Outlander Season 8 Episode 7 Review: Evidence of Things Not Seen

Just when it seemed Outlander’s final season was distancing itself from uncertainty, the series sprints back into the fire.

Outlander Season 8 Episode 7, “Evidence of Things Not Seen,” delivers a series of shocks in the unfortunate style of a historical soap opera. In a peculiar move, the episode centers almost entirely on non-book storylines and prominent ones at that.

It’s a choice that leads us to mourn more than just a character death.

Outlander gets one thing right. We would be upset and shocked to lose Fergus in the final hours of this series.

What this show needs to contemplate is whether that moment of shock exists only for shock. Did Fergus die for the sake of furthering his family’s story and the final season in a meaningful way, or was he sacrificed to shake things up for fans of the books?

There’s little that suggests a benefit to Fergus’ death beyond shock value.

This is a character that has suffered so much loss and emotional devastation to the point he contemplated ending it all. Then Jamie and Marsali showed him how to appreciate life to the fullest. Fergus is in such a happy and content place when we meet him this season that he turns down a life of luxury and legitimacy.

Fergus has the Fraser name and his dream family; he’s rich in so many other ways. Alas, that makes him the perfect mark for a gruesome reality check.

It’s such a tired and dated TV bit that the moment a character finds true happiness, they must suffer for it.

Outlander has gone above and beyond to reward characters who bring us joy by keeping them alive long after they leave the books, and the series has valued the need to keep a good villain around. So it’s disappointing to see the series stoop to cheap tricks now.

Ultimately, the death scene itself is played for Bravo-esque drama with slow-motion falls and silent screams. The over-the-top nature of the fire doesn’t help soften the blow of losing Fergus to the flames of his life’s work.

Perhaps what is most frustrating is how inauthentic all the great Fergus and Marsali moments feel after the fire. The sex scene is less passionate when it is a means to bring more children into the storyline after Fergus is gone. The cute banter between Fergus and Marsali rings false when its only purpose is to foreshadow his death.

Worse of all is the placement of Fergus’ demise.

Fergus falls into the flames just over halfway through the episode, and then Outlander forces us to slog through other storylines as if it didn’t happen.

The Faith revelation was already struggling to garner support. So, forcing us to humor the hoops this series is jumping through to establish the miracle just moments after losing Fergus is absurd behavior. How is the audience expected to focus on anything after a deliberate shock-inducing moment rattles the entire story?

There were many ways to lead Marsali and Fergus back to the ridge without killing anyone, and it would have likely helped cushion the disdain we feel towards Faith’s fantastical resurrection.

As for the Faith storyline, it continues to feel like an odd choice for Outlander to make this last-minute change the centerpiece of the final season.

With the unseen parts of an interview with Jane doing all the heavy lifting, the show is grasping at straws to rewrite a season that feels ages away from where we are now. The explanation as to how Faith survives makes sense because Outlander has the power to make it so.

That doesn’t change the aggressive, imperfect paths it is taking to do so.

It’s even more bizarre a choice when Blood of My Blood spent a whole season establishing Claire’s parents are alive, to have its flagship show ignore that storyline entirely in favor of resurrecting a different character from Claire’s lineage.

It seems this final season is hellbent on doing the most in all the wrong places.

However, there is evidence of good storytelling choices amongst the rubble of this brutal outing.

Any moments spent with Marsali and Brianna, before and after Fergus’ death, are excellent from performance to execution. Lauren Lyle is a force that infuses her character’s unimaginable grief with the fiery determination we know well.

For Jamie to sense something is happening with Fergus is the subtle fantasy element we have come to expect from Outlander. It’s magical lore development, but with a refined delivery.

It makes sense that Jamie, who has previously experienced lucid dreams featuring real events and time-travelers, would have a vision of Fergus in that moment. The recent reveal that Fergus and Claire are related and therefore share time-traveling genes comes in clutch for teasing Jamie’s secret ability.

And really, it goes without saying that any time spent with Fergus, Marsali, and the kids in the first half of this outing is time well spent. It doesn’t get more classic Outlander than those moments.

Too bad it was all for the purpose of killing our sweet, undeserving Fergus.

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Outlander airs Fridays at 8/7c on STARZ.

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