In a bittersweet moment, just as Roger was able to meet his dad, he had to say goodbye. He managed to get Jerry MacKenzie back through the stones in Outlander season 7, episode 13, but what happened to the man afterward?
Roger has a lot of questions. When he got Jerry through the stones, he expected to have a flood of memories of his dad growing up. By not getting them, he had to question whether Jerry even made it back to his own time or not.
There was one flash of a potential memory, but Roger doesn’t know if it was an old or new one. It was Jerry in the London Underground during an air raid. This does seem to hint that Jerry is able to make it back to his own time, but why aren’t there more memories?
What happens in the Outlander books?
Jerry’s story isn’t told in the main Outlander books. We get to see Roger sending his dad back through the stones and that’s it. We have to turn to a short story to get the answers, and I had hoped that we’d see some of this short story used in the series.
A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows takes us to the 1940s. We get the top secret mission that Jerry was sent on—and if you thought of Frank Randall when you heard MI6, that was for a good reason because he was there—and then we get to see what happened to Jerry when he returned. His wife, Marjorie, still has hope that her husband is alive, but she knows that he’s presumed dead.
As Jerry gets back, there’s an air raid in London. Jerry races after his family, but as the Underground they’re in starts to collapse, Majorie has to find a way to make sure her son survives. She looks over the stairs to see Jerry is down there. Majorie throws a young Roger to Jerry just before she is killed in the collapse.
Sadly, Jerry dies as well in the collapse. Roger is the only survivor out of the family, and it leads to him being raised by Reverend Wakefield.
Roger was always meant to save his father so his father could save him
Many who have read the main books or have now watched Outlander season 7, episode 13 will wonder why Roger even went back to the time his father was. It seems like a wasted trip, does it? Well, not when you consider how time travel works.
Big events can’t be changed. That means that those major deaths or the big battles can’t be prevented. Things have to happen.
Roger has to go back in time to get his father back to Jerry’s own time. That leads to Jerry saving Roger in the London Underground. Had Majorie not seen her husband, she probably wouldn’t have thrown Roger over the ledge. She just knew that Jerry would do what it took to save him.
I do have a feeling that Outlander season 7, episode 13 tried to show us that Jerry did, in fact, end up in the 1940s after going through the stones. That memory was an old one of Roger’s, but one that he had forgotten. Jerry did die, but he died when he was supposed to. I just wish we could have seen some of that play out properly in the series just for closure, even if it was just for us.
Outlander airs on Fridays on STARZ.
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