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.