Outlander Season 3 Episode 8 Recap: First Wife

Part of Jenny’s charm has always been her toughness, and she’s a real tough act to please in this episode. Not only has Jamie returned her runaway son (after harboring him behind her back), but he’s brought with him a “stray” in Claire.
Jenny’s got little patience for this stranger she used to know, keeping Claire at a distance. It’s a reasonable reaction to a woman who’s dropped in and out of her life, nearly at random and often with a prophecy about potatoes. When Claire tries to explain herself, she’s dismissed.
“Oh, well, maybe we should all gather round the fire if there’s a tall tale to tell,” Jenny says with a bite so harsh Claire might as well be a haggis platter.
Jenny’s equally dismissive of Jamie’s explanation for Claire’s absence after Culloden—which he’s apparently making up on the spot. “The Claire I ken never would have stopped looking for you,” she tells him.
The only positive outcome of this initial family reunion is that Jamie manages to save young Ian from a thrashing. Instead, he has the boy’s parents assign to him a more unpleasant task: muck-kneading, by the looks of it. (I don’t know, man. I guess it’s a thing.)
Home Sweet Hell
Has there ever been a time in Claire’s recent history where she hasn’t felt like a fish out of water? Now’s surely not it. She confides in Jamie later that night about her fraught encounters with his sister, once her bosom buddy.
The two then spend an intimate evening reminiscing about the last miserable 20 years, which is all well and good and heart-warming until it leads to a long-overdue admission—and an unexpected guest. Gird your loins, dear viewer: it’s the return of Laoghaire.
Jamie’s mysterious other wife, the one that he was just working up the nerve to tell Claire about, is Laoghaire, the ghost you least wanted to see from Season 1. The only thing that could make this worse is Dougal MacKenzie lurking behind that door.
As we find out after the fireworks are over, Jenny dispatched her daughter to bring Laoghaire and her daughters to Lallybroch. Hell hath no fury like a sister kept in the dark. Claire, of course, has a meltdown upon 1) seeing the woman who framed her as a witch and 2) learning of Jamie’s dirty little secret. Her wrath is lessened by less than a percentile when Jamie explains the little red-haired girls are purely Laoghaire productions.
“Well, there are other red-headed men in Scotland, Claire,” he explains, before digging himself further into the hole. “You’re the one who told me to be kind to the lass.”
Claire reminds her husband that being kind to a young woman is a long way from marrying her. The arguing continues, though, eventually, it leads to a hate-fueled makeout session, doused only by a bucket of water from Jenny, annoyed at their “fighting and rutting like wild beasts.”
Everyone’s angry with everyone, and, as usual, Ian is the only pillar of level-headedness around. He chides his wife for denying her own brother a modicum of happiness. To her credit, when has anyone ever allowed Jamie a modicum of happiness?
Shots Fired
Speaking of misery, Laoghaire comes ‘round again the next morning, presumably to kill Claire. Instead, she accidentally shoots Jamie. With her brother bleeding on her dining room table, Jenny seems genuinely shaken for the first time this episode—perhaps regretting her own efforts to stir the pot of passions last night.
Meanwhile, Claire’s forced to play surgeon, which distracts her from her own anger for just a bit. Really, Claire sewing up an incapacitated Jamie is these two at their best.
Once he rouses, Jamie tells the story of how Laoghaire became yet another Mrs. Fraser. This involves an extended Christmas Carol-esque flashback with dancing, figs, and joyous Scots. It seems Laoghaire’s two darling girls sweetened the pot; Jamie longed for a chance finally to be the father he’d never been.
But it was not to be. In a brief moment of sympathy, we learn that one of Laoghaire’s first two husbands abused her. As Jamie says, she was afraid of his touch. So, he struck off to Edinburgh to live apart and all was quiet—until, of course, the Sassenach came back through those stones.
Ned Gowan, a much more charming callback to Season 1, pops by Lallybroch to go over the legal matters of Jamie’s matrimonial dilemma. Laoghaire can only be satisfied with a substantial amount of alimony—or Jamie’s castration, whichever’s easier.
A Plan to Forget
Forgoing Option No. 2, Jamie concocts a preposterous plan to raise the sum she demands, and it reads more like a road trip of Claire and Jamie’s greatest hits than an actual scheme. They’ll go to Selkie Island, where Jamie found the box of jewels after his escape from Ardsmuir. (Young Ian will do the swimming, though, no one explains why he can’t just take a rowboat.) From there, they’ll take the jewels to France, to Cousin Jared to trade for usable currency. Flawlessly imagined as usual. Somehow, though, Jenny and Ian acquiesce to this plan, having finally forged a peace with Claire, the ghost of their past, and Jamie, the maker of many bad decisions.
As we watch young Ian start his swim to the island—again, not sure how he’s going to swim back with the jewels—Claire and Jamie have one of their trademarked relationship talks.
“I’m just not sure if we belong together anymore,” Claire admits. She has some fine points: both she and Jamie had functional lives in their respective timelines, though Claire seems to forget the substantial amount of prison time it took for Jamie to find that life. (Also, marriage to Laoghaire stretches the definition of “functional.”)
“When has it ever been easy?” Jamie quietly tells her. Also, a valid point.
Claire doesn’t have much time for a rebuttal because, to the surprise of literally no one, Jamie’s expertly improvised plan falls apart. A rogue ship pulls up beside the island. Jewels in hand, young Ian is nabbed by unknown ruffians, dragged to their rowboat (!), and taken aboard their ship.
Yes, on his first parentally approved field trip with his nephew, Jamie’s lost his charge to pirates. Really puts Brianna’s bikini pics into perspective, doesn’t it?