Episode 7 of Outlander: Blood of My Blood delivers some deeply satisfying payoffs while raising new questions about what lies ahead. “Heart of the Highlands” sees Henry, helped by Arch Bug, venture off to procure gemstones. Brian finds out what his father did to Ellen and returns to Leathers to settle the score. Julia finds a way to get back in Lovat’s good graces, but discovers the truth about her time travel abilities.
Sadly, we’re barreling towards the end of season 2. Let’s see what episode 7 brought to the table.
In the heart of the Highlands
The titular heart is actually a gorge in the middle of the Highlands, where Murdina Bug (Sorcha Groundsell) says Henry (Jeremy Irvine) will find gemstones to time travel. Arch (Terence Rae) opens up to Henry about Murdina’s miscarriages and the loss of their son. In a decision born out of desperation as much as faith, Arch agrees to help him, believing that it will convince the faeries to give them another child.
After following the route described by Murdina, Henry and Arch are able to locate the gorge. It is deep and steep, and Henry risks his life during the descent, but he makes it safely to the bottom. He discovers a vein of amethyst in the gorge wall, certainly enough for three people to travel through time.
Dougal comes back to Leoch
With Murtagh (Rory Alexander) and Brian (Jamie Roy) at his side, Dougal (Sam Retford) returns home to Leoch, but he is not well received. The MacKenzie brothers have a public fight: Colum (Séamus McLean Ross) tells Dougal he will no longer be war chieftain, stripping him of the role as both a personal humiliation and a significant blow to his standing within the clan. He also orders him to hide in the crofter’s cottage in case redcoats come looking for him.
Colum tells Brian that he owes him everything for bringing Dougal back. Brian tells him he has only one request — to see Ellen. He immediately goes to her bedchambers, warned by Mrs. Fitzgibbons (Sally Messham) of the delicate situation he will find.
Ellen (Harriet Slater) bursts into tears at the sight of Brian and tells him she has lost the baby. “I’d already fallen in love with her,” she says, confessing to having imagined their child to be a girl, named Janet after her late sister. When Brian ties to reassure her that they will have another, Ellen has the horrible duty to tell him that his father poisoned her, making her barren.
Brian’s grief quickly turns to rage. He tells Ellen: “I love you. Always. Remember that,” and proceeds to leave. Ellen tries to follow him to stop him, but she is still too weak.
Brian faces his father
With no doubt, the apex of the episode happens at Leathers. After learning of Ellen’s miscarriage and what Lovat (Tony Curran) did to her, Brian goes straight to his father’s castle and confronts him.
He unceremoniously bashes Balloch’s face into the table, breaking his nose, and exclaims, “Do I have your attention, Father?” He wants to make his father pay for what he did to Ellen.
“I ought to kill you,” Brian tells him, to which Lovat, rather nonchalantly, says, “But you won’t, because I am your father, and you’re a Fraser.” Lovat thinks he is safe, but he immediately recognizes he has greatly misjudged the situation when Brian grabs him and threatens to part him with his “most prized possession” — his manhood.
Brian’s anger is understandable: he is not only mourning the loss of a child but also confronting the cruelty inflicted upon the woman he loves. Yet revenge threatens to consume him, potentially destroying the future he hopes to build with Ellen. He might have crossed a line with no return.
Julia (Hermione Corfield) intervenes and reminds him that if he kills Lovat, he will be executed for murder. It’s the thought of essentially losing Ellen that stops Brian. He does not relent, though: he demands “the house by Broch Murda, and the surrounding crofts and acres.” The “old ruin” that confuses Lovat is what will become Lallybroch in Outlander, home to Jamie and Jenny and almost every Fraser we encounter in the main series. “And you’re never to set foot over there, as long as you draw breath. Come near Ellen again — father or not — I will kill you.” As he turns back and leaves, I really hoped this is the last time Brian had to look at his father.
Brian ultimately chooses to return to Ellen rather than remain consumed by his hatred for his father. He brings with him a stone from the bridge where he and Ellen first exchanged names — “The bridge that brought us together… our bridge,” he calls it — to be the hearthstone of their home together on the land he received from Lovat, the future Lallybroch.
After so much pain and uncertainty, the prospect of a home of their own offers Brian and Ellen something to look forward to. Their future remains shadowed by loss, but the stone gives them a tangible connection to the love that has endured through it all. Rather than allowing Lovat's actions to define their lives, Brian and Ellen can begin creating something that belongs entirely to them.
While all of this is happening upstairs, Colum and Ned (Conor MacNeill) discuss how to react to Lovat’s actions. We come to understand that Ellen told her brother that she was poisoned, and not that she also had a miscarriage. This means she concealed her pregnancy and allowed Colum to believe that her “virtue” was intact.
In Colum’s eyes, Lovat apparently didn’t do anything wrong: he rescued Ellen, welcomed her into his home, fed her and brought her back to Leoch. That he poisoned her remains a theory, at least for Colum and Ned, who are thinking more about the diplomatic response and economic risks. In fact, Colum points out that by making his sister barren, “Lovat took Ellen’s worth: a woman with no womb is worth nothing at all.” Ned even says they wouldn’t win if they brought the matter to a magistrate. They find themselves in front of a classic 18th-century, he-said-she-said situation, and they deal with it in a very dry, matter-of-fact way that might seem almost disconcerting if not historically accurate.
While in episode 6 Ned visibly despised Colum’s political response to Ellen’s kidnapping, in episode 7 he seems to take his side in this diplomatic crisis: he ends the discussion by saying, “If Brian wasn’t willing to kill him, then I’m afraid we must let the man live.”
For now, it seems settled. But for how long? It might just be a matter of time before Colum learns the truth about Ellen’s pregnancy, and that might change the already-precarious relationship between brother and sister.
Julia learns a hard truth
Julia finds Maisri (Katharine O'Donnelly) once again at Leathers and confronts her about her actions in episode 6. I did think the seer was more sympathetic to her fellow women’s situations, but it seems she was acting in her own economic interest. After all, Lovat pays her for her services.
Maisri tells Julia that Claire is safe in the future but that they will never see each other again. She tells Julia that she only traveled before because she was pregnant with a traveler — baby William. As I suspected, Julia cannot travel on her own. And if she cannot travel, what does that mean for her future?
Moreover, if she fears she is barren, is that fear justified, or is there still more to learn about the potion and its effects? We know the potion didn’t work on Ellen because she will have at least three children with Brian. Julia might still be able to get pregnant, hopefully with a traveller, and make the journey once again to reunite with Claire in the 20th century. But even if she did get pregnant, it wouldn’t be possible to know for certain if the baby was a time-traveller or not (as we know from Outlander and Brianna’s last-born son).
It is a painful turning point that leaves Julia, as well as the audience, with more questions than answers. Hopefully we’ll have a clearer answer by the end of the season, although I’m sure we’ll see the consequences of this discovery pretty soon.
Love grows
Amid the grief and conflict, love continues to find a way forward. As Dougal’s political world begins to crumble, his romantic one actually starts to blossom. At the same time that Colum is demoting Dougal, Maura (Bobby Rainsbury) tells him she is glad to see him alive and well. They share their first kiss, weeks after their wedding and their bedding. With Dougal's position in the clan now uncertain, his relationship with Maura may provide him with a different kind of stability, rooted in love rather than power.
Another relationship develops in this episode: Murtagh finally makes his feelings known to Grace (Ruby Fubara), but she quickly tries to quiet them down, pointing out the obvious — that she’s indentured, meaning she’s bound to servitude to the Camerons for six more years, during which she can’t possibly start a life with anyone. Murtagh is not concerned with this, and proposes that they meet in secret. While they cannot yet build a life together, they may at least find a way to pursue their relationship in secret.
Verdict
Overall, “Heart of the Highlands” is a strong and emotionally rewarding episode that starts the end of Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 2.
We need to thank Jamie Roy and Tony Curran for bringing to life my greatest wish — to have Brian lean into his dark side and see Lovat scared for his life. To say it’s been a long time coming for Lovat would be redundant, but I’ll say it still. Watching Brian go berserk and show his darker, more brutal side — after Ellen’s own 007 moment in episode 3 — is highly entertaining, especially because it directly affects Lovat. (“I’ll be damned.” “You will.” Chills!). Scared as he is and probably for the first time in his life, Lovat has to rely on his son’s good conscience to save his own skin. The person who ends up truly saving him is Julia, the wife he despises and treats like dirt.
Brian’s decision to spare his father ultimately allows him and Ellen to begin imagining a future together, with the revelation of the origins of Lallybroch providing a particularly satisfying payoff for long-time Outlander fans.
Although the Jacobite Rising takes a back seat this week, this is partially justified by the fact that we’re already in the last stretch of the war. In fact, we are informed that many loyalists are going to be rewarded by the Crown for their roles in the “victory” secured at Sheriffmuir — Lords Lovat and Grant being among them. In the upcoming episodes, we’re probably going to learn what will happen to the Jacobite clans, starting with the MacKenzies, who are still protected by Ellen’s plan, and how the war is going to be resolved.
“Heart of the Highlands” leaves plenty of reasons to look forward to the remaining episodes of Outlander: Blood of My Blood season 2.
Grade: B+
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