Episode 809: Pharos

I hope everyone had a lovely Mother’s Day. Shall we talk about some fathers?

Warning-Contains spoilers from Outlander Episode 809: Pharos

“I give you your life. I hope you use it well.”

“I owe you my life. I should greatly prefer not to, but since you have forced the gift upon me I must regard it as a debt of honor. I should hope to discharge that debt in the future and once it is discharged, I will kill you.”

“Then I must hope, sir, that we do not meet again.”

Do you remember the first time we met Lord John? Stumbling into camp on the eve of Prestonpans, a teenager in over his head yet thoroughly possessed of character and integrity? Willing to divulge information to save Claire’s honor? People fall into our lives—sometimes quite literally—and change them forever. Such fortunes and friendships are rare, and recognizing those fortunes in the moment is even rarer.

What has happened before always happens again, Claire tells Richardson, and that’s the crux of it all. In an episode in which we say farewell to Lord John, such truths come full circle. Who we are, what we do, what has happened before…it will always happen again. I give you your life…again. I will find you, I will save you, I will hold these truths and our shared history accountable…again, and again, and again.

And so this episode—the penultimate episode for the entire series —serves a number of emotional purposes. Thematically, it is about how we make peace with our past , whether it is our personal past with our friends or family, or our collective past as a country. It provides closure for Jamie and John and William as they navigate thirty years of love, regret, joy, and hurt. It asks us, as Americans, how we make peace with a past we cannot change. Finally, toward the hour’s end, in hearing the words that started us on this journey so many years ago—People disappear all the time—we, as an audience, prepare to say goodbye.

The Pharos, or Lighthouse, of Alexandria, was a wonder of the ancient world. Standing for over a thousand years at the edge of the Nile Delta, it was a guide for those in uncertain waters. And isn’t that a perfect metaphor for this gift of a character that Gabaldon gave us in Lord John? When our characters are lost or need guidance or rescue, Lord John is the reliable light in the dark. He has been a character others trust for safe-keeping, so to open the episode with Lord John in need of help is simply exquisite story-telling…Lord John has saved our characters time and again, and now it is time for our characters to return the favor.

The hour opens shortly after the last one left off, with Lord John held prisoner after being kidnapped by Ezekial Richardson. And now that the cat is out of the bag, go back and watch Episode 714 (Ye Dinna Get Used to It) and pause it at 28:31…look familiar? Richardson is Callahan, a man who ran in cahoots with Rob Cameron. It’s not clear why the show didn’t dive in deeper on that backstory (I suspect it just ran out of time), but it’s in keeping with the canon of the series in regards to time travel—Callahan has traveled from 1980 roughly two hundred years in the past, right before the Battle of Kings Mountain in 1780 and just as the abolitionist movement in the United Kingdom is gaining traction.

In any case, Richardson’s motivations may be quasi-noble, but his actions are not, as he uses signed confessions from as blackmail against Lord John and as leverage against Hal. “I am not brave, I never have been,” Percy provides as a means of apology to John, a line proven true later in the episode. What has happened before will happen again, this episode argues, and most people change very little.

The Frasers and William have evidently received word from Amaranthus that Lord John has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and so they arrive in Savannah as a trio of exceptionally good-looking badasses willing to kick butts and take names. After delivering a well-deserved walloping to Percy, they deduce that Lord John must be held on Tybee Island, a barrier island of Georgia known then (and now) for its lighthouse…its pharos. Outlander never lets us forget the importance of a Classical education.

They arrive on Tybee Island and spot Richardson, who is fishing and momentarily away from Lord John. William and Jamie make their way to the boathouse, while Claire serves as a lookout for Richardson.

What follows is a full-circle moment for these characters…one of many this hour. Again, if you’re in the mood for a re-watch, I encourage you to revisit Episode 209 (Je Suis Prest). While Jamie and Claire are playing a sort of farce with Lord John when we meet him in 209, in this episode they are nothing but serious. This is their friend they have come to save, and what has happened before will assuredly happen again.

After John’s rescue, Claire is again charged with managing Richardson while Jamie and William secure their surrounding. In an episode with more than one meaningful exchange, I found Claire and Richardson’s conversation to be exceptionally deft story-telling. We see confusion, then recognition, followed by a sort of amazement wash over Claire’s face as she slowly realizes she is conversing with a fellow time-traveler.

This is another full-circle moment for Claire, because she has dealt with fanatical time-travelers before. Richardson is as zealous for the abolitionist movement as Geillis was for the Jacobite uprising, and like Geillis he is willing to behave with moral ambiguity in the name of his beliefs.

Claire is overwhelmingly skeptical that Richardson can do anything of significance to change the course of American history. And had the British won the Revolution, it is very possible that slavery would have persisted in the American colonies despite its abolition elsewhere—the economic power the South wielded with its cotton and tobacco production would likely translate to political influence in Parliament. What has happened before will happen again, and it is probable that a conflict similar to the Civil War would have eventually torn the region apart.

But perhaps because she empathizes with Richardson’s passion for a re-imagined timeline that she eventually tries to let him go. Claire could not save Geillis from her own worst demons, and she and Jamie could not stop the tragedy of Culloden. Richardson, for better or worse, represents one more chance to try to set things right.

Outlander has examined the concept of fate more than once, both philosophically and in the context of Fate as understood by the Greeks. The more we try to escape a fate that is written for us, the more we become trapped in our destiny as it is written. And so it happens in this episode as well, when Lord John kills Richardson as he makes his way to escape. History will proceed as planned, and what has happened before will happen again.

Everyone returns to Savannah but there is still emotional work to be done. While Jamie initially tries to absolve himself of any wrongdoing in their friendship, neither John nor Claire let him have it. Sadness and pain, it turns out, are inevitable in any intimate relationship, friendship or otherwise. We cannot heal until we know what hurts us. And so John and Jamie engage in one last game of chess, both figurative and literal. I have hurt you and I have loved you and I am grateful for all you have given me, they say in turns to each other. And when Jamie rides away this time, in direct reference to the end of Episode 304 (Of Lost Things), he does look back one more time. Things were lost but now they are found.

Lord John sets closure to another part of his past, when he confronts Percy and forces him to sign an affidavit of confession of extortion and malignant. Percy signs, but unable to imagine a future of shame and imprisonment, dies by suicide.

I often tell my children that we cannot control others, we can only control ourselves. And so it is while our characters this hour sort their histories and collective pasts.

The past, it turns out, cannot be changed. Not by us regular non-time traveling folk, and not really by the time travelers themselves. All we can hope for, this episode argues, is to do the best we can in our lives as we know them in the present.

We, as individuals, are usually incapable of changing history alone. But, as Claire opines, we can be a part of history. What part we choose to play depends on us. Do we wash our hands of past mistakes, or do we do the hard work of reparation? History, friendship, parenting, love…these things are messy. But if we do it right, we can look back as we ride away and know we did the best we could.

Slàinte.

(p.s. 30-second prediction for the series finale: a battle, a brief death and a ghostly visit to 1945, a resurrection, and a happy ending)

Screengrabs provided by outlanderwatch.com