This Outlander Episode Should Never Have Been Allowed to Air

Summary

• Outlander fans are used to sexual assault story lines
• However, the abuse of Jamie was shown in unnecessarily graphic detail that turned many viewers off the series
• Although the creative team has always stood by the episode, they’ve never filmed anything as graphic since.

Outlander Often Uses Rape to Move the Plot Forward

If there is one common criticism about the Outlander series, it’s that whenever things need a bit of extra drama the writers have one old standby – a major character must undergo horrific sexual assault. By season five, six major characters and one secondary character had been raped.

Now, to be fair to the show’s creative team they are following a blueprint laid out for them by Diana Gabaldon, the author of the Outlander series of books. Gabaldon has always defended her choice to have every major character undergo a rape (some of them more than once) by touting 'historical accuracy' – though it seems debatable whether or not sexual assault was ever THIS common.

Did we need to see such graphic detail?

Whether or not the frequency of rape in Outlander is accurate to Scotland/France/America in the 1700s is a matter that scholars and time travellers can debate. But what turned the stomach in Outlander’s Season One Episode 16 ('To Ransom a Man’s Soul') wasn’t just the fact that a character was assaulted. It’s also the extreme violence that was shown so explicitly.

That violence went far past the bounds of what the average audience member could possibly have been expecting.

In 'To Ransom A Man’s Soul' and the episode leading up to it, 'Wentworth Prison' Jamie is captured by Captain Jack Randall and imprisoned. Then he is tortured physically, psychologically, and sexually. The average audience member might have given a sigh of relief when Jamie was rescued, but then there were the flashbacks. And it got… rough. (Lavender will never be the same. Neither will the common nail.)

The show has never been as graphic since.

The debate rages: does showing this kind of violence on screen glorify it? Or desensitize the audience? Or, on the other hand, is it necessary to show these things in graphic detail so that the audience can truly appreciate the horror of what the character is going through?

There are definitely viewers who said 'To Ransom A Man’s Soul' made them leave the show and never return. It’s possible that the creative team took this to heart, because although the characters have undergone some horrific trials since then, the show never again approached the level of violence and sadism that closed out Season One.

Brianne’s assault largely took place offscreen, as did the brutal series (yes, series) of rapes that Claire went through in Season 5. Still, viewership of the show has decreased, and fans on Reddit have largely said that they just couldn’t stomach it any more.

Will the pattern continue…?

Outlander will be filming its eighth and final season in 2024.

Although Gabaldon has confirmed that the 10th Outlander novel will be the final one, it won’t be released until well after filming has wrapped. But not to worry – the author has informed the television crew about how the story will finish, and fans should know that the ending promises to be a good one for our long-suffering lovers.

However, so far the show has averaged a violent sexual assault once a season, every season. Although it’s doubtful that the show’s writers will ever go as far as they went at the end of Season One, we won’t unclench our fists until the final credits roll.