Everything To Remember From Outlander Season 5

Content warning: This post includes discussion of sexual assault.

The Revolutionary War looms for the Fraser family in Outlander Season 6. Though Claire (Caitriona Balfe), Jamie (Sam Heughan), and their daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton) are finally together in the past, the series picks up as social and political tensions in North Carolina are mounting and threatening their hard-won happiness. Jamie has to appear loyal to the British Crown after being gifted Fraser’s Ridge, but he knows from time-travelers Claire, Brianna, and Brianna’s husband Roger (Richard Rankin) that war eventually breaks out and the American colonists win.

It’s a “darker, fractured, and intense” season, Heughan told Entertainment Tonight. Balfe added that after the brutal events of Season 5 — which saw her kidnapped and sexually assaulted — Claire is struggling to cope. “We explore the PTSD that she's experiencing and we explore how that trauma is affecting not only her, but the whole family,” she said. “I think prior to this, Claire is someone who has always been able to compartmentalize things and put something in a box and move on, and that just doesn't serve her this season.”

It’s been two years since viewers were last transported to Fraser’s Ridge, so here’s everything you need to remember from Season 5 before diving in to the new season.

Claire introduces modern medicine and is punished

Having traveled back in time from the 1960s, Claire, a doctor, is naturally frustrated by the lack of modern medicine and her inability to treat people. So she decides to skip ahead a few centuries and invent penicillin on her own. She opens a clinic and hires Marsali (Lauren Lyle) as her medical assistant. Despite having good intentions, a woman practicing medicine in the 1700s is not well-received, and the men of Brownsville become enraged when they learn Claire has been spreading modern ideas under a pseudonym — Dr. Rawling — about a woman’s right to decide what she does with her own body.

Led by Lionel Brown (Ned Dennehy), the men kidnap, beat, and sexually assault Claire. (Outlander has been repeatedly criticized for its use of sexual assault as a plot device.) Jamie, Roger, and Ian (John Bell) kill all the men and save her, while Marsali kills Lionel with a lethal injection. Claire is left traumatized by the ordeal, and Lionel’s brother vows retaliation.

Jamie struggles with loyalties

Season 5 opens with Brianna and Roger’s wedding, where Governor Tryon (Tim Downie) reminds Jamie that he has to serve the British in exchange for making his settlement at Fraser’s Ridge. He’s ordered to organize a militia to take down the Regulators — a real group of North Carolina farmers who opposed the British taxation system — and kill their leader, his godfather Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix). This leads to the Battle of Alamance, where Murtagh saves Jamie but then one of Jamie’s men shoots and kills Murtagh. Heartbroken after losing his lifelong friend, Jamie decides to renounce his loyalty to the Crown.

Roger and Brianna stay in the past

Brianna originally traveled through the stones to warn her parents of a fire at Fraser’s Ridge, and in Season 5 she and Roger struggle with whether or not to stay in the past. They worry about their son’s safety, so when they realize they can travel back to the 20th century with their own gemstones, they say a tearful goodbye to Claire and Jamie. But when they travel through the stones, they end up right back at Fraser’s Ridge, seemingly confirming that their true home is in the past with their family.

Brianna kills Stephen

Smuggler Stephen Bonnet (Ed Speleers) is one of Outlander’s most hated villains, with one of his most despicable crimes being sexually assaulting Brianna in Season 4. But he finally meets his end in Season 5 following a failed kidnapping attempt of Brianna. After Roger and the Frasers save her, they give Brianna the option to kill Bonnet or let him stand trial. She decides to turn him over to the justice system, and he’s sentenced to death by drowning. She then goes down to the harbor where he’s being tied to a post and shoots him in the head just before the water can submerge him.

Ian returns from the tribe

In Season 4, Young Ian (John Bell) offered himself up to the Mohawk tribe to save Roger’s life. In Season 5, he returns to Fraser’s Ridge in Native American garb, clearly depressed about something. He alludes to a wife he had while living with the tribe, but after a suicide attempt, its inferred that something bad happened to her. Based on the trailer for Season 6, it looks like we’ll finally learn what happened while he was living out in the wild.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.

If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You can also reach out to the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860 or the Trevor Lifeline at 1-866-488-7386, or to your local suicide crisis center.