Outlander deaths
Dougal MacKenzie (Graham McTavish)
When Jamie was plotting to stop the Jacobite Rising because he knew how disastrous the fallout for Scotland might be, it never crossed his mind that it would result in his taking his uncle’s life. But when the war lord of Clan MacKenzie was about to lead his troops into the fight at Culloden, he overheard Jamie and Claire talking about assassinating Prince Charles (Andrew Gower) in order to prevent the great losses from the battle. Irate, Dougal attacked, and Jamie and Claire fought back, with Jamie fatally stabbing his uncle. Having failed to change history, knowing what was to come and figuring he would be among those who lost their lives at Culloden, Jamie was determined to spare Claire the suffering and privations that Scotland was to face in the coming years and insisted she go through the stones and return to the 20th century. Plus, there was the matter of her pregnancy with her second child that would be better handled in modern times. Speaking of…
Faith Fraser
If she had lived, Faith would have been Jamie and Claire’s firstborn child, but Faith arrived stillborn in Season 2 of Outlander. Her untimely passing came about thusly: Dueling was illegal in France, but that didn’t stop Jamie from a dawn battle with Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies), who had raped Fergus (César Domboy), a young boy that Jamie had taken under his protection. Claire rushed to the site of the duel, hoping to intervene, but she went into early labor and had to be taken to the hospital, where she almost died giving birth. Jamie was unable to be by her side as he was arrested and in the Bastille. After Claire held her baby in her arms for hours, Mother Hildegarde had the stillborn buried in the cemetery at L’Hôpital des Anges. The import of Faith’s death was twofold: One, she was part of the reason the Frasers left Paris to return to Scotland, but more importantly, her death was also the reason that Jamie wanted Claire to travel through the stones to more modern times (the 1940s) when she was pregnant with their second child (Brianna) just before the Battle of Culloden. He was afraid either she or the baby, or both, would die if she remained in the 18th century.
Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies)
If ever there was an Outlander villain, Black Jack Randall fills that bill. While he may have had the surface veneer of an officer in the British Army, underneath was a sadist who enjoyed inflicting pain on others. To save Claire at the end of Season 1, Jamie gave himself over to Black Jack, who raped and tortured him. Jamie wasn’t the same as a result of the brutal treatment he received, and even when he recovered from the trauma, he wanted Black Jack dead by his hand. But when it finally happened at the Battle of Culloden, it wasn’t clear exactly how it happened. In the third book of the Outlander series, Voyager, Jamie awoke hours after the battle was over, and he found Black Jack’s dead body on top of his. He could only hope that he had been responsible for his death, but he had no memory of the fight. (In the TV series, it’s made clear that Jamie kills his nemesis.) Black Jack’s death was a blessing to Jamie, and one thing off of his to-do list, but he still lived with the memory of what the man had inflicted upon him.
Geneva Dunsany (Hannah James)
Geneva was not an important character except for one thing: She was the mother of Jamie’s only son, albeit one he could never claim. The vixenish Geneva had blackmailed Jamie into sleeping with her just weeks before her marriage to Lord Ellesmere (James Cameron Stewart), a much older man, whom she did not want to be her first sexual partner—especially with a strapping Scot like Jamie sleeping in the barn at her family’s Helwater estate, where he was working as a groom. Little did either Geneva or Jamie suspect that their night of lovemaking would result in a pregnancy, but when Jamie saw her several months after her wedding, she was in full bloom. If she proved to Jamie to be a lot of trouble when she was alive, things got even worse when she died in childbirth: Jamie was forced to shoot and kill her husband, who was ranting furiously that the child wasn’t his and was about to kill the newborn. Jamie rushed to the scene, shot His Lordship and rescued the bairn. As it happens, Lord Ellesmere was speaking the truth: He wasn’t the father of Geneva’s baby, Jamie was, and as we know, he would do anything to protect his family. Had Geneva not died, Ellesmere would no doubt have swallowed his pride and let the child be known as his son and heir—and Jamie would hardly ever get to see the child, since the Ellesmere estate was hours away from Helwater. With Lord Ellesmere’s death, baby William inherited the title and all that went with it. He was raised by Geneva’s sister, Isobel (Tanya Reynolds), who ended up marrying Lord John (David Berry), essentially making John William’s father, which meant that Jamie, through his friendship with Lord John, would be able to get word from time to time of his son, because once the resemblance between Jamie and William started to become apparent, Jamie opted to leave Helwater, lest the secret of his true paternity be revealed. Jamie has a brief reunion with his son when Lord John brings the 12-year-old for a brief visit to Fraser’s Ridge (in Season 4 of the TV series).
Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies)
By the time we get to Frank Randall’s demise, his 20-year marriage to Claire is over and he’s asked for a divorce. He wants to take Brianna with him as part of his plan to relocate from Boston back to England, but Claire will have none of it—even though Frank has been the main caregiver over the years, since Claire has gone to medical school and become a surgeon, which took up much of her time and energy over the years. Frank is killed in a car crash before anything else happens between him and Claire. Some time after his death, Claire and Brianna travel to England on a mother-daughter bonding trip. There, Claire learns of the death of Reverend Reginald Wakefield (James Fleet), who raised Roger, and whom she had met when he was a young boy, on her first trip to Scotland with Frank in 1945. This results in Claire and Brianna traveling to Scotland to pay their respects—and their meeting Roger, which has a story-changing effect: Roger discovers that Jamie didn’t die during the battle of Culloden… and might still be alive at some point in the 18th century. Before that happens, Claire begins (for the first time in decades) to look back at her time in Scotland with Jamie, and she reveals to Brianna the truth—that Frank wasn’t her biological father. At first, Brianna is reluctant to believe this and furious at her mother’s far-fetched story about falling in love with a man from 200 years ago. Time travel is a hard concept for a future mechanical engineer to swallow, but when Claire tries to stop Geillis Duncan (Lotte Verbeek) from going through the stones, Brianna sees Geillis disappear without a trace and she becomes a true believer, ultimately giving her mother her blessing to leave her and return to Jamie.
Stephen Bonnet (Edward Speleers)
Stephen Bonnet is a pirate, smuggler, murderer and all-around bad guy who did Jamie and Claire (and their family) ill at every turn: He robbed the couple of all their valuables even though they had done him a kindness and saved his life; he raped Brianna, resulting in her not being sure if he or Roger was the father of her son; and Roger is witness to and nearly victim of Bonnet’s brutality while on Bonnet’s ship on his trip from Scotland to the New World after he’s gone through the stones in search of Brianna. Needless to say, both the Fraser and MacKenzie families want Bonnet dead, and when they finally capture him, Brianna makes the decision to turn him over to the law to face justice. But when he’s sentenced to drown, Brianna, who knows this is his greatest fear, shows mercy on him by shooting him before the water rises high enough to drown him. “Brianna’s case is arguably the strongest,” bestselling Outlander author Diana Gabaldon previously told Parade.com. “Still, her 18th-century father and 18th-century-in-training husband want to do it for her, feeling that killing someone in mostly-cold blood isn’t something a young woman of good family should have to do. Unless she really wants to, of course… in which case it’s totally her right to cut his throat, knife him in the guts, or otherwise dispose of him according to her fancy.”
Murtagh Fraser (Duncan Lacroix)
Readers of Gabaldon’s novels know that Murtagh, Jamie’s godfather, died at the Battle of Culloden. But for the TV series, the decision was made to keep him alive; the show had already changed things up with Murtagh by having Jamie and Claire tell him that she was a time traveler, which meant they could share with him what they knew about the future. It also gave Jamie someone he could be completely honest with, which was very meaningful when the two men met up again after being separated for many years. So, on the series, Murtagh survived the Battle of Culloden and turned up in Ardsmuir Prison with Jamie. But they were separated again when Jamie was sent to the Helwater estate, where Lord John could keep an eye on him, and Murtagh was sent to the New World as an indentured servant to finish out his sentence. They didn’t see each other for another decade, until a chance encounter in the North Carolina colony. In the New World, Murtagh became a Regulator opposed to high taxes from the British (a precursor of the rebels who’d declare independence from England several years later), and he took up arms against the Crown. As a result, he was killed during the Battle at Alamance doing what he promised Ellen Fraser he would do on her deathbed: Watch over her son. Jamie’s life was in jeopardy as he tried to reason with a Regulator, when Murtagh happened upon the scene and knocked out the Regulator—one of his own men—to save Jamie’s life. Moments later, one of Jamie’s own militia shot Murtagh, unaware of his connection to Jamie. “The effect of Murtagh’s death and the timing of it—this is the turning point for Jamie; the place where he definitively severs his connection (however unwilling) with the Crown and becomes in his own soul a Rebel,” Gabaldon told Parade.com. Outlander Season 6 premieres Sunday, March 6 on Starz. Next, Find Out What Sam Heughan Says About Jamie Fraser’s Season 6 Journey on Outlander—Plus, Which Co-Star Calls It His Fave Season Yet
