Save for the visits to the Cherokee and Mohawk villages, the majority of Outlander Season 6 has played out on Fraser’s Ridge—but in episode 5, Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) head to Wilmington to hear Flora MacDonald (Shauna Macdonald), former Jacobite now a Loyalist, speak.
The journey away from Fraser’s Ridge gives Outlander an opportunity to expose Jamie and Claire to the political upheaval taking place in the colonies that hasn’t yet reached their home in the North Carolina hills—so while it may not have the same significance as a dramatic event, like the birth of Henri-Christian, it does set up the story to move along.
“What episode 5 is doing—in essence—is removing Jamie and Claire from events on the Ridge (which we continue to see, but only the highlights: the finding of the love-charm, Bree’s efforts to build things, her announcement of her pregnancy to Roger, and Malva’s threat to Roger when he discovers her in flagrante with Obadiah Henderson) and putting them into a new storyline that shows the evolution of the Revolution outside the Ridge,” bestselling Outlander author Diana Gabaldon tells Parade.com in this exclusive commentary.
“For the first time, they actually see the change of events and realize the magnitude of the disruption that’s underway. We don’t often see the political side of events in action in this season because our main focus is usually the Ridge and what happens there. So, this episode is also providing a step-back, to give us a fresh perspective.”
That said, there is one moment when everything changes for Jamie. Up until now, he hasn’t had to come out publicly as a Patriot, but the time is finally at hand. He does so in front of a group of Patriots in a pool hall with a stirring speech about the price of liberty, but he also reveals the truth to Lord John (David Berry) in person, something that didn’t happen in the books (he writes John a letter there), but doing it in this fashion makes it more dramatic.
“This is a personal as well as a political disruption: Jamie’s admission to Lord John is—so far as they both think at the moment—the end of their friendship (and for Jamie, the end of his knowledge of his son),” Gabaldon points out. “This realization may be what fuels Jamie’s declaration over the pool table; he’s destroyed his most important link with England, and now the time has come—as he’s known it would—to join the fight openly as a rebel.”
