After a season of tragedy, misery, desperation and pain, season 2 ends on a hopeful note, that Jaime has survived the Battle of Culloden and that Claire can go back through the stones. At this point in the series, it has really been 15 straight episodes of misery dating all the way back to Wentworth Prison. But if you were hoping that season 3 would pick up on the cheerful note season 2 left on, oh does Outlander have a surprise for you. Get ready for more pain, misery and despair because that's what The Battle Joined has for you.
Remember at the end of Season 1 when Jaime was broken, alone and wanted to die. Well, after reclaiming himself in season 2 we get to start off season 3 seeing Jaime right back where he started, wounded, broken, and soulless with Claire's return to the past. Don't worry because he's not alone. Claire is in a similar rut of desperation at the loss of Jaime and difficulties in adjusting to a new life in the future. Just like Jaime, Claire finds herself coming full circle to where she started in season 1, a Sassenach outsider in a strange land living a life she doesn't want. Because we are back in the future, we get to add Frank on the list of good people who get to suffer, trapped with a wife that he loves who has closed herself off from him. If seeing all the main characters suffering isn't miserable enough for you, Outlander has even more to offer. Strap on in and watch your friends from the earlier seasons, Gordon and Rupert get gunned down in cold blood for their roles in the rebellion. If that still isn't enough and you don't think Claire has suffered enough, watch her sheer terror when she wakes up in the hospital without her baby and asks her nurse if the baby is dead, in case you forgot about Faith from last season. And just as Outlander gives you hope that maybe Claire and Frank can get something started again in the future, the nurse asks about Brianna's red hair, foreshadowing that things are not going to be alright for Claire and Frank.
If you couldn't tell, this is an episode I want to hate. After enduring an entire season of pain, it's tough to start out with all of the main characters in misery yet again. But, I can't hate the episode, because it's so beautifully done. The battle scenes are perfect, short, coherent, and brutal, a clear and concise viewing of the final defeat of the Jacobites. Sam Heughan in particular gets a gold star for this one, giving Jaime such depth even as he barely says any lines. You can see Jaime's brokenness, his hopelessness as he lays in the field and the barn, both waiting for death and welcoming it.
Speaking of death, I have to say that the death of Black Jack Randall was a thing of absolute beauty and such a poignant message. In the first half of season 2, Jaime was obsessed with revenge, felt alive again at the thought of watching Randall die. As a viewer, you feel the same way as Jaime, desperate to watch Randall die and finally pay for all of his many sins. And after all that, his death is absolutely meaningless, both to you and Jaime. Randall is just another solider on a field of death. Jaime doesn't kill him so much as Randall just falls down onto him. At the end of the battle, for all of their hatred and animosity, they are just two men slowly dying on a battlefield. The message is so powerful and reinforces what Jaime learned at the end of the Paris arc. Randall's death and Jaime's revenge is meaningless, because Claire is gone. It was such a great way to conclude the arc because at the beginning of the series, Randall is someone who haunts Jaime's memories. Upon his death, Randall has no meaning to him.
And Claire, well her's and Frank's story I find to be more the interesting of the two though maybe less emotionally moving. Outlander should get a ton of credit for its consistency since the problem in Claire and Frank's marriage are the same types of problems that you see in the first episode of the series from 1945. The two have feeling for each other, but they just lack that connection, that spark, that you see with Jaime and Claire. It was always there, that gap, that lack of intimacy, but now it's even worse. You know already that the relationship is not sustainable because Frank is mindful of Claire's adventure and just wants to move past it, like it never happened. That was never going to be possible because Claire is a different person than she was in 1945. We as the viewer have seen all that Claire went through, being captured, beaten, losing a child, harassed by soldiers, raped by the King of France, on the front lines of the Jacobite rebellion etc. You see first hand that Claire is never going to be able to live the life of a dutiful housewife, that she is never going to be able to connect with a man that is unable to accept and engage with the experience that Claire has undergone. It's the first time in the series that I think the idea of someone being "whole" comes into play, and is definitely something the show engages with moving forward. You can see that Frank does love Claire, and I do think that Claire has feelings for him as well, but Frank cannot accept all of Claire, cannot reconcile the fact that she is a different person than the one he took to Inverness in 1945.
It's these complexities that make this episode and the series as a whole so powerful and so engaging. It is hard to continually watch the characters be put through such endless misery, but you keep doing so due to the quality of the product that gets put out.
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