‘Outlander’ Season 4 Episode 10 Recap: “The Deep Heart’s Core”

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LRShive
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Outlander Season 4 Episode 10
Sam Heughan (Jamie Fraser) and Sophie Skelton (Brianna Randall Fraser) in ‘Outlander’ season 4 episode 10 (Photo Credit: Starz)

Our beloved Frasers have a hard and extremely confusing time of things after the events of last week’s episode, “The Birds & The Bees,” in Starz’s Outlander season four episode 10. Jamie (Sam Heughan) emerges from the cabin intent on checking snares he’s set for small game. He sees Brianna (Sophie Skelton) feeding the goats but obviously thinking about something else.

Jamie’s knuckles on his right hand are wrapped up and Bree asks what happened. Of course, the injury’s from pummeling Roger (Richard Rankin) into the ground before giving him to Ian (John Bell) to dispose of.

Jamie gives Bree some story of a “wee accident” and brushes it away. He then changes the subject to Claire (Caitriona Balfe) filling him in on part of the facts of the rape. Lizzie (Caitlin O’Ryan) moves around behind the pair doing chores, so Jamie asks Brianna if she’ll go with him to check the snares.

As they’re walking and Jamie’s checking the snares, he says that he’ll see Bree married and cared for. She flatly refuses because she loves Roger but thinks he went back to their original time. Bree’s sure Roger will not want her now, given the condition she’s in with the pregnancy and all. Jamie points out that he feels the man would not be good enough for her anyway if he turns his back on her.

Brianna’s feeling stupid and weak over ‘allowing’ the rape. Jamie tries to talk her our of that way of thinking at first, but seeing her mind is not going to be changed by words he takes a different tack. He provokes her into striking at him. Jamie puts Bree in a headlock and immobilizes her against her will to prove to her that she physically could do little to stop a man if he was intent on raping her.

It was NOT her fault, and she begins to understand that at that point. Leave it to Jamie to get right to the point of things but in what looked like a harsh way to begin with. In the book, that conversation took place in the barn over a calving, which takes hours and hours for a cow to deliver a calf. Plenty of downtime to wrestle your daughter into a pile of hay.

As Bree realizes she couldn’t overpower a stronger man, her Da or anyone else, Jamie assures her it took strength to not fight back. The man would probably have killed her if she had. Bree asks Jamie if he fought back against Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) while he was tortured and raped in Wentworth. Though it’s painful, Jamie discusses the situation with Brianna to help her understand he understands her pain and feelings about wanting to see the rapist dead, and by her own hand.

In the book, Jamie admits he didn’t know if he was the one who killed BJR or not, given the way they battled on the Moor. He woke with BJR’s body on top of him but didn’t know if he had killed him in the end. In the show, Jamie reveals he did kill him on the Moor.

Jamie tells her revenge at that moment was not so important, given the lives lost at Culloden. Brianna voices her opinion that the pain might be less if she knew her attacker was dead by her hand. Maybe she would forget the rape then. Jamie fills her in that she will not forget what happened, but time will fade things eventually.

A band of Indians, the Mohawk, are dragging Roger and another prisoner with them as they travel through the woods ever farther from Fraser’s Ridge. Poor Roger’s battered and bruised, mainly in the face. The other captive is in worse shape, if that’s possible.

Caleb (James MacKenzie) is stumbling and falls, only to be drug a little way by the horse pulling him until Roger can get the Natives to stop. Kaheroton (Braeden Clarke) dismounts and makes Caleb stand up again, but Caleb just drops to the ground immediately after the Indian turns his back. Roger knows they’ll have no issue at all dragging the man until he dies if Caleb doesn’t stand back up to walk. Roger lifts the man to his feet again and tries to support him as they continue their trek through the woods.

As one of the other braves (Gregory Dominic Odjig) is telling the story of the Flint & Sapling around a fire, Roger and Caleb are tied to a tree nearby. Roger’s knotting a string to track the days. He voices his intention to Caleb to return to his wife. Caleb cracks a joke that Roger will need a longer string. (I found that very funny since I was thinking that very thing at that same moment. It was almost as if he was reading my mind.)

Claire and Brianna have the ‘options’ talk about her situation. Claire explains she can perform an abortion if that’s her choice. She doesn’t have the correct herbs, but she has the ability surgically. In the book, Claire and Jamie have a HUGE fight about that particular topic; it was left out of the show. In the show, Brianna realizes it could be Roger’s baby, not just Bonnet’s (Ed Speleers). Claire reminds Bree she can go back through the stones pregnant, but they have no idea what might happen if she tries to go through with a baby once born. Brianna would have to make her choice immediately one way or the other.

The next morning, Brianna brings water up from the river. Ian takes the buckets from her as Jamie’s working on some wood to strip a plank for fencing. Bree spots Claire working in her wee garden and Jamie walks up beside her. They start off talking about how much Claire enjoys her garden and Jamie mentions he thinks Bree must hate him for taking Claire away from her and for everything else that happened to her when she came to find her mother. Bree assures him she didn’t blame him for anything and came to the past to find him too, not just her mother.

Life continues, as it must no matter what circumstances come. We get a voyeur’s view of life on the ridge as animals are fed, chores are done, and dinner is served. The happy family sitting around the dinner table shows that out of tragedy can come happiness. We’re tougher than we think we are, and far more resilient. Time does heal, but scars remain, forged by life’s events.

One day as Bree and Claire are doing laundry, Claire tries to cheer Brianna up by mentioning things they miss from the 20th century. In the book, Bree and Roger do that.

Later that night, Bree’s in bed and wakes to see Roger sitting at the foot of her bed. As she’s telling Roger she’s pregnant, the face changes to Steven Bonnet. He attempts to rape her again, and as Bree tries to fight him off Lizzie wakes her up. Lizzie promises Bree the man who raped her cannot harm her again. Brianna realizes Lizzie knows something. Lizzie lets it spill out that Jamie beat the man Lizzie thought attacked her. Brianna knows Lizzie hasn’t seen Bonnet, so she figures out that it was Roger Jamie attacked by mistake.

Jamie, Claire, Ian, and Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) are having breakfast when Brianna bursts into the cabin asking where Roger is. Now everything spills out, naturally with painful words attached to the yelling. Bree confronts Jamie to ask what he’s done. Jamie admits he beat up someone who Lizzie said violated Bree.

Brianna admits to bedding Roger but adds that they were handfast beforehand. Jamie then springs to the conclusion that Brianna was lying about the rape to save her virtue. Bree slaps him and says she was violated by another man. She looks at Claire and nods, so Claire pulls her original silver wedding ring out of her pocket to show who the villain really was. Jamie knows right away the rapist is Bonnet.

In the book, Brianna never admitted to Claire or Jamie she and Roger were handfasted; they find that out in another way. (No spoilers as to how yet; I’ll tell you later). Claire and Bree were terrified if Jamie knew it was Bonnet, he would go after him. Well, that part was consistent between the show and the book. In the show, the next thing Brianna asks is the first thing she asked upon bursting into the cabin: where is Roger?

Ian admits to trading him to the Mohawk warriors on their way north to their tribe in New York. In the book, all of this information came out over months and the tribe that took Roger was closer to the ridge, but still several weeks walk.

Roger’s standing near the most recent tree he’s been tied to for the night. Caleb has passed away through the course of the night and now Roger will be the only prisoner the Mohawk drag along. We are treated to lovely scenery but have to watch poor Roger pulled along behind a horse at the same time.

That night Ian explains the Mohawk custom of keeping someone of value to the tribe and not killing them. He’s certain they would take Roger with them to their village as long as he’s of use. Jamie and Ian declare they’ll go and find Roger and bring him back to her. Bree wants to go, of course, but since the Mohawk make their village 700 miles away she’s unable to make the trip in her condition.

Outlander Season 4 Episode 10
Caitriona Balfe and Sophie Skelton in ‘Outlander’ season 4 episode 10 (Photo Credit: Starz)

Claire and Brianna argue but Brianna forces Claire to go since she cannot. In the book, Claire was just as torn between staying to help Brianna with the pregnancy and going to tend to Roger if/when they find him. Claire was easier to convince in the book that she needed to go because Roger would need to see someone he knew and trusted since Bree couldn’t go. Also, the Natives that had him were closer so she assumed she would be back in time to help Bree deliver the baby.

Brianna has decided to keep the baby, so she needs to go somewhere safe. Jamie mentions she could stay with his Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy) at River Run. Murtagh volunteers to take her there so the group doesn’t have to backtrack on their efforts to get to Roger. River Run’s in the opposite direction the Mohawk are headed.

In the book, it’s a different Ardsmuir fellow inmate who helped Jamie with things between Fraser’s Ridge and River Run. (Duncan was his name.) But I do like that Murtagh could take up the job in the show. Jamie tasks Murtagh with a secret mission after depositing Bree at River Run: find Bonnet and bring the rapist to him. As Claire and Bree feared, Jamie plans to kill him. This shocks no one; Je Suis Prest!

Brianna draws a likeness of Roger for Claire to take with them on their search. Claire asks what she should tell him when they find him. Brianna says he deserves to know the truth about everything.

Claire, Ian, and Jamie head north from Fraser’s Ridge while Murtagh, Lizzie, and Bree head to River Run. It’s a painful parting for mother and daughter. Before leaving, Ian bends his knee and offers to take Brianna as his wife if they don’t find Roger. In the book, Jamie puts Ian up to the offering. However, in the show Jamie tells Ian to get off his knee. Claire’s face is too funny when Ian drops to one knee. I absolutely busted out laughing at her reaction.

Jamie makes Bree a promise too, to find Roger no matter what. He doesn’t tell her that he won’t come back without Roger as he does in the book. As everyone’s departing, Jamie cuts Murtagh a glare and Murtagh nods his understanding. Male telepathy is always along the same lines in my experience.

More gorgeous scenery greets us at Roger’s expense as they continue to drag him along. Roger’s not looking very good after so many days of walking, but the bruises on his face are receding. Along the way Roger becomes so weak he stumbles and rolls down a hill. His arm is still attached by the rope, so his wrist is being pulled to a painful point of almost breaking.

Roger manages to get his hand out of the loop and slides the rest of the way down the hill to try to escape. Cue chase scene. Roger eventually manages to hide and evade the braves who are pursuing him.

Bree, Murtagh, and Lizzie make it to River Run without issue. Murtagh and Bree look around and see all the slaves working the fields and tending the house. They go inside and Ulysses (Colin McFarlane) greets them in the foyer.

Murtagh asks to see Mistress Cameron and provides Jamie’s note with his seal when Ulysses inquires who sent them. Ulysses takes Brianna and Murtagh in to where Jocasta’s seated. She’s excited to hear Murtagh’s voice and feel his hands. They reminisce about Murtagh’s care for Jocasta’s sister, Ellen. Murtagh introduces Brianna as Jamie and Claire’s daughter. Brianna admits to the situation since Jocasta cannot read the letter herself. It saves Ulysses the need to read from Jamie’s letter. Of course Jocasta takes in her kin to care for her in her hour of need.

As Roger’s walking through the woods, he stumbles into an ancient standing circle of stone formations. It’s similar to Craigh Na Dun and the circle that was built at the beginning of the season over 20,000 years ago. Roger can even hear the center stone buzzing the open passage.

Roger has a hard decision to make. He has the jewels he needs to make the passage back to the 20th century and safety, but it would mean leaving Bree behind. He stands there in agony and reaches for the buzzing stone as the episode closes. What would you do? Stay for the one person you love most or flee to a certain freedom and safety for yourself. Not an easy decision. We have but three more episodes left this season. We’ll see Roger’s decision next week.




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