OUTLANDER Recap: (S05E06) Better to Marry Than Burn

Leona Laurie

Jamie and Claire look out over Frasers Ridge in the premiere episode of Outlander season 5, The Fiery Cross

If you’re the type who tunes in to Outlander hoping to see classic Jamie / Claire sexy time every week and have spent most of the last four seasons being mostly disappointed, “Better to Marry Than Burn” has got you covered!  Let’s just say that there’s more than one stallion in the stable in this one…

RELATED: Missed last week’s episode? Catch up here!

The time has come for Jocasta’s (Maria Doyle Kennedy) wedding to Duncan Innes (Alastair Findlay), and their big day is the event of North Carolina’s social season. Everyone has come, from Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) to Governor Tryon (Tim Downie) and his wife and that hunky Lord John Grey (David Berry). The bride isn’t exactly over the moon, but she trusts that her new husband will give her some peace by devoting himself to her happiness for the rest of their days.

Before the wedding, Jocasta finalizes the amendment to her will that she announced at Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and Roger’s (Richard Rankin) wedding, really making baby Jemmie the heir to her estate. Gerald Forbes (Billy Boyd) has prepared the document, and Jamie signs as witness. Jocasta will run the estate until Jemmy can, with her new husband’s approval… since they have no children of their own. 

The wedding festivities take a few days, which gives guests plenty of time to mingle and get in trouble. Claire is particularly sorry to see Philip Wylie (Chris Donald), a lecherous dandy she met at a dinner in Wilmington early in their North Carolina time.

Although she does her best to avoid him, Wylie corners Claire near the gift table and tries to seduce her with promises of fine things he can procure with the help of an Irish smuggler he knows. Claire’s ears perk at this, and she quickly devises a plot to use Wylie to get to the man she’s sure he’s talking about, Stephen Bonnet (Ed Speleers). 

Claire invites Wylie to take a glass of Jamie’s whiskey with her, and she pretends that her husband’s whiskey venture is not profitable and could benefit from a partner like Bonnet… with a liaison like Wylie, of course. Wylie is interested, but before he’s fully on the hook he lures Claire to the stables to meet the gorgeous black stallion he has there. And then he, of course, tries to get it on with Claire. 

Before Jamie bursts in with a knife and threatens to kill Wylie, Claire has dispatched him neatly into a pile of poo. Between the poop on his clothing and Jamie assuring him that he’ll kill him if he ever sees him again, Wylie jumps at the chance to get away from the Frasers, which looks like it’s going to foil Claire’s plot. 

As soon as they’re alone, Claire loops Jamie in to what she’d been working on. He picks up on the rumors of Wylie being a gambler who loses a lot and has a ton of debt. He goes off to challenge his “rival” to a game of whist under the pretext of settling the question of honor in the stable through less violent means than murder. Wylie agrees, if Jamie will stake Claire’s wedding ring from Frank (which he creepily admired while they had whiskey) against his horse.

Jamie thinks the wager is fine, but it makes Claire furious. She accuses Jamie of having impure motives for wanting Bonnet– that he’s more concerned with the perceived mark against his own honor Bonnet made when he raped Brianna than anything else. She gives him both of her wedding rings and sends him off in anger. 

Later, Claire visits the horse in the stable again, and that’s where a drunken Jamie finds her after he humiliates Wylie at whist. She’s still super mad at him, and when he tells her that she thinks too much from her own time and needs to remember that she’s just a woman, she slaps him full-on across the face. He, in turn, grabs her by the arm and kisses her firmly. 

They separate and square off, her glowering at him as he makes serious come-hither eyes, and she closes the distance and kisses him roughly. Then the games are on! He pushes her up against a stable wall and tells her to look down while he takes her! It is… very steamy

In the aftermath of their coupling, he questions whether she’s ok with him coming after her like an animal and she says she quite liked it. He returns her rings, kissing each and promising that they’ll never leave her hands again– and that Stephen Bonnet will never take anything else from them now that they’re going to confront him.

Wylie lost the horse, and Jamie bartered a partnership in the whiskey business and an introduction to Bonnet instead. Jamie plans to resurrect his A. Malcolm alter-ego for the occasion, and to kill Bonnet just because he wants to see the man who hurt his daughter die. Claire is satisfied. (In more than one way!)

While things are heating up in the stable, Jocasta is surprised by an unexpected guest. Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) risks sneaking into her house while the Governor is there to beg Jocasta to wait for him instead of marrying Duncan. He’s made them matching silver Luckenbooth brooches, hearts entwined under a crown. Hers is on a ribbon, and his is pinned over his heart. 

Although she clearly loves him, Jocasta cannot give her heart to a man who will sacrifice everything for what he believes. She’s made that mistake in the past and paid dearly for it.

She tells Murtagh that after Culloden, her then-husband, Hector Cameron (Christopher Bowen), ordered her and their youngest daughter, Morna (Rosie Graham), to grab what they could and hop in the carriage. They raced towards their other daughters’ lands through the night, but they were stopped by British Dragoons just after dawn and their carriage was searched. The Dragoons discovered a chest of French gold Hector had stolen when it arrived too late to help the Jacobites, and a gunfight broke out. The Dragoons were both killed, but so was Morna, and they had to leave her behind in the mud. 

Their older daughters perished in the fires after the battle, and the Camerons emigrated to America with the stolen gold that built River Run and no children. She believes her blindness is punishment for leaving Morna’s body behind, and she will not attach herself to Murtagh and live through him going to war and inevitably hurting her in pursuit of what he believes to be right. 

Murtagh tells her he loves her and that he wishes he’d been brave enough to say so earlier, then leaves the brooch with her as he exits, surrendering her to the man whom she does not love and therefore cannot be hurt by. 

Throughout the wedding festivities, Jamie has had to have several uncomfortable military conversations with Tryon. The Governor is about to move to New York to become Governor there, and he wants to leave order in North Carolina as his legacy. Towards that end, he’s been instrumental in passing a new law that prohibits men from gathering in groups of 10 or more. He’s now legally allowed to hang Regulators and has granted his agents a great deal of flexibility in how they enforce the “Riot Act,” doing what they will with anyone they recognize from any riot in the past. He’s resigned to the fact that war with the Regulators is coming, and Jamie knows the rebels cannot defeat the better equipped and better organized British Army. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Roger and Brianna are being domestic 1770s-style when the new family cat delivers a locust to them as a gift. They look outside and discover countless locusts descending– precursors to a devastating swarm that could easily wipe out all the crops on Fraser’s Ridge and lead to starvation for its residents when winter comes. 

The menfolk of the Ridge gather to discuss options, and they believe that burning the crops to kill the locusts is the best thing they can do. Roger doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t immediately have a better idea, and he definitely doesn’t have the confidence of the men.

As he’s feeling defeated by not being the magical Jamie Fraser, Roger remembers a story his adoptive father told him when he was a child in which locusts were driven away by smoke. Because, he reasons, most stories are based on some truth, this is worth trying. 

Roger mobilizes all the Ridge’s residents in building bonfires of green wood that will smoke more than burn at the perimeters of all the fields, and creating and distributing smudge pots made from dung and goose fat throughout the fields’ interiors. Brianna builds fans for people, to wave at the smoke to ensure that it blows where they need it to when the swarm arrives. 

The plan is a raging success, and when the sky goes black with locusts, the smoke deters them from landing and they pass on by. Roger wins the respect of his neighbors by minimizing the loss of crops, and he gains some pride in having found his own solution instead of puzzling out what Jamie would have done. 

RELATED: Read all of our Outlander Season 5 recaps HERE!

POSTSCRIPT: After the wedding, that little snake Gerald Forbes meets up with his pal, Stephen Bonnet, at a coffee house to tell him that HIS SON has just become the owner of River Run!

 

 

Leona Laurie

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