Outlander is back! To celebrate the end of another Droughtlander we caught up with actors Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe to talk about Stephen Bonnet’s unforgettable introduction!
It’s the most wonderful time of the year — especially if you’re an Outlander fan who’s been waiting with bated breath for the hit Starz series to come back.
The last time we saw our favorite Highlander and Sassenach, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jaime (Sam Heughan) had found that they’d washed up on the shores of a brave new world.
We’re definitely not in Scotland anymore, folks. That’s a fact that’s apparent from the get-go in this year’s season opener which kicks off in North Carolina in 1767— just a few years shy of the start of the American Revolution.
The Colonies may be a land of opportunity, but that doesn’t mean they’re without dangers. We’re treated to our first death of the season right at the beginning of the episode when Hayes is swiftly hung.
There’s a nice reprieve of happiness amidst the mourning when Fergus and Marsali let the group in on a bit of good news: Marsali is with child and the couple is planning to stay in Wilmington.
The group parts ways from here, with Jamie, Claire, Young Ian, and Lesley setting off to River Run with plans to make a pit stop along the way to bury Hayes’ body.
Their plans hit a small snag when Jamie finds a stowaway who goes by the name of Stephen Bonnet (Ed Speleers) in their midst.
Jamie is clearly weary of Bonnet’s intentions, but decides to let him go. He even agrees to help smuggle Bonnet out of town– a decision he swiftly comes to regret once we reach the end of the episode.
In true Outlander fashion, the season opener goes out with a bang in one of the most wonderfully stylistic scenes the series has ever produced.
Just before the episode ends, Jamie, Claire and the rest of their company find themselves ambushed by Bonnet and his band of men who’ve come to rob them of their coin and jewels.
The bloody clobbering (artistically set to the tune of Ray Charles’ “America the Beautiful”) comes to a head after Bonnet slits Lesley’s throat right in front of Claire and then demands that she give up both of her wedding bands.
Claire tries to outsmart him by swallowing the rings, but Bonnet is ruthless. Eventually, he walks away with the ring Jamie fashioned for Claire, leaving her to choke up the gold band given to her by Frank.
It’s a slight deviation from Gabaldon’s Drums of Autumn in which Bonnet ends up stealing Frank’s ring instead. The change is a small one, but even so, showrunner Ronald D. Moore has a good reason for wanting to switch things up on the Starz series.
During a cast appearance at PaleyFest in New York City, Moore revealed that they needed to make sure the ring Bonnet steals from Claire is easily recognizable later on in the season. The writers decided Jamie’s ring was more unique in design to the simple gold band that represents Claire’s marriage to Frank, so having Bonnet walk away with Jamie’s ring made more sense in the grand scheme of things.
As for Stephen Bonnet, rest assured that we’ve not seen the last of him.
When we caught up with Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe a few days before the Outlander season 4 premiere in Los Angeles, Balfe warned that fans should be on high alert whenever we see Bonnet pop up again from here on out.
“[Ed Speleers] is incredible. He’s very intense on set and those scenes that we did— that fight scene on the boat where he steals the ring— it was very horrific, and we both really went there,” Balfe told Hypable. “I think it sets up his role for the rest of the season, and the kind of things he’s going to do. I think audiences are going to know to be very weary of Bonnet whenever he shows up again.”
Claire and Jamie are no strangers to villains. We’d be hard pressed to forget that they spent the better half of the first few seasons of the series squaring off against Captain Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies).
So how does Bonnet compare to Black Jack?
According to Balfe, it’s hard to draw parallels between the two characters specifically because the forces that drive them are incredibly different.
“I think with Jack, there was a perversion there— he was a total psychopath,” explained Balfe. “But with Bonnet, he’s more manipulative. He obviously does incredibly horrible things, but I think he’s much more of an opportunist where I think Jack was a sadist. I think what drives Bonnet is greed which is just a very different kind of thing.”
Additionally, Heughan warned that it’s not just Claire and Jamie who will suffer at the hands of Stephen Bonnet.
“He affects the whole Fraser family,” teased Heughan. “He has some dealings with all of them and becomes a real villain.”
It’s not all doom and gloom for the Frasers in the first episode back.
One of the most tender moments between Jaime and Claire occurs in the forest where they’ve made camp for the night on their way to River Run to meet Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta (Downton Abbey’s Maria Doyle Kennedy).
It’s here that Claire first discusses the idea of the American Dream with Jamie— a moment we first saw in the trailer for the new season earlier this summer.
Rightly so, the idea of the American Dream is an underlying theme that courses through the rest of the season as the Frasers settle into their new lives in North Carolina. It’s especially interesting to see how the notion takes hold of Jamie in particular.
Like many who will make the trek to America seeking a new life after him, Jamie will eventually realize that the idea of the American Dream is easier to buy into than it is to achieve.
When we asked Heughan about how the American Dream relates to Jamie’s story arc for the season, he teased that as season 4 progresses, we’ll see how Jamie’s outlook on his future in the Colonies changes leading up to the impending American Revolution.
“I feel like Jamie starts off being very free. He sees a land of opportunity and great freedom and his heart is open to all that. By the end of it, he’s constrained again— a lot by the politics of the time and what’s going on,” hinted Heughan. “You can’t escape history. It’s always trapping them and by the end, I think they all are, in this sort of predicament.”
Overall, the first episode back sets up a lot of things to come. It’s a great start to the next chapter of the story, and we’ll be looking forward to seeing how all of our favorites fare when it comes to navigating themselves in the new foreign land they’ve taken up residence in.
Outlander airs Sundays at 8 p.m. on Starz.