Have you ever noticed that Outlander is a show about trauma? How many times have we watched these people suffer something horrible, shut down and then claw their way back to life? “Famous Last Words” is another entry in this series, and it’s beautifully done.
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The episode opens with a flashback to Roger (Richard Rankin) teaching in 1969. Brianna (Sophie Skelton) sneaks into his classroom to hear him lecturing an intimate group of students about how they disappointed him with their essays on “famous last words.” The students challenge him about what he would say for his last words, and he supposes it would be that history can forget his name, as long as his words and deeds live on in the hearts of those who loved him. Brianna likes seeing him in action, and when he adjourns his class so they can go on a date to see a silent film, she asks if that’s what he’d really say. He pauses in thought…
The next thing we know, we’re watching Jamie (Sam Heughan) cutting down Roger’s body from the tree on which he was hanged after the battle at Alamance Creek, in the style of a silent movie. The motif is used throughout the episode to soften the intensity of our having to witness Roger’s trauma as he’s dragged back to life when Claire (Caitriona Balfe) performs an emergency tracheotomy.
Three months later, Roger is physically healing nicely, but he refuses to try to speak. He knows his voice has been permanently changed by the experience, and he’s trapped by fear of what that means for his identity. He disengages from his family and throws himself into building a loft onto his and Brianna’s house. Brianna thinks he’s drowning in silence, and she’s frightened that he’s lost to her for good.
More time passes, and nobody seems able to draw Roger out. The closest anyone comes is wee Jemmy, whom Roger saves from a terrible kitchen accident by yelling out before his son can yank a hot kettle onto himself.
Just when it seems like all hope is lost, Young Ian (John Bell) returns unexpectedly from the Mohawk. Like Roger, he is changed and withdrawn. He won’t speak of what’s happened since they left him with the Mohawk, and he’s uneasy returning to the life and family he once knew. He took Roger’s place with the Mohawk voluntarily, but he won’t say why he’s returned.
Marsali (Lauren Lyle) is excellent in this episode, pushing the buttons of both men. She provokes a cathartic scene between Brianna and Roger by playing Tarot with Roger and pulling the Hanged Man for him repeatedly. Roger’s angry response gives Brianna the opening she’s needed to confront him directly about how he’s not the only one who has known trauma in their family, and she needs to know if he’ll fight for her and Jemmy the way she did.
Marsali pushes Young Ian’s buttons by chattering on to him happily about her growing family and memories of his big family back in Scotland, apparently oblivious to how dark his countenance becomes as she talks about her inner conflict at feeling a greater sense of belonging with the family she’s built in America than the one she left behind.
At last, an opportunity presents itself to give Roger and Ian both a chance to heal. Tryon has granted Roger 5,000 acres of land as a “whoops!” gift because of his man having accidentally hanged him. The land needs to be surveyed, and Young Ian knows how to do that. (He helped Jamie do it to their land.) It’s agreed that the two should go out together to get the job done, so they take Rollo the wolf/dog and go.
Once they’re alone, they both relax some. Roger is free from the pressure to speak. Ian is free from the pressure to tell his story. They’re both free from the pressure they feel to be their old selves. In nature, and in the relative silence of their company, they find the perspective they lacked on the homestead and are able to choose their paths forward.
Roger finds his resolve at the edge of a cliff. He walks to the very edge and looks over, clearly contemplating taking a final step. Before he does, he remembers being hanged, and how it was Brianna’s face in his mind that sustained him and helped him survive. He sees her again and chooses to step away from the edge and fight for his family.
Roger finds his voice when he wakes to discover Ian missing from their little camp one morning and Rollo tied up, which is uncharacteristic. Claire had noticed some water hemlock missing from her stock just after the duo departed and feared that Roger had taken it. It wasn’t Roger, though. It was Young Ian.
Ian is literally burying his hatchet and preparing to drink a tea made from the stolen hemlock when Roger stalks up behind him and kicks the tea away. They grapple, and Roger is forced to speak up to claim the progress he’s made while offering Ian a figurative hand up.
Roger intuits that Ian has lost a loved woman, and although Ian confirms this, he refuses to name her. She isn’t dead, but she’s lost to him, and he wanted to die so the pain would go away. Ian begs Roger to tell him what he saw as he approached death in the hangman’s noose, and when Roger tells him it was Brianna’s face, Ian realizes that death might not free him from his pain after all. Roger agrees, saying that the only certainty is that it will separate him from his family.
Ian isn’t convinced that life has anything to offer him, but he accepts Roger’s invitation to come home with him and live to fight another day.
When they return, Roger thrills his one year’s bride by saying her name when he walks in their door. He tells her that he isn’t the same man he was before the hanging, but that it was her face that saved him and that he’ll always sing for her– even if she can’t hear him and his voice doesn’t work. They kiss, and all will be some version of well for them now.
Elsewhere in this episode, Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy) visits Murtagh’s (Duncan Lacroix) grave on Fraser’s ridge and shares her grief with Jamie. And Lord John Grey (David Berry) visits Fraser’s Ridge bearing gifts and wisdom and hotness. Their visits are brief, and as with everyone else’s story, they are the minor notes in a song that’s truly about Roger and Ian and the choice to live.
RELATED: Read all of our Outlander Season 5 recaps HERE!
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