How This Heartbreaking Outlander Scene Hearkens Back to Season 1

This season on Outlander, Jamie and Claire are spending all of their time apart (so far) as they live their lives 200 years apart — and both in less-than-ideal circumstances. Jamie's years of living in the cave at Lallybroch might just be the worst span of either of their respective times apart. He's isolated and frustrated at his inability to help his family for fear of putting them in the Redcoats' crosshairs, which is why after seven years of living like a hermit, Jamie decides the best course of action is to sacrifice his freedom for his family's well-being so they can stop living in constant fear and he can stop living such a lonely life.

Since there is a price on Jamie's head, he, his sister Jenny, and his brother-in-law Ian concoct a scheme wherein she "turns him in" to the British, as he is wanted for the crime of treason for the part he had played in Bonnie Prince Charlie's attempted Scottish uprising. The money Jenny receives for selling her brother out will go toward keeping the people of Lallybroch alive.

Jenny doesn't want to go along with the plan initially, horrified at the idea of turning Jamie in and worried that he'll be hung for treason. But the British aren't really hanging Jacobite fighters anymore at this point, they're only imprisoning them, so he thinks he'll be all right, and at least it's better than living as a fugitive forever.

After a lovely send-off from Mary McNab where she shaves off his unruly beard and cuts his hair, then offers herself to him bodily so that they both may feel some kind of connection (her husband having died years earlier), Jamie and Jenny stage his capture. Laura Donnelly really kills it in the scene, conveying both Jenny's indignant front for the Redcoats and also the intense heartbreak at going along with this scheme — she looks like she's almost going to throw up as she shouts to her brother that she'll "never forgive" him and runs into the house while the Redcoats drag him off.

On set last October, Donnelly told us that Jenny has a hard time in season three, because she feels very "protective" of Jamie, but she also doesn't know how to help him after suffering through losing Claire.

"[Jamie has] gone through such a huge change and is kind of in a distant state [when he returns], which affects both Jenny and Ian," said Donnelly. "It absolutely breaks Jenny's heart to see Jamie like this. I think Jenny's perspective of it will be quite similar, I imagine, to how the fans will see those first episodes, because that's not the Jamie they know. He's a beloved character and they have to go through the pain of watching somebody suffer immensely and for a long period of time for the loss of something they've also built up a love for as well. This relationship is hugely important to the fans, and with that gone, it's horrible to watch."

So it's understandable why turning Jamie in is so immensely hard on Jenny, even if she knows it's probably the best course of action. The scene, set in the courtyard of Lallybroch, is a nice callback to the season one scene when the Redcoats attack the estate and Black Jack Randall is going to rape Jenny before Jamie defends her and is arrested, then taken to Fort William to be flogged. It's a similar confrontation, but this time Jenny and Jamie are in on it, which makes it all that much harder for them.

This current surrender plot plays out pretty much the same way it plays out in the book, Voyager, with Jamie now hauled off to Ardsmuir Prison. In the timeline, it is now 1753, 10 years after Jamie first meets Claire when she comes tumbling through the stones and falls out in 1743. He has a long way to go before they're going to be reunited.