Outlander Episode 16 Recap: To Ransom a Man’s Soul

When we last saw Jamie, he was in agony inside Wentworth Prison, awaiting Round 2 of Randall’s horrific attentions. If you had hoped we might be spared the details of what occurred in that cell, sorry. Jamie’s torture was physical, mental, and spiritual. While Randall is an endlessly violent man, he uses more than just physical pain to win Jamie’s “surrender.” He coos that he wants this to be a “pleasant experience” for the two of them.  When that doesn’t trigger the response he wants, he forces himself on the battered Scotsman and instructs him to scream. Finally, he uses Jamie’s in-and-out consciousness to pose as Claire. As Jamie says later, “He made love to me.”
The result is Randall in bed next to the bloodied, beaten wreckage of what was Jamie Fraser. As Randall goes to leave, Jamie croaks out a reminder that they had a deal: Jamie would submit himself to Randall’s perverse desires if he would kill him quickly at the end. Instead, Randall leaves Jamie in the cell, perfectly and unwillingly alive, to go check out a noise he heard.
That noise? Murtaugh’s rescue plan, finally. Randall creeps to one of the prison block’s doors and hears a ruckus. I don’t know that he can hear the jaunty bagpipe music we’re treated to, but he sure can hear the thunder of hooves as a posse of Highland cattle crashes through the door and tramples him.
Topside, all the rest of the Redcoats are flummoxed by the bovine brouhaha, so Murtaugh and Company sneak in to snag Jamie. Best rescue plan ever? Best rescue plan ever. One thing, though: As the Scots follow in the cows’ wake, they step around the prone body of Randall, underneath a door. He looks kind of dead, but the fact that none of them reach down to check seems like an astounding lack of foresight.
Less merry than the stampede is the state of Jamie. He’s naked, barely conscious and bloody. Murtaugh scoops him up and the Rescue Rangers carry him out of the prison like a prize won at the fair.

Down the road, they meet Claire, wearing immaculately tailored pants once again. She immediately begins to tend to Jamie, but he’s still somewhat delirious. As Claire looms over him, he sees Randall’s face and attempts to throttle her. So the first aid will have to wait, as the wagon train makes its way to a nearby monastery, filled with a bunch of fearless monks who are eager to help this party of scraggly outlaws and their cross-dressing lady friend.
Claire sets to work on Jamie’s wounds, but some hurts may be beyond her healing powers. As one monk tells her, Jamie’s soul has taken the most damage. The flashbacks to Randall’s torture are grotesque and difficult to watch. It’s telling that the most watchable part of these scenes is Claire setting nine bones in Jamie’s hand. Even then, the only way Claire can even get near Jamie to treat him is by drugging him. He refuses her touch. He refuses to eat. He refuses to say more than the bare minimum about what happened to him.
Murtaugh attempts to coax Jamie out of the “darkness,” with a spirited discussion in Gaelic. We’re not treated to subtitles, but I imagine it went something like this.
Murtaugh: “Jamie.”
Jamie: “No.”
Murtaugh: “Jamie. I danced my way through Scotland to find you.”
Jamie: “I said no.”
Murtaugh: “Do ye know how awkward Season 2 is going to be if you willn’t speak to the Sassenach?”
Jamie: “Get out.”
Meanwhile, Claire seeks help in other places. One kindly old monk finds her alone in a chapel and asks if she’d like him to hear her confession. Oh, did this man not know what he was getting into. Claire unloads it all on him: time-traveling, two husbands, the whole kit and caboodle. Fortune has once again smiled on Claire, however, because this 18th-century monk not only believes her, but calls her story a miracle.
Not even these most progressive of monks, however, are enough to pull Jamie from his misery. Jamie’s kin agree that the monastery cannot shelter them from the British for long, so they pick a new destination: France, where Murtaugh and Jamie have a cousin. (Apparently there are also some MacKenzies in France, but Claire and I are not convinced that the first French MacKenzie they’d meet wouldn’t be Dougal in a flamboyant wig and breeches.)
When Willie tells Jamie of the new plan, Jamie asks him for a knife, so he can kill himself. The news is distressing to Claire, who gets another blow when Murtaugh admits that his non-translated conversation with Jamie included lots of talk of suicide.
But Claire is not a flower who wilts in a storm. She confronts Jamie with something he’ll understand: strength. She commands Jamie to tell her why he doesn’t want to live. She pulls him out of bed, smacks him and makes some fine points: I didn’t get sucked all the way through time and fall in miraculous, sexually celestial love with you for nothing. You, Jamie Fraser, don’t get to ruin the narrative.
Jamie begins to tell her about his imprisonment, but she can tell he’s holding back—until she rips open his shirt and sees that Randall has forced Jamie to brand himself with his initials. Jamie tells Claire that he cannot touch her, or even be near her, without feeling overcome by shame. He feels unworthy of Claire, because Randall broke him, took him, made him his own.
“You belong to no one else but me,” Claire replies. “And I belong to you, and nothing will ever change that.”
With those tearful admissions, Claire breaks through the darkness, and a little tattoo removal brings Jamie a little further into the light. And just like that, we’re boarding the ship Murtaugh has secured to France. May a new country bring happier tidings. In fact, it already has. Claire finally finds the time to break some big news to Jamie: she’s pregnant. Oh, and she also wants to change the future by stopping Bonnie Prince Charlie’s uprising.
It may not be Dougal MacKenzie in an elaborate wig and breeches, but those are still some positive, exciting vibes to end a difficult season.