Outlander: Blood of My Blood is back for season 2 episode 3, titled “Rabbits Don’t Swim.” In this episode, Brian and Dougal are taking their men through the Highlands to join the rest of the Jacobite forces, and Julia meets the new scullery maid of Castle Leathers, who knows Henry a little too intimately. However, while every storyline is consistently brought forward, most of the action takes places at Castle Leoch, and involves every member of the MacKenzie family who stayed behind.
What makes episode 3 so effective is that, with the men gone from Leoch, the women aren’t simply left behind by the war — they become its agents.
MacKinney comes knocking
At the beginning of the episode, all the MacKenzie siblings (apart from Dougal), their brides, and Ned Gowan (Conor MacNeill) are gathered around the table of the Great Hall for supper; in true family style, everyone is bickering with everyone. Ellen and Maura especially are at each other’s throats, but who could blame them? Ellen did jilt Maura’s brother Malcolm, leaving her to marry Dougal somewhat against her will. Maura doesn’t even know Ellen had a hand in Malcolm’s death — that’s going to make for an interesting reveal, probably later in the season.
Ellen (Harriet Slater) leaves the table to escape the family drama. This choice ends up saving her life and everybody else’s: MacKinney has come to Castle Leoch, and has brought trouble with him.
James MacKinney (Ryan Fletcher) first appeared in season 1 as one of the main contenders to the lairdship of clan MacKenzie. Before Colum and Dougal decided to band together, MacKinney had most of the MacKenzie men on his side and was forecasted to prevail. In season 2, we learn that he never moved on from this loss, and has come back to Castle Leoch for a second round.
He orders his men to lock all the women in a room, while he negotiates with Colum. His best-laid plans vaporize right in front of him when Colum tells him everything that belongs to clan MacKenzie is not his anymore, but Ellen’s. And Ellen, as Colum says, “does as she pleases.”
The plan Ellen put in place in episode 2 buys them some time. She hides in a secret room facing the Great Hall, and strikes yet another plan.
The main sequences at Leoch happen in two strikingly different ways. In the Great Hall, the men — usually more prone to action and violence — are sitting down at the table, negotiating and politicking their way to an early grave, in Colum’s case, and a seat as laird of clan MacKenzie, for MacKinney. In the rest of the castle, in narrow and stony hallways, bell towers, and the small family chapel, the women of the clan are ruthlessly killing MacKinney’s men, one by one, efficiently taking out the problem.
“Because rabbits don’t swim”
Ellen saves the other women: her sisters Janet and Jocasta, Maura, Colum’s wife Letitia, and Mistress Fitzgibbons. “We must take matters into our own hands,” Ellen tells them. “MacKinney sees us as he sees all women: weak creatures meant to serve and obey, hopeless without their men to protect us. That blindness is his weakness; he’ll think us rabbits fleeing to our burrows.”
Here, Ellen is referencing a past conversation she had with her father, which we see in a flashback. Red Jacob tells her that her brothers can find her easily playing hide and seek because she’s predictable and conforms to their expectations. But she’s more than that; she is his firstborn. “When the fox hunts for the rabbit, he doesn’t look in the loch,” he tells her. “Because rabbits don’t swim.” Be unpredictable and go beyond people’s expectations.
At a roundtable attended by Winter Is Coming, Harriet Slater said that episode 3 was pitched to her as “Home Alone, but with knives.” She also said that this never-before-seen, vengeful and ruthless side of Ellen surprised her: “I didn't know she was capable of that,” she said.
She also added: “The women fend for themselves because they have to. We’ve never seen that side of them before — and would never have seen that side of them if the men hadn’t all gone off to fight. It’s kind of similar with what happened in World War I and II when the women had to take on the men’s roles. There’s a great amount of strength and power when they do band together in that way.”
And work together they do. They overcome their personal fears and fight the men with what they have (all the weapons are with the fighting men). They lure the MacKinney men and kill them one by one, using candles, curtains, and the secrets of the castle to their advantage.
But not all the women come out untouched: Janet MacKenzie is hurt and dies in Ellen’s arms. The sisters share some beautiful scenes in the episode, exchanging compliments and lifting each other up in preparation for their fight. Ellen confesses to Janet that she’s always admired her, and that she’s one of the reasons she’s learned to “love without restraint.”
For this reason, right before Janet dies, Ellen whispers to her sister that she is pregnant, and that in case she has a daughter, she will name her Janet. And Outlander fans already know who that daughter will be: Janet “Jenny” Fraser, Jamie’s older sister and Young Ian’s mother.
But it’s Janet’s words that haunt the episode: “It’s not only men that the war takes, it hollows out what’s left.” This couldn’t be more true for episode 3. Even though the threat is eliminated (Ellen fires an arrow into MacKinney in the end), the terrible loss of Janet and Colum’s still-fresh betrayal have forever changed the dynamics of the family. Colum himself recognizes this and tries to heal the wound by reminding Ellen that Leoch will always be her home. To this, Ellen says: “My home is with the man you couldn’t kill,” once again reminding him of the price he has to pay for betraying her.
Unexpected allies
Brian and Dougal are totally unaware of the chaos wreaking havoc at Leoch. Frasers and MacKenzies are still marching towards Inverness, in an unexpected alliance. On top of this, Brian is trying to understand his father’s sudden cheerfulness, as well as his hidden intentions. We obviously know his plan: Ellen has figured it already and is riding hard to their camp to warn Brian. Lord Lovat has already struck a deal with the English to fight on their side in exchange for the restoration of his title and lands. If you know some history of the Jacobite Rising of 1715 (or have simply watched Outlander), you might already know how that’s going to go down.
What’s more shocking, though, is that Lovat seems to have helped with MacKinney’s mission. He was actively trying to sweep Ellen out of the picture. In fact, he ominously says to his son: “Wars have casualties, Brian, not always on the battlefield,” hinting at Ellen’s death.
There Seema to be a problem
At Castle Leathers, Julia gets to know the new maid, Seema, whom we met in season 1. She was the prostitute Henry turned to for comfort when he was still searching for Julia, as well as a shoulder to cry on. Problem is, it was more than a shoulder, and Julia finds out. This visibly shocks her; she begs Lovat to send her away, deeming her presence a constant reminder of the Grant man who “kidnapped” her. Lovat, of course, refuses: he’s predictably grown fond of Seema, and of having her in his bed. He later leaves for Inverness, and Julia and Seema are left alone at Leathers, with Davina and baby William.
We’re only on episode 3 and Julia is already living through a new nightmare. But Hermione Corfield did ease my mind a bit; in a roundtable attended by Winter Is Coming, she teased that Julia will have more agency and that “she fights back, a little later in the season.” We can only hope it’ll be sooner rather than later — although episode 4 promises more nightmares.
A family drama at its best
At the heart of Blood of My Blood — beyond the main love stories and the Jacobite Rising — are the family dramatics. What carries that drama, more than anything, are the women on screen. Episode 3 makes this especially obvious with the “sudden” absence of the men at Leoch, leaving the women to drive the story forward.
The MacKenzie siblings are at the center of this. I absolutely love what they’re doing with Ellen and Colum: their relationship has so much history and tension packed into every interaction. Ellen and Janet also give us echoes of season 1, when the story revolved more around the relationship between Ellen and Jocasta. Ellen and Maura have perhaps the most complicated relationship of all: you can’t hate Maura because she is absolutely right to feel the way she does, and you also can’t help but cheer for Ellen, who was so resolute in marrying Malcolm up until Colum betrayed her trust.
The glue holding all of this together, naturally, is Ellen. Not just during this episode, but throughout the whole series: there would be no Leoch without her, and most importantly no Outlander as we know it: if she hadn’t fought for her future, we wouldn’t have Jamie falling in love with Claire, after all.
The other connections are only becoming more tangled. Now that these families are beginning to unite — with Brian and Ellen essentially going public, and Maura and Dougal marrying — the dramatics are only going to get bigger. Episode 3 already shows this shift.
Verdict
Even though I deeply enjoyed watching this episode — with all its emotional highs and lows — I can’t help but notice some inconsistencies with the first season.
Ellen suddenly being so physically trained was a bit surprising — fun, absolutely, but a little new. What bothered me more was Red Jacob’s characterization. In Ellen’s flashbacks in this episode, he appears entirely supportive of her ambitions and her refusal to conform to conventional expectations of women. That makes for satisfying storytelling: it gives Ellen’s actions a connection to the lessons she learned from her father, but it doesn’t quite square with the version of Red Jacob we met in season 1, in particular his opinion on Ellen’s limitations as a woman.
But I can’t not mention one of my favorite details from this episode. When MacKinney talks about marrying Ellen, Colum says: “Touch her and you’ll answer for it — not to me. There’s a man who’ll come for her. Not even god himself could stop this man from coming for her.” I love how I had literal goosebumps when the episode cut to Brian fighting — just chef’s kiss.
I also wish we’d gotten more of Janet before her death. Still, the scenes we got of her were beautifully written and added the right emotions to the otherwise entirely 007 killing scenes. Ellen’s speech about Janet making her brave especially reinforces the idea that bravery isn’t about living without fear, but about loving someone with everything you have.
Grade: B+
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