Claire’s worst nightmare comes true, and then things get really complicated

Sing me a song about a boy who’s gone. Say, could that boy be James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser?

This is how things look at the end of this week Foreignerin which Claire receives word that Jamie’s ship has sunk while crossing the Atlantic Ocean. There are no survivors.

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Yes, we’ve reached the point in the season foretold in the trailer, where a devastated Claire declares, “I would feel it in my heart if his had stopped.” Mine would stop too.” And to make the emotionally crippling injury even worse, barely a moment passes before she is forced into a decision that will affect the rest of her life.

Maybe we’ll find some levity elsewhere in the episode. What are you saying there? Ian just died in his bed next to Jenny and Arch Bug is about to leave Rachel? Damn!

Read on for the highlights of ‘Brotherly Love’.

GOODBYE, OLD FRIEND | We get another great scene between Ian and Jamie, where Ian teases his friend about marrying a woman (hundreds of years) older. As the laughter dies down, Jamie says he loves Ian like a brother ever since they traded blood after Willie’s death. And then all Jamie has to do is carry his fading friend to his bed, where Jenny and Jamie join him in waiting for the inevitable. “On your left, man,” Ian squeaks at Jamie, evoking his signature call. Then he says Jenny’s name one last time, and he’s gone.

Jamie digs Ian’s grave alone. Then he invites Jenny to stay with him and Claire on Fraser’s Ridge, but she declines.

THE BALL IS IN CLAIRE’S COURT | Meanwhile, Claire arrives in Philadelphia to help Lord John’s nephew, Henry. Henry technical is a prisoner of war under the care of Mercy Woodcock, a pro-independence black woman; Lord John has been hanging around her home, dressed in his British army uniform, to give her a little protection now that the city is under British control. He is relieved to see Claire and happy to announce that he has bought all the vitriol he could get his hands on so she can make ether to use during Henry’s abdominal surgery. During her investigation, she discovers that Denzell Hunter performed the procedure that successfully removed the first musket ball, and that William, Denzell, and Rachel are all in town.

Dr. Hunter helps Claire with Henry’s surgery. Mercy controls the airwaves. Lord John is silently gagging in the corner, but to his credit he doesn’t throw up. Finally, Claire manages to remove the second musket ball, and Lord John happily announces the news to William and Rachel, who are waiting in the drawing room. In the aftermath, Mercy asks Claire about her husband Walter, who you’ll remember died at Valley Forge. Claire breaks the news softly: “He died thinking of you.”

ADIOS, ARCH | Earlier in the episode we saw Arch Bug clocking Rachel and William at the market. The old man later finds Rachel, who is worried that she has lost Rollo, and grabs her in the stables. Arch tells Rachel he’s going to kill her to punish Ian… who suddenly shows up! Rachel begs Ian not to kill Arch. But that obligation becomes difficult to fulfill after Arch buries his hatchet in Ian’s arm. The men fight, and Arch definitely has the upper hand – grief-mediated anger makes you strong, I guess? – but William enters the stables at the most opportune moment and shoots the old man dead. He tells Rachel (who he has a huge crush on) and Ian to run, because no one will arrest him for the crime, but they could be in real trouble.

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Once things have calmed down, Rachel and Ian get cozy when she reminds him that he never told her he loved her in English. So he does. “The world has turned upside down, and yet you are the only constant, the only thing that ties me to the earth,” he adds. (At his feet, Rollo says, “THANK YOU.”) They talk about him not converting to Quakerism, but wanting to be with her. She seems to come to a new way of thinking about the differences between them. “Your dog is a wolf, isn’t he?” she wonders. ‘You’re a wolf too, and I know it. But you do Mine wolf.”

‘HE’S GONE’ | Throughout the episode, the British cracked down on revolutionary spies. That’s a problem, because Mercy is one of them. When her connection is caught and she is followed, she worries: she has a letter that should go to General George Washington, but she cannot deliver it. Claire volunteers to deliver it instead; the soldiers never search her as she passes a checkpoint on her way to a garden outside the city. And indeed, although she gets a suspicious eye from a Redcoat along the way, she comes out of it in the most Claire Fraser way possible: by talking about explosive diarrhea. He quickly waves her away and she leaves the letter in a dead spot.

When she comes home, her world ends. The first indication that something is terribly wrong is that Lord John is in the drawing room with a visitor, and the normally composed Brit can barely keep it together. ‘Jamie’s ship… has been lost at sea. Lost with all hands,’ John tells Claire, who immediately replies that he is mistaken. The visitor is the captain of a ship who brought the news; Jamie’s signature was on the manifest of the crashed ship – she herself had received a letter from him saying he was on his way – and there were no survivors. ‘I would feel it. I would know,” she claims, angrily and slapping John away as he tries to console himself. ‘He’s dead, Claire. He is gone,” says Lord John, devastated, and goodness gracious, can anyone comfort HIM?!

When the tears start, they don’t stop. Claire goes to her bed and doesn’t answer the door to anyone, so she misses the part where a redcoat John knows comes to the house and says he’s going to arrest Claire for being a spy. Lord John lies and says that he and Claire have no personal connection and that she is not home. So the Brit gives him a day to produce her and then leaves.

Lord John heads for Claire’s room and ignores her requests to be left alone. “You have to marry me,” he says, ordering her to get dressed because it has to be done quickly. Claire likes HARD PASS, but he points out that otherwise she will be hanged. Poor Lord John, who is very much dying inside from the loss of his favorite redhead, chokes on the thought that her marriage will at least insulate her from the charges and be the ‘last service I Jamie Fraser can prove.’

Claire, who is admittedly not her best self at the moment, doesn’t care. She wants them to hang her. But when Lord John explains that they won’t stop with her – Ian, Rachel, Mercy and Henry will all be involved – she seems to reconsider. “Please, there’s not a moment to lose,” he begs. “Marry me?”

FATHER’S DAY | Now let’s look at Roger and Buck in 1739. As Geilis listens to Buck’s heart, she notes that he looks familiar, and Roger says in voiceovers that this is because he is her son. (Heh.) As she steps out of the room, Roger tells his traveling partner about all the family drama. Buck wonders if she knows Rob Cameron; later, after she tries to seduce Roger and he gently rebuffs her, it appears that she has absolutely no connection whatsoever to the kidnapper.

It gets stranger. We witness the moment Geilis and Dougal Mackenzie meet and immediately begin flirting, sneaking into a back room so she can “show me your wares,” Dougal suggests. But first he answers Roger’s questions about whether he has seen a man traveling with a little boy. He didn’t do that, but he gives Rog a piece of jewelry with Jeremiah’s name on it. When they’re alone, Roger explains to Buck that the jewelry is actually a set of military ID tags… and that they belonged to his father, a member of the Royal Air Force who disappeared in the middle of the war. The elf man some people have seen wandering the countryside is not Rob, Roger theorizes, tears welling in his eyes, “It’s my father. He’s here!”

Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Hit the comments with your thoughts!

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