Outlander: Soul of a Rebel (8x01)

We're back for the final season!

Cons:

The "Faith lived" story is one of the stupidest things this show has ever done. Just... profoundly, entirely unnecessary. I cannot imagine why they decided to go this route. And I'm very suspicious of the way Faith "died" by being thrown overboard on a ship... if this woman shows up in this season still alive magically, I'm going to be super annoyed and yet not at all surprised. And too many precious minutes of this episode was taken up with Claire and Jamie with their anguished faces just boohooing about it. I think it's stupid just on a logistical level because like... how, and why, would anybody have just lied to Claire's face about her daughter being stillborn? And how would a tiny infant hearing Claire sing a song to her one (1) time remember the tune and words? That's nonsense.

And then, I'm going to go so far as to say that Fanny being Claire and Jamie's actual granddaughter sort of... flies in the face of a major theme of this story? Like, it's all over the episode, the way Claire and Jamie collect a family around them that is not tied exclusively by blood. We have Fergus, who took Jamie's last name, we have Marsali, who was/is Jamie's step-daughter from a previous marriage, we have Ian who is Jamie's nephew but more like a foster son to him. And then Jamie's two biological children, Brianna and William, both growing up not knowing him for a father but coming into that knowledge and grappling with what it means for them. It's not a story where destiny is the be-all-end-all. Is it destiny that Jamie and Claire found each other? No. Fergus was random happenstance on the streets of Paris, William was the product of coercion and deceit. Them taking Fanny in fits in perfectly with the way these people collect strays and build family ties from that collection. There is simply no reason in this text that you need to add in this dumb as fuck twist about Faith. The story functions fine, functions better, without it. (Also, like, if Jane was Jamie's granddaughter then William slept with his niece. Is that ever going to be a thing that's addressed?)

I don't have any major complaints I don't think, other than just a degree of cheesiness and clunk to some of the dialogue. That's sort of part and parcel with this show and is part of what endears me to it a lot of the time, but there are moments that are more eye-roll-y than others, mostly when it seems like they are just making everybody react emotionally to something? Like, when they walk into the new house and the dialogue basically devolves into "wow, wow, wow, omg" over and over or all the awkward greetings and reunions at the Ridge. It's just a little tedious.

Pros:

To be quite honest, however, mostly I watch this show to point at the screen and gasp and smile at my little darlings who I've read thousands of pages about and have been watching on my screen for such a long time. The whole episode I was like, Fergus and Marsali my babies! William my baby! John my baby! Bree and Roger my babies! Lizzie my baby! Ian and Rachel my babies! And that was fun for me, it felt good to see everybody again.

There's a shot of Marsali screaming in agony in the preview for the rest of the season and I know exactly what she's reacting to and ouch, this first scene with Fergus and his family in the print shop already set me up to have my heart broken. I love that Jamie immediately finds Fergus's little hidey hole of seditious materials, because honestly, everything Fergus knows about how to do this, he learned from Jamie. Jamie tells Fergus to be careful, and honestly it's mostly just nice to see Fergus at peace with himself and doing so well in life. I love the actress who plays Marsali, she is such a warm and welcoming figure on the show and it's always a delight to see her.

Jamie and Claire return to the Ridge with Fanny in tow, reunite with Ian and Rachel, discover that their whole community, led by Ian, have built the new house for them, they meet a somewhat sinister former British captain who has settled on the Ridge, then Bree and Roger and the kiddos turn up and we get lots of good reunion stuff... it's a busy time for the Frasers. 

Of the many reasons I hate the "Faith lived" twist, one of them is that it taints Fanny for me as a character, when actually she is quite sweet and the idea of Jamie and Claire tenderly welcoming in a little orphan and making her feel comfortable is so lovely. I loved the little moment when Jamie offers Fanny a room all her own and talks about building her furniture for it. So sweet! I'd love to see more of that, and I'd love for Claire and Jamie to find out right now that they're wrong about the Faith thing and just love Fanny for herself and not for this connection to their dead daughter please. 

I really loved Ian and Rachel just being this unambiguously happy couple gleefully welcoming the Frasers back to their home; I have flip flopped so much about Ian as a character over the many seasons of this show but I've landed on being very endeared by him and the story being told here.

And of course it was such a joy to have Bree and Roger and the kids back; the scene of Jamie reading Goodnight Moon to the kiddos was genuinely adorable, and I love that they kept in that detail of Brianna bringing back a medical book for her mom, and The Lord of the Rings for her dad. Amazing. I also liked the scene of Jamie being haunted by the image of Frank on the book about the American Revolution, and asking Claire why she never told him that Frank looked so much like Black Jack. I think Jamie and Claire work best for me as a couple in these smaller little conversations, as opposed to the big declarations of passion. And it's such a fun and compelling tension to set up, that Claire's first husband Frank warns of Jamie's death in his work about Scottish people and their role in the revolution. I know where this is all going from the book but I really like how it was set up here!

I hope Lord John is in every single episode of this season, disgruntled and holding a cute little baby. I am so obsessed with him it defies belief. I think I've said this often about this show; I'm always curious what story-lines make the cut and what doesn't, and I love that they've chosen for William's stories to get a focus, and of course, by proxy, John's as well. The stuff with Amaranthus Grey is already making me smile, especially since I Know Stuff and am excited to watch it play out. My heart broke for John talking about how if he told Hal that Ben was dead, Hal might die of heartbreak and he couldn't bear that. Poor guy! My favorite John moment was when he told William that all three of the men who had some claim to being his father (Ransom, Grey, Fraser) would be ashamed of the way he'd treated Amaranthus. John's like, "all of your dads are very disappointed in you, son." It made me laugh and also John looked kinda hot getting all stern about it, to be quite honest with you.

So that's episode one, of this final season of Outlander! I'm most curious to track which story-lines from books eight and nine make it in here, and if I detect hints of stuff from the as-yet-unfinished book ten... it's a unique challenge, ending a show like this when the source material it's adapting is still a live document. I have confidence this show will do better than Game of Thrones managed to do in that same scenario, but then... that's not exactly a high bar, is it?

7/10