Review's Resort: Outlander: Hour of the Wolf

"Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone."

Hello everyone!

We're halfway through season six of Outlander after this week's episode, can you believe it?

It's really going by so fast with only eight installments slated for the season, though of course all of us can't wait for the extra long seventh that's coming our way (all of us are also sort of feeling that it MIGHT be the last, and that's why they're making it extra long).

In the meantime though, we're still slowly marching our way towards the inevitable.

History is as much a part of the Outlander books as the love story between Jamie and Claire, perhaps even more sometimes, and the closer we are to the end of the season, the closer we are to the inevitable Revolution.

But it hasn't arrived JUST yet, and so we can probably rest for a little while longer.

Maybe.

Without further ado, let's take a look at Hour of the Wolf.

As always, links to previous episode reviews can be found at the bottom of the page.

Hour of the Wolf is very aptly named because, as you may have guessed, there IS someone connected to wolves in the Fraser household: namely, Ian Murray.

Which for any fan out there means we're FINALLY getting more of him and his time with the Mohawk, which, to be fair, it takes a bit even in the books to be revealed, but it's felt forever since we've gotten anything out of him at all.

So after our main couple have a nice wake-up together (read: sex), Jamie sends Fergus to town to sell their goods, on a roundabout trip that will take some time to complete, in a show of faith and also to remove him from all he knows for a time so he might find himself again first before he starts doing anything else.

Then he relieves poor Major MacDonald of the riffles the man brought for the Cherokee, so the cat-allergic doofus can hightail it out of there while Jamie and Ian head on over to the Natives.

Only, it's not just the Cherokee that are there. Some of the Mohawk are, too. Mohawk Ian actually knows, and who know and remember him well.

That night, Ian reveals what book fans have known all along, but Jamie and show fans haven't had a clue about until that point: he fell in love with a Mohawk woman whom he called Emily (because he couldn't pronounce her name to save his life), and she chose him to be her other half. The two of them were right on track, a baby on the way, but unfortunately she didn't carry it to term.

And unfortunately it didn't get better. I'm not sure how many times it's implied she sadly miscarried, but, well, it's not a happy tale.

In the end, the village matriarch told Ian to leave, because he would be strongest with his own people, and he learns that Emily chose a Mohawk warrior to be with instead, who could hopefully give her the children she wished for. Only, said Mohawk warrior was practically Ian's brother, so you can see how to someone like Young Ian, this would feel like a betrayal.

Ian explains all this to Jamie, who sympathises deeply (looking at you, season two), but says there's nothing more Ian could have done, short of forcing the woman, so now their job is to deliver the muskets and then go home.

They might have even done so if not for the fact that Jamie runs into another Scottish agent among the Indians, who tells him of a scheme he's concocted (and probably others too) about buying Indian land; he can hook Bear-Killer, too, with Cherokee land! Jamie's disgusted, for one because he doesn't NEED land (he has more than enough of his own, thank you), for another, because the King has sign a treaty not to move further West into Cherokee territory.

Sadly, he also knows this won't be respected, having hear from Brianna about how the Indians are going to be forcibly removed to reservations, and the trip there would claim so many lives they'd call it the Trail of Tears.

As it happens, before he can explain all this to the Chief, Ian and the Mohawk whom Emily chose (naturally he's here) get into an altercation because, Ian, which ends up in a duel between the Mohawk and the Scottish agent who offered him insult. Jamie helps Ian find some peace about whether or not his daughter is in heaven, saying they'll ask Faith - Jamie and Claire's first, lost daughter - to look for her, and then Ian offers the dueller his uncle's pistol, one of the finest around.

Of course the other Scot wants to cheat, but Ian stops him, and the whole thing comes to nothing really (and thank GOD for that!), and while Jamie's telling the Chief all about his wife and daughter's visions of the Cherokee future (you have to hand it to the man, he knows how to spin a story), Ian returns a bracelet Emily made to her husband, who'd given it to him so Ian would have gone to her and the son they'd had, should something happen to him.

Thus finding peace in himself, Ian heads back home to Jamie, where things have been rather quiet. Claire tests ether on a few patients and continues Malva's apprenticeship, before being interrupted by Jamie's return and she hurries out to the stable to greet him. He finally admits that he can't keep dancing down the fine line between both of the forming sides, and that he'll resign as Indian Agent, before the couple start yanking clothes off one another.

This is all fine and dandy until the camera pans out and you see that Malva followed Claire to the stables and is avidly observing what's going on.

Which, naturally, is where the episode cuts off.

Still think Malva isn't a little bit sus? I bet you reconfigured your beliefs after this one. But overall it was an enjoyable episode, very Ian-focused which I liked, though again I feel like a lot of A Breath of Snow and Ashes is being cut and edited out to focus on some forcibly modern beliefs and thinking overall. Still, there was no Tom Christie, an instant plus in my book.

But it was more or less a filler episode, so hopefully the action resumes next week when we head into the fifth.