Hello!

We’re veering into the TV side of things this week before we head back to scientific séance territory.

The eighth and final season of Outlander premiered on Friday. If you know the show, it needs no introduction. If you don’t, one way to describe it is that it’s a love story between 20th-century born Claire (Caitríona Balfe) and 18th-century born Jamie (Sam Heughan).

The two find each other across time via ancient stones (just go with it), face immense suffering — their lives span World War II, the Jacobite uprising in Scotland, and the American Revolution — but also undying love.

The series is also known for having a lot of sexy times, but — as I touched on in an essay I wrote for Vulture in 2023 — later seasons have less naked kissing. What’s remained constant, however, is that Claire, Jamie, and their family face trauma after trauma yet love and live all the harder because of it.  

Season eight continues that trend with a brutal cold open.

(Warning: If you care about spoilers for the end of Outlander season seven and/or the first five minutes of season eight, stop reading!)

Season eight opens with Claire and Jamie in a darkened shed meeting with unsavory people. We learn that the two have tracked down the man who killed their adult daughter (a daughter they thought was a stillbirth) and then sold their granddaughters to a brothel.

(Yes, Outlander has soap operatic leanings, not unlike Downton Abbey. Let’s carry on.)

After a man gleefully shares the story of how he killed her daughter and raped her eldest granddaughter, Claire takes a knife and stabs him repeatedly, something we get close-ups of. Jamie gives Claire a look, and then kills the man’s criminal compatriot.

The sequence is abrupt and brutal, so much so that I double checked to make sure I didn’t accidentally start in the middle of an episode.

I talked with showrunner Matthew B. Roberts about the opening, and he explained how that sequence came to be.

“Jamie and Claire have, in between seasons, been on a journey,” Roberts told me. “But that journey was painful for them. That journey wasn’t just an investigation or exploration — it was actually them suffering. And this was the culmination.”

Right after that culmination, we jump to Jamie and Claire waking up in a cozy room. They briefly talk about their pain and anger, and then we realize they’re in the home of their adopted son, Fergus. What follows is a warm family gathering. The remainder of the episode, in fact, is full of warm reunions, including when Jamie and Claire head to their home at Fraser’s Ridge and realize that their daughter Brianna and has come back in time to be with them.

“This shows how important family is to them,” Roberts said about this shift in tone. “So you have this one moment where they’re defending family that they didn’t even know; and then the next moments are [with] the family they have [Fergus]; and then the family returns to them [Brianna]. So there's three beats there.”

This weaving between horrific trauma and loving family moments is reflective of the series as a whole. Since its first season, Outlander has veered between agony and intense joy. It works because neither emotion exists without the other, and both come along for the ride when one loves deeply. Such is life.

In our reality, the pain often overwhelms. But in Claire and Jaime’s heightened world, their love blazes in technicolor, dimming (but not extinguishing) their trauma.

And perhaps Outlander’s final season will turn even more toward the joy of living rather than the pain of surviving. Roberts told me that the writers’ room “didn’t want to make everybody wait” for their daughter’s murderer to get comeuppance. We could have spent episodes with grief-laden Claire and Jamie hunting down those responsible, but we were spared that. Having that journey take place off-screen makes us focus on the power of defiant hope, of turning toward love after so much misery.

It’s that message that earned Outlander its fans. (Okay, also the sexy times. And, if you’re me, the impressive historical sets as well.)

The first episode of Outlander season eight is now available on Starz, with new episodes releasing every Friday.

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