Last week’s episode of Outlander saw the Fraser’s heading off to Wilmington to catch up with Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy) and Lord John Grey (David Berry) as they also met Flora MacDonald (Shauna MacDonald), who is a very important part of the Jacobite history.
In this episode, the storyline stays much closer to home as things go decidedly sour on Fraser’s Ridge.
Sickness comes to Fraser’s Ridge
As previewed in the trailer for Episode 6 of Outlander, illness by way of dysentery (or the bloody flux) comes to Fraser’s Ridge.
Quickly many people succumb to dysentery because Season 6 of Outlander is only eight episodes long, and there isn’t much time to get all the plot points from A Breath of Snow and Ashes into the TV show.
And as soon as you can get a few rows of makeshift graves happening, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) is also falling ill, and the world shrinks down to a single focal point for those who love her.
Claire has the worst coma dream
Claire gets so horribly sick that she is bedridden for a week, and during that time, Malva (Jessica Reynolds) and Mrs. Bug (Sarah Collier) cut off Claire’s hair.
But this isn’t the worst of it. During the fever, Claire also has some pretty wild dreams. Among them are a vision of snakes and a bloody heart.
Oh, and that one time when she sees Malva cozying up to her husband, Jamie (Sam Heughan).
Except that nightmare turns out to be a reality
That last one, though? That’s not a dream. Instead, Malva was putting the hard word on Jamie.
That seems enough for Claire to overthrow her sickness and wake up. Once she discovers she now sports the world’s worst haircut, she finds other things to be mad about.
Roger (Richard Rankin), who was there when Claire woke up, makes things worse by telling Claire that Jamie cried when he saw his wife’s hair. Way to go, Roger, your bedside manner sucks.
While Claire is confident that Malva would have no sway over Jamie, things are about to get a crapload worse.
Claire makes a house call
Now that Claire is better, she does what any person who has just been feverish for a week would do: she takes a trip to see Tom Christie (Mark Lewis Jones).
You see, while everyone on the Ridge has had the flux, both hers and Tom’s version of it seems just a little… different.
So, to find out what they might have had instead of dysentery, Claire insists a poo sample from Tom would clear things right up.
This house call goes as well as you would expect it to go in the 1770s and with a man who believes the word of God before he believes a female doctor who wants him to crap in a jar for her.
Malva drops a bombshell
This is not the worst thing involving the Christies, though. No, things get infinitely worse when Tom turns up at the big house a while later (once again, things are moving at a clipping pace here), his children in tow.
You see, Malva has a little case of pregnancy.
Now, before you jump up and down, shouting, “A-ha! I know who it is,” Malva is declaring front and center that the baby is Jamie’s, and it was conceived while Claire was sick. She can even name a few intimate scars on Jamie’s body that seems to seal the deal.
But not before Claire slaps Malva across the face and storms out.
Things get complicated with the Frasers
While Jamie is adamant that he did not take advantage of Malva, it’s hard to downplay the fact that Malva knows of the scar on his inner thigh. I mean, only Malva and Outlander fans know it is because she is a peeping Tom.
Malva’s brother, Allan (Alexander Vlahos), is just about losing his mind because his sister has been sullied, and now Jamie won’t ‘fess up to it.
Jamie will have none of Allan’s BS, though, and throws the Christies out.
Then, he has to settle things with Claire. Sure, she doesn’t believe what Malva is saying, but they have to have a big long discussion about the situation, and, in the process, Jamie admits to sleeping with someone years ago after Claire had left through the standing stones.
Word gets out after this about Malva’s accusations, and Jamie has to go off and do war preparation stuff — hello to another time jump — and leaves Claire by herself on Fraser’s Ridge, where she gets treated like a pariah.
It also gives her time to try and reason with Malva, who almost seems ready to crack — until Allan shows up and reminds his sister that Claire is a witch.
Young Ian makes a confession
Given that no one really wants to speak to her, Claire ends up tending to her garden, and it is here that Young Ian (John Bell) turns up to speak to his auntie about a small issue.
At first, it seems like he wants to chat about whether or not his uncle would bump uglies with Malva but then he explains himself a little better.
Instead, it turns out that Malva was bumping uglies with Young Ian. And because Young Ian is the sort of fellow he is, he totally wants to marry Malva, regardless of whether or not she has slept with others alongside him.
Jamie returns home
Thanks to the warp-speed episode that feels more like the final season of Game of Thrones than the normally meandering Outlander, Jamie arrives home from the Provincial Congress after another great amount of time has passed. He didn’t get picked as a delegate to go to Philadelphia because word travels fast in the 1770s — even without TikTok — and they all know about Malva.
Claire starts losing it some more after she sees a vision of Lionel Brown (Ned Dennehey). Taking a nice long hit of ether, her dreams still get interrupted by a hallucination of Malva.
When she wakes up, she decides to tend to her garden — and finds a very dead Malva there. It looks like her throat has been slit.
Claire immediately performs a C-section on Malva, hoping to save the baby but to no avail.
The episode ends here, so viewers will have to tune into next week’s episode of Outlander to find out more about who killed Malva.
Season 6 of Outlander currently airs every Sunday night on Starz.