A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 120 breakdown

Alexandria Ingham
Alexandria Ingham

Claire and Jamie

Outlander Season 5 -- Courtesy of STARZ

Outlander Season 5 dvd
Outlander — Courtesy of STARZ

It’s time for the MacKenzies to head back to their own time in Outlander Book 6, Chapter 120

We get a very short but important chapter in Outlander Book 6, Chapter 120. It’s time for Roger, Bree, Jemmy, and Mandy to head through the stones.

Jamie and Claire head to Ocracoke with their family. They want to say goodbye, and they need to make sure everyone gets through the stones fully. Of course, they don’t know where everyone gets to in the future, but they can at least assume everyone got to the 20th century safely.

Roger and Bree travel through separately with their children. Something that surprises me is just how affected Claire is by everyone going through the stones. She feels pain from the stones, as well as the emotional pain of saying goodbye.

There is a little bit of foreshadowing in this chapter. Jamie mentions something about a big mouse to Jemmy, which makes it clear that has to come up at some point in the story. I’ll get to my thoughts on that in the foreshadowing section.

I hope to see this chapter in Outlander Season 7. I’ll get to my thoughts on that in the adaptation section.

Let’s dive into A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 120.

Outlander Season 5
Outlander Season 5 — Courtesy of STARZ

Just the Outlander chapter

The chapter picks up with everyone at Ocracoke. Claire stays back from the stones, but she still feels the pull from them. However, she is determined to stay with Jamie.

Bree goes through the stones first with Mandy. She follows everything that she read from Donner to make sure she gets through the stones safely. I love that they do this. Everyone just went through the stones without the ritual their first times. Even with the multiple trips Claire has done, she’s not always had even gems for protection. However, Bree isn’t taking any risk with Mandy with her.

Roger offers Jemmy the chance to say with Claire and Jamie. However, Jamie knows that his grandson needs to go. He tells Jemmy to say hello to a big mouse called “Michael,” which we know as Mickey Mouse. Then, Jemmy runs to Roger and they head through the stones together.

While Jamie feels the emotional pain of saying goodbye to his family, Claire feels physical pain. When Bree and Mandy go through, she starts to feel the headache. She collapses when Roger goes through the stones.

When Claire wakes, she hears Jamie telling her that he will continue for her sake alone. It’s clear that he worried that he was going to lose her too. I don’t think it meant he would kill himself, but he wouldn’t have felt the need to fight as hard as he would with her still with him. I think it would be a lot like Culloden where he was ready to die with Claire gone.

Outlander - Go Tell the Bees
Outlander Season 5 — Courtesy of Aimee Spinks, STARZ

Foreshadowing in the Outlander chapter

The foreshadowing here is a trip to Disneyland. Jamie wants Jemmy to say hi to Mickey Mouse, and it’s clear that Bree and Roger will take Jemmy there. After all, Jemmy needs to experience everything about the 20th century. They don’t think they’re going to return to the past.

I do think there’s an element of foreshadowing in Claire’s reaction to the stones. I was confused by the way she did react, but I do wonder if it’s foreshadowing how all time travelers react differently to the stones. We know in the future that Buck will time travel and he suffers heart problems. When Bree gets back to the past, she learns that she can’t time travel again. Yet, Roger doesn’t seem to struggle as much, and we know Mandy is the way the family stays together when they travel in the future.

Adapting A Breath of Snow and Ashes chapter

I would love to see this chapter play out just as it does in the book. We know Bree and Roger are going to head to their own time based on leaked images of Outlander Season 7, which means a trip through the stones.

I love that in Outlander Season 5, the planned trip was with Young Ian taking them to the stones. This gave Ian a chance to see that time travel really was real. It reminded me of Jamie seeing it for the first time. However, for this real trip, I need to see Jamie tell Jemmy to say hello to Michael.

The show will probably keep the time travel at the stone circle Roger found on the way to the Mohawk village. The Ocracoke circle hasn’t been found yet. I do wonder if Donner’s story will come up more. We haven’t had the full lore behind time travel in the series, and I don’t mind that. As I’ve said before, there isn’t the time to explain everything in TV so the rules need to stay simple. Just having a gem to travel is enough.

What did you spot while reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes Chapter 120? Let us know in the comments below.

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Alexandria Ingham

Alexandria Ingham

Alexandria Ingham is the Site Expert at Claire and Jamie, Precinct TV, and Last Night On within the FanSided network. She is also a contributor at many other sites, including Show Snob, GeekSided, and Winter Is Coming, and has been with FanSided since 2016, writing about Game of Thrones, Outlander, Grey's Anatomy, The Boys, Supernatural, and much more. When she's not writing, you can find her curled up with a good book or an intriguing dystopian or fantasy TV series. She is also a freelance writer for hire in niches such as lifestyle, entertainment, parenting, budgeting, and more.