‘Outlander’ recap: Captain Randall takes a wife

There’s an episode of “The Simpsons” that features a bunch of the kids watching their favorite cartoon, “Itchy & Scratchy.” In the cartoon, Itchy and Scratchy are on their way to a fireworks factory but get distracted from their (awesome) destination. Eventually, so frustrated by the turn of events, Milhouse wails, “When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” immediately before bursting into tears.

Fireworks factory syndrome is a common issue with television shows that announce their intentions for a season early on and an easy summation of the “Outlander” issue I addressed last week. Luckily for “Outlander” fans, if not for poor Milhouse, Jamie and Claire have finally arrived as the fireworks factory, and it is just as magical as we hoped.

Primary in all of this is the fact that the Battle of Culloden, which the Frasers have been working to avoid all season, is imminent, with Jamie’s last-ditch efforts foiled in the final scene of “The Hail Mary” by the hapless leadership of Charles Stuart.

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Now, the grim inevitability that suffused the season has transformed into an intense anxiety. If Claire and Jamie are truly unable to stop what’s to come, how is there any hope that Jamie might survive Culloden?

It’s a conflict only underlined by another plot reaching its conclusion in the episode, the fate of Alex Randall and Mary Hawkins and their unexpected savior, Capt. Black Jack Randall.

The largest point of contention between Claire and Jamie throughout Season 2 has been Claire’s insistence that Jamie not kill the man who raped and tortured him, her attempt at saving future husband Frank Randall’s life.

Though she was successful at staying Jamie’s hand, “The Hail Mary” reveals that Claire’s interference may not have been entirely necessary, as Frank’s true ancestor is Alex Randall, Jack’s brother.

This allows for two separate, but equally curious realizations.

One is the necessary complication of Black Jack Randall’s character. While sometimes used to cartoonishly evil ends, Jack is made a fantastically more interesting character with the reveal of his deep and abiding love for his brother. But where many shows would use this opportunity to give a character a hidden heart of gold, “Outlander” makes a much more interesting choice and uses Jack’s love to fill in just how deep his depravity runs.

Jack agrees to marry Mary and raise Alex and her child as his own, but grudgingly. Though Alex beseeches him, telling him that he knows what efforts Jack has taken to hide his better self from the world, with Claire, Jack makes clear that depravity and violence is the only way he knows how to live.

It would appear that Jack’s reticence to agree to his brother’s dying wish comes not from grief or even from the thought that he doesn’t know whether he can restrain himself from inflicting his violent urges on Mary, but rather, that he doesn’t really want to have to restrain himself.

Jack’s love for his brother isn’t a suggestion of who he really is deep inside, it’s a statistical anomaly that he was anxious to be rid of. Though he mourns Alex’s death, Jack’s first reaction is one of anger, pouncing upon his now dead brother and repeatedly punching him in the face, both as a means to process his grief and, perhaps, as a way to channel the rage that he always spared his brother and, now, would have to spare his brother’s widow and child.

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The other observation from the Alex/Mary/Jack/unborn baby reveal is the fact that “Outlander” is obsessed with bastards, maybe even more than “Game of Thrones,” a show that literally aired an episode last week entitled “Battle of the Bastards.”

Jamie shamefacedly admitted to Claire earlier in the season that his father was a bastard, an admission Claire was unfazed by because even in the 1940s, such situations were losing social stigma. The first episode of the second season sees Frank Randall agreeing to raise Claire’s unborn child, so long as that child is raised thinking that Frank is his or her true father. In one of his final moments before death in “The Hail Mary,” Colum MacKenzie and brother Dougal angrily discuss the fact that Dougal is the true father of Colum’s son.

The only problem with everyone being a bastard is that there is no problem with everyone being a bastard. Rather, there’s no reason that most everyone has questionable lineage, outside the fact that it makes it seem thematically resonant, without holding any greater significance.

And so “Outlander” heads into the final hour of the season with all of its cards on the table, hurtling through time toward the destination they were always going to reach. Despite knowing that the future, for the show at least, guarantees another two seasons, for audiences, it’s unclear just how we’ll get there.

As hope curdles into fear, Jamie and Claire and their highlander troops face one final unwinnable battle and, for the first time all season long, it’s unclear how they’ll make it to the other side. May God have mercy on us all.

libby.hill@latimes.com

Twitter: @midwestspitfire

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