Outlander has been on hiatus for a week, but Episode 6 ended with quite the cliffhanger before that.
The last installment saw Malva Christie (Jessica Reynolds) accuse Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) of being her baby’s daddy. It shocked everyone involved, most notably Jamie, who swears he isn’t the father.
Then, by the close of Episode 6, Malva was murdered in the Fraser’s garden. When Claire (Caitriona Balfe) discovered the woman’s body, her throat slit, she immediately tried to save the life of Malva’s unborn baby.
Unfortunately, the child could not be saved either. In Episode 7, which is the penultimate for Season 7 of Outlander, viewers can learn more about what happened in the aftermath of Malva’s murder.
Tom Christie wants to know if Malva died quickly
Episode 7 of Outlander opens with Malva emploring the congregation not to judge her harshly for being suckered into fornication out of wedlock, obviously a flashback to before Malva died.
Then, it flashes back to the present, and Malva’s dad, Tom (Mark Lewis Jones), and her brother, Allan (Alexander Vlahos), are standing in the garden alongside Claire, Jamie, and poor dead Malva.
While Allan is quick to imply that maybe Claire had something to do with Malva’s death, Tom is just more interested in finding out how quickly Malva died.
Claire makes the same assumption I did: he wanted to know if his daughter suffered.
But, oh no, he just wants to know if she lived long enough to say a prayer and make things right with God. Claire’s answer gives him no doubt that his daughter is damned.
He also wants her and her dead son buried out in the woods, but Jamie will have none of that. Malva and her child will be laid to rest in consecrated ground.
Later, at the funeral, Allan full-on loses it when Claire tries to help by carrying out Malva’s unborn son’s casket.
Claire struggles with what is happening
Claire is tasked with preparing Malva for burial, but she struggles to cope. Previously, in Outlander, she has been having visions of Lionel Brown (Ned Denehhey) and now is no exception.
In fact, he taunts her constantly now, and Claire even questions whether or not she might have killed Malva. After all, she heard banging on the door and ignored it due to her ether addiction.
While she fights against the urge to use ether this time around, it gets increasingly hard for her as most of Fraser’s Ridge seems intent on insinuating Claire and Jamie are guilty. Whether it be directly for Malva’s murder or merely for sinful ways, it doesn’t make much difference.
Jamie seems concerned for Claire and her nightly trips to the kitchen for “a cup of tea” but doesn’t seem to know how to broach the matter until he finds Claire being erratic outside her surgery.
Finally, Claire comes clean about everything, even her visions of Lionel, and Jamie reassures her that everything bad that has happened since she stepped through the stones at Craigh na Dun is not her fault.
And, in my opinion, this is possibly the best scene between Claire and Jamie that involves them leaving their clothes on in the entire series of Outlander.
Then, just as Claire seems to be coming to terms with everything she has endured of late, Lionel Brown’s brother, Richard (Chris Larkin), turns up to arrest Claire for Malva’s murder.
Unfortunately, viewers will have to wait until the Season 7 finale next Sunday night to discover Claire’s fate.
Meanwhile, Roger makes a decision
While everything is playing out regarding Claire and Malva’s murder, Roger (Richard Rankin) tries to decide what to do with his life.
He knows war is coming up, and he also knows that he’s not a fighter. Plus, he has another calling — he wants to be a minister.
It’s a strange life choice for Roger since he is the adoptive son of a minister, but he can’t help it. As he tells Brianna (Sophie Skelton), it elicits the same feeling in him as teaching did when he was in the 1960s.
So, the pair decide that Roger may as well become a minister and get ready to leave the Ridge so he can be ordained.
Lizzie has a very spicy secret — or two
Things are pretty heavy on the Ridge, but Lizzie (Caitlin O’ Ryan) makes a startling revelation that is completely unexpected and lightens the mood for fans as they try to come to terms with Malva’s murder.
Remember Lizzie? She’s that quiet mouse that came to the Ridge with Brianna and seems incapable of scandal until now.
We’ve seen the flirty glances between Lizzie and the Beardsley twins over Season 6 of Outlander. However, many thought they were token gestures that wouldn’t amount to much because Lizzie would never do something as socially incorrect as bedding a lad before wedlock — particularly not since Malva had set such an example of how it can all go so terribly wrong.
Except Lizzie was totally fooling around. And not just with one of the Beardsley’s either.
Oh no, Lizzie went fully polyamorous with both Josiah and Keziah (both portrayed by Paul Gorman).
In fact, she went so far as to explain to Claire in great detail how the situation went down for the first time.
And, now that she has made the confession — along with confirmation that she is with child to the pair of them — she refuses to see anything wrong with the situation.
And, nor is there — except that this is the 1770s, and people are already riled up with the whole Malva situation, so Claire and Jamie are hella strict with making Lizzie choose one for marriage and sending the other twin away until after the baby is born.
In the end, Jamie makes the twins draw straws, and the one with the short straw gets to wed her. He performs a handfasting to bind them, and that’s the end of that, right?
Wrong.
Lizzie will have no part in sending one twin away now that she has had them both. So, she heads off to speak to Roger, and he handfasts her to the other twin, and now she is officially bonded to both of them.
How this plays out remains to be seen, and viewers will have to wait until Sunday night to find out more.
Season 6 of Outlander currently airs every Sunday night on Starz.