Outlander Episode 1 Recap: Through a Glass, Darkly

In the season finale all those eons ago, Claire and Jamie, healing from the many wounds inflicted on him by Black Jack Randall, were boarding a ship for France. They were ready to change history, and they were ready to add a bouncing bundle of joy to their family.
Season 1 was a difficult, tumultuous ride, but it ended with positive vibes. Surely Season 2 will build on that momentum, right? Wrong, as Claire discovers when she awakens in the Scottish stone circle that started this whole mess. The Highlands are the Highlands, so it’s hard to place her at first, but some context clues—chiefly Claire’s screams—place her squarely in the 20th century. It’s 1948 to be exact, three years after she first wandered through the portal to the past.
We don’t know how she came to be here, nor does the dapper Scotsman who stops to check on the woman in full corset wandering down the middle of the road. Claire responds to his questions with one of her own: “Who won the battle of Culloden?” Either because this is fiction, or because this is Scotland, this poor patriot readily replies that it was the British. One banshee scream later, Claire’s admitted to a hospital in Inverness, where she remains the most sorrowful of any living person who’s returned to a world with indoor plumbing.

Meanwhile, Frank (the modern, practical husband) has been notified his wife has returned from the ether. The brief snippets of Frank’s life we saw in Season 1 were filled with misery and confusion, and he is in store for more as he visits Claire for the first time. She’s wary at best in her interactions with him. It is, after all, hard to love a husband who’s the spitting image of the man who ruined your life and tortured your other husband.
There is some good news for Claire: she’s to “convalesce” at the home of our old friend Reverend Wakefield, who lives in what is presumably the ashes of the Library of Alexandria. Claire spends every waking minute combing through books, trying to find some mention of Jamie’s fate, on which she is unclear.
By the time Claire’s worked up the will to tell Frank just where she’s been all this time, it’s easy to see blissful ignorance is preferable to the poor guy. “No, no, dear,” his face pleads, “I’m really fine if we pretend you fell in with a particularly virulent cosplay cult. We don’t need to speak of it again.”
She unloads on him. Book fans will note how differently this episode treats Claire’s return, but it works for the format. Instead of hearing Claire’s recollections of how Frank took the news, we get to see the stiff-upper-lip anguish ourselves. Cut out the middleman, I say!
In his typical stoic fashion, Frank announces he’s ready to take this “leap of faith” with his bonkers wife. He’s trying so hard, being so brave, and Claire does everything in her power to smash his facade with a hammer. Her fury at how helpless she feels shortens her fuse, and we can presume this is why she doesn’t so much break the news of her pregnancy as drop it like an atom bomb.

Before we go any further…despite the trauma she’s experienced, Claire is at the top of a short list for luckiest woman alive. She has two husbands, both of whom are more understanding than men of their times have a right to be, and she spent all of the last three years on a journey through time and sheets. One husband is a hunk with a heart of gold and abs of steel, and the other is slim, trim, and perfectly willing to go along with an insane story of bed-hopping of the days of yore.
Anyway, Claire could deliver the news of her pregnancy with a bit more delicacy, but it wouldn’t be Outlander if she weren’t being tart with a man who loves her beyond reason. Pushed to his limit, Frank sets about to hulk-smashing his kindly Scottish host’s belongings. Claire’s news about her pregnancy is a double whammy for the poor guy: not only did his wife get knocked up by some other beefcake, but she did so after years of struggling with infertility in their union.
Rage subsided, Frank lays out the conditions for his taking on this whole fatherhood business: they will raise this child as their own, and Claire must stop her frantic research on Jamie. If Frank had watched the sex scenes from Season 1, he’d realize, “You must let him go,” is a lot easier said than done. But Claire consents anyway, because one husband is better than zero husbands.
Speaking of…it’s flashback time! We pick up with Claire’s memories as she and Jamie step off the boat in France, safely back in the 18th century. Also there: Murtaugh, Europe’s crankiest traveler. Yay.
The difference in Claire’s overall demeanor is noticeable—she’s bubbly. But while his wife’s ready to go whole hog in stopping the ill-fated Jacobite rebellion, Jamie is hesitant. Despite Claire’s understanding, they have not agreed to reshape history. What exactly they talked about on that long boat ride is a mystery, but it wasn’t strategy. Jamie does finally consent to Claire’s plans, including the portion where he must con his Jacobite cousin into ingratiating them with the rebel alliance.
As Murtaugh, poet of the soul, utters later in the episode, Claire and Jamie’s plan is “like a plaid woven out of guile and deception.” The man can turn a phrase.

The Fraser clan is a talented bunch, as we learn when we catch up with Jamie’s cousin, Jared, who runs a lucrative wine business. After some persuading, Jared asks Jamie to run the store while he goes off to the West Indies for lucrative wine business things.
Claire and Jamie have their foot in the door in France. But…it also wouldn’t be Outlander if Claire weren’t on the verge of causing an international incident. Down at the docks, Claire notices a man being carted off a ship on a stretcher. Her nurse instincts kick in. He’s got smallpox, she loudly declares to anyone who’ll listen. Unfortunately, that means the ship he came in on and all the cargo on it must be burned. This aggravates the owner of that ship, here known as Snarly Businessman #1, a chief competitor of Jared Fraser.
“Another country, another enemy. Life with you is never dull, Sassenach,” Jamie says, adding some levity to a situation that will surely come back to haunt them. Never dull, indeed, which is why we’ll all be back next week to see what Claire’s stepped in.