In her dreams, she sees Jamie (Sam Heughan) with another woman, but she also sees other fever-induced visions, like the beating of her own heart. So, when Malva Christie (Jessica Reynolds) later describes what Claire thinks she saw, it initially causes her doubt. “Both the fever dream and its specific images are taken directly from the book,” Outlander bestselling author Diana Gabaldon shares in a new exclusive interview with Parade. “Unfortunately, it’s really difficult to convey a dream—especially a dream involving moods and unreal creatures/situations—on film. Subjective chaos is one of the things you can do much more easily (and usually more effectively) in writing, because you can evoke the reader’s own imagination. Film imposes its own reality, and if that’s too far from the viewer’s sense of things, it may not work that well.” But as Gabaldon notes, “They pretty much had to film Claire’s dream, because she has to incorporate the vision of Jamie and Malva into it. Without that, she wouldn’t have the slightest doubt as to whether Malva’s story was true or not.” It turned out that most of the illnesses were caused by river water that had been polluted by a dead animal, but Claire, who was the last to fall ill, suspected that her illness and that of Tom Christie’s (Mark Lewis Jones) had a different underlying cause. And she was right, even though she wasn’t able to prove it before Malva—who poisoned the two—accused Jamie of being the father of her unborn baby. Remember the love charm from the last episode? Guess who? Remember Malva spying on Jamie and Claire making love, so that she’s seen his naked body and can describe his scars and birthmarks? Malva makes a convincing case for Jamie being the father, and Claire, momentarily thrown, runs out of the room where the accusations are being hurled to the stable, where she is eventually joined by Jamie and they have a confrontation. Initially, it seems as if she may doubt him and he her love for him, but Gabaldon says that isn’t the case. “His trust in the love between them is his most important article of faith, and he’d have to be in complete despair to abandon it,” she explains. “In this instance, he’s far from despair: upset, furious, and desperate to reassure Claire, but in no way about to abandon either his faith in her faith in him, or the fight to prove his innocence. As he says, when she accuses him of having no faith in her ability to believe him, ‘If I didna have quite a lot of it, I wouldna be here.’ And he’s right.” So, while we see that the two are united—maybe even stronger than before—in their belief in each other and in the fact that Jamie didn’t father Malva’s baby, the folks on the Ridge do, despite everything Jamie has done for them. “As Jamie says to Claire after their scene at the stable, when she says no one will believe it: ‘They’ll all believe it, Claire,’” Gabaldon points out. “He understands human nature very well; especially the nature of the people on the Ridge. There’s a reason why tabloid newspapers sell; it’s because people enjoy scandal, whether it’s true or not. And in a rural community, where entertainment is scarce, scandalous gossip spreads like wildfire.” Both Roger (Richard Rankin) and Young Ian (John Bell) have come forward to reveal their knowledge of Malva’s sexual exploits, with Ian even admitting he could be the father. But it wasn’t clear from the episode whether they told anyone other than Jamie and Claire. Especially if you take into consideration that since they are both related to Jamie, people on the Ridge might not believe them anyway. “People are hard-wired to be interested in sex,” Gabaldon adds. “Any sort of sex, any time and under pretty much any circumstance. They also understand that that interest is universal. (Bear in mind also the general nature of religious belief in the 18th century. It tended to be quite rigid and judgmental, regardless of sect.)” The end result of this episode was Malva’s murder and Claire’s attempt to save the baby by cutting Malva open, neither of which will bode well for the Frasers, who are already being shunned. Next, Outlander Season 7 Has Started Filming! Plus, Everything Else We Know About the Show’s Future
