Outlander: The Best (& Worst) Episode From Each Season

The time-traveling romance series Outlander has produced five great seasons so far. Despite the consistent quality of the show, there are of course high and low points in each season.

The best episodes typically feature great storylines concerning Jamie and Claire’s love or the bonds they share with their family members. The weaker episodes are those that can feel like filler, lacking direction, and narrative clarity.

10 Best Of Season One: The Devil’s Mark

This episode picks up right where the previous one left off, with Claire and Geillis being imprisoned in a literal hole in the ground for witchcraft. Ned Gowan is able to defend the women from each witness that takes the stand until the priest Claire offended earlier manages to convince everyone of their guilt. With this, Ned tells Claire that she must publicly renounce Geillis for her own safety. Claire can’t bring herself to do it, and right before she’s flogged Geillis gives the first real clue that she’s from the future.

The second is the reveal of her smallpox vaccine scar, which she presents as “the devil’s mark” in order to save Claire. Claire tells Jamie the whole truth about her time-traveling, so he returns her to the stones in order to give her what she wants. She can’t bring herself to leave her new husband, however, so she decides to stay in the 18th century.

9 Worst Of Season One: The Gathering

This is the one where Claire finally has a plan put together for escaping Castle Leoch. This plot doesn’t even take up half of the episode, however, before Jamie convinces Claire it isn’t safe and suddenly the focus is on something else entirely, Jamie’s struggle to maintain balance and keep the peace between Colum and Dougal.

The episode ends with a hunt, during which a man is killed by a boar and Claire proves her worth to Dougal. The reason this episode stands out as a weak spot in the first season is due to the fact that it lacks an overall plot or connecting thread, not moving anything along or doing much for any particular character’s development.

8 Best Of Season Two: Dragonfly In Amber

After all of Jamie and Claire’s efforts to stop the uprising, things have really gotten away from them in the season two finale. They can’t change the major historical event that is the battle of Culloden. Things become incredibly heartbreaking when Jamie decides to send Claire and the child she’s carrying through the stones where they’ll be safe.

The other parts of the episode take place in the future, where Claire and her grown daughter Brianna are attending a funeral for the man whose friendship with Frank led Claire to Jamie in the first place. She comes clean to Brianna about her true parentage- time travel and all…and Brianna refuses to believe until she witnesses someone time traveling for herself – Geillis. Young historian Roger discovers that Jamie didn’t die during the battle of Culloden as Claire believed he did, ending the season with the hope that the two will be reunited.

7 Worst Of Season Two: The Fox’s Lair

Jamie and Claire return to Scotland to recoup after everything that happened in France and quickly find that they will need to once again become concerned with the Jacobite uprising. This leads Jamie to consult with his grandfather, whose loyalties are known for shifting to align with the highest bidder.

Not too much of consequence happens in this episode, aside from establishing that Jamie and Claire are closer than ever after losing their child, and ending with Jamie managing to recruit more Highlanders to the Jacobite cause.

6 Best Of Season Three: A. Malcolm

The episode prior to this one ended with Claire returning to Jamie. “A. Malcolm” picks up a few hours earlier from Jamie’s POV, showing his day leading up to Claire’s arrival. The two share a beautiful reunion and she shows him photos of their daughter. Claire accompanies Jamie as he goes about his daily business before he takes her to his current living place: a room above a brothel.

The two catch up, and Balfe and Heugan do an excellent job portraying the chest-bursting excitement and intense nerves each party feels at seeing one another again for the first time in 20 years. It’s a beautiful hour that fans had waited for since their separation only five episodes prior, and yet it manages to feel earned.

5 Worst Of Season Three: The Bakra

This episode could also be titled “The Character Assassination of Geillis Duncan”. One of the most intriguing characters from season one returns here as the Bakra herself, and she’s gone from devious to unjustifiably cruel.

She’s trying to fulfill a prophecy that connects to the woman Claire treated earlier in the season, which is supposed to result in a Scottish King taking the throne. This episode also marks the first of Outlander‘s white savior plots, of which there are mercifully few and yet any number of which is too many.

4 Best Of Season Four: The Birds And The Bees

Outlander nails another long-awaited reunion with “The Birds and the Bees”. Only this is less of a proper reunion and more of an introduction, with Jamie and Brianna finally meeting face to face. That scene alone is enough to make this episode the standout of the season, but the rest of the episode is solid as well. Brianna goes to Fraser’s Ridge with her parents and Ian, who coincidentally confirms that the man who robbed the Frasers is the same man who raped Bree in the episode prior.

Things between Jamie and Brianna are understandably awkward, as the time apart coupled with Frank’s ghost make it hard for the two to connect as quickly as Jamie might hope. Part of why Bree seems out of sorts is because she’s pregnant and unsure of who the father is. A misunderstanding leads to Jamie beating Roger, who he believes to be responsible for assaulting his daughter.

3 Worst Of Season Four: Do No Harm

Claire, Jamie, and Young Ian arrive at Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta’s plantation following the awful robbery by Stephen Bonnet and his wife. Claire and Jamie are disturbed by the presence of slavery, but the episode makes it about their discomfort over anything else.

It’s a misguided attempt to deal with the realities of the time that ends up being yet another example of a narrative saying “See, look – not all white people were bad!”

2 Best Of Season Five: The Ballad Of Roger Mac

Jamie must finally carry out the act he’s been dreading- leading his militia against the Regulators, led by Murtagh. Brianna remembers the outcome of this battle, and Roger goes to warn Murtagh that he and his Regulators will lose. Of course, Murtagh and his men don’t back down, and the battle is to go on as planned. On his way back to the militia, Roger is stopped and beaten by men who view him as a traitor.

During the battle, Murtagh saves Jamie’s life before promptly being shot by one of Jamie’s soldiers. His death is heartbreaking and made all the more devastating by Jamie’s reaction. Once the dust has settled and there’s still no sign of Roger, Jamie, Brianna, and Claire set out to look for him. They find him hanging from a tree, having been mistaken for a Regulator.

1 Worst Of Season Five: Better To Marry Than Burn

Like previous “worsts” on the list, this episode suffers from a lack of focus. It isn’t clear what any particular storyline is attempting to do, and the three plots don’t connect at all. Jamie and Claire try to get a lead on the whereabouts of Stephen Bonnet, while Brianna and Roger stay at the Ridge and try to handle a swarm of locusts that threaten the crops.

A highlight of the episode is a scene that finally gives weight to the Murtagh/Jocasta romance, which up until this point felt light-hearted but unnecessary. Murtagh comes to Jocasta on the eve of her wedding to another man in order to ask her not to marry him, and instead wait for Murtagh. Jocasta tells him that she lost a child due to her previous husband’s dedication to fighting the British, and she won’t make the same mistake again.

About The Author