From the outset of the season-three premiere, not much happens, nor does this episode pick up where the season two finale left us—with Claire visiting Scotland in 1968 with her daughter Brianna, discovering that Jamie did, indeed, survive the Battle of Culloden, and vowing that she would go back to eighteenth-century Scotland. In other words, the drought may be over, but our lips are still parched. The show knows what we want and it is going to make us wait for it, though I have no sense of how long that wait might be.
The first episode of season three opens in the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden. Across the moor, we see dead bodies, mostly Highlanders. Redcoats wander among the bodies, occasionally stabbing at men who are still alive with their bayonets, because nothing says “honor” like attacking helpless men. Slowly, the camera pans to Jamie, in the sea of all those dead bodies, fairly close to death himself and with a redcoat lying on top of him. Suffice it to say, Jamie has looked better. The only satisfying glimpse we get throughout the episode of his impeccable body is of his exceedingly well-defined pectoral muscles. That’s it. The struggle is so very real.
As he lies there, gaunt and gasping, Jamie recalls the actual battle of Culloden. The Jacobites are being bombarded and Jamie implores the utterly ineffective Prince Charles Stuart to allow the men to charge so they can have a fighting chance. Then, the Jacobites charge the redcoats and it’s blood and gore, flesh and blades clashing. The sound effects are very…vivid.
Suddenly, among all the fighting men, Jamie spots Black Jack Randall, and it’s on like Donkey Kong. The men run at each other and a battle within the battle ensues, like a war version of Inception. Black Jack injures Jamie with his sword, but in the end, Jamie is victorious. The redcoat lying on top of Jamie on the battlefield is, in fact, the corpse of Black Jack Randall. It’s kind of a disappointment that Black Jack’s death—something most of us have been wanting to see for two seasons—is relatively anticlimactic, but at least we have the relief of knowing he won’t smarm about the world with his sadistic impulses.
As Jamie lies among the dead, it begins to snow, and he hallucinates that Claire is walking toward him. He keeps moaning pathetically—and let it be known, this is pretty much all he does for the entirety of the episode. “Are you alive, Jamie?” Claire asks, and before he can answer, he realizes it is actually Rupert, his clansman, speaking to him and saving his life.
Claire and boring Frank scout a new apartment.
Aimee Spinks/STARZ
