S07.16 A Hundred Thousand Angels

[GHScorpiosRule]

Season Finale.

Denzell must perform a dangerous operation with the skills he's learned from Claire; William asks for help from an unexpected source in his mission to save Jane.

Edited Wednesday at 07:33 PM by GHScorpiosRule

[Night Cheese]

I for one was pretty upset when I sat down with my coffee this morning to watch this episode, only to find out from Google that this episode is pushed back to the 17th. 🤨

[surfgirl]

On 1/10/2025 at 3:25 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Season Finale.

No synopsis yet.

Do you really think this season finale will be any different from the others? One of them will almost die. The other one(s) will anguish over possibly losing the other. Someone may go missing for the umpteenth time. Rinse and repeat. If I've learned anything with this show and books, it's that DG is persistent is recycling the same tropes over and over and over again. YMMV, natch!

[GHScorpiosRule]

2 minutes ago, surfgirl said:

Do you really think this season finale will be any different from the others?

If it follows how buik 8 ended, it will be a different ending than other finales.

[Ziggy]

I want to know if it's going to be any longer than the other episodes.  They did that with Dragonfly in Amber, but I think that's the only time.

I would love a 90 minute Season Finale.

[Night Cheese]

I'd love that too, especially if this was initially envisioned as the series finale before the show got renewed for S8. 

[Salacious Kitty]

41 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

I want to know if it's going to be any longer than the other episodes.  They did that with Dragonfly in Amber, but I think that's the only time.

I would love a 90 minute Season Finale.

No, normal runtime. 

[AheadofStraight]

On 1/15/2025 at 1:29 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

If it follows how buik 8 ended, it will be a different ending than other finales.

Please remind me how the book ended! It's been forever since I read them and they are all a blur.

[GHScorpiosRule]

57 minutes ago, AheadofStraight said:

Please remind me how the book ended! It's been forever since I read them and they are all a blur.

Since this is the buik talk thread, it ended with Bree, Roger, and the kids showing up on the Ridge, in a horse cart, with Roger saying "Hello Home!" or something like that. It made one think, oh, okay, so this is how the series ends? for those not familiar by that time with Gabaldon's teasing. Because we know it has to circle back to buik one, where Frank sees Jamie's ghost.

[NeenerNeener]

7 hours ago, AheadofStraight said:

Please remind me how the book ended! It's been forever since I read them and they are all a blur.

It's been forever since I read them too, and I don't remember baby Faith growing up to be the mother of Jane and Fanny. Even if she was switched with someone else's dead baby there's little chance that she would know a song Claire sang to a dead baby in France 20+ years before, and as Jane and Fanny's mother she's also dead at this point in the story too. So what was the point of this scene unless we're going to have a crossover with Doctor Who next season.

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 hours ago, NeenerNeener said:

It's been forever since I read them too, and I don't remember baby Faith growing up to be the mother of Jane and Fanny.

What in the HOLY HELL?????!!!!! That's because Faith DID.NOT.SURVIVE.

Fuck Roberts, Graphia, and the bunch of writers who did this.

Unless those that have read buik 9 can confirm Gabaldon pulled a soap opera trope and Faith who was BURIED, and Master Raymond had NO TIME TO RESURRECT her, was brought back to life?! The FUCK? And if he did it before he was left, hid the baby and didn't tell Claire?

Like, what in the FUCK?

Edited Saturday at 02:15 AM by GHScorpiosRule

[NeenerNeener]

9 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Unless those that have read buik 9 can confirm Gabaldon pulled a soap opera trope

I've read Go Tell the Bees* and I don't remember

Spoiler

this being in there either.

It's not like Jamie and Claire wouldn't take Fanny in if she wasn't "family", because they would accept her in a heartbeat without any blood relation at all. So what was the point to this? It was all just a coincidence that the mother's name was Faith until the kid starting singing a song that wouldn't be written for another several hundred years.

ETA: OMG, I hope they aren't planning to use this for a spin off.

Edited Friday at 11:06 PM by NeenerNeener

[GHScorpiosRule]

It's even MORE aggravating because BOTH Sam and Cait are producers and were okay with this BULLSHIT?

[FnkyChkn34]

So... William slept with his niece?  Cool, cool...

(Where is the animated eyeroll emoji when you need it?!)

Glad to see I'm not the only one who is greatly disturbed by this ridiculousness! 

[ch1]

Purely jump the shark.  And no one thought hey let’s not go there since that would mean William banged his niece?  They are going to have to twist themselves into pretzels to make this work.

And really the baby was still born - leave it be.  Let these people die.  It’s bad enough that both Jaime and Claire should be dead ten times over but now their premature baby?  Come on already.

[Ziggy]

I don't remember the book well, but whatever was in Bees was enough to have Outlander fans discussing the possibility of their daughter being Fanny's mother.  It really was all over the internet in 2021.

[Night Cheese]

I think in Bees Jamie and Claire briefly discuss the possibility that Faith was Fanny's mother, but quickly dismiss it. There wasn't an out and out "Faith lived!" declaration. 

[Ziggy]

Just now, Night Cheese said:

I think in Bees Jamie and Claire briefly discuss the possibility that Faith was Fanny's mother, but quickly dismiss it. There wasn't an out and out "Faith lived!" declaration. 

That's true.  Still, it was discussed quite a bit by fans.

[Night Cheese]

Oh, most definitely. I wasn't denying it was discussed, I was one of those discussing it. I was just providing some context. It seemed so fast to me in the book when DG brought it up and then waived it off.

[GHScorpiosRule]

9 minutes ago, Ziggy said:

That's true.  Still, it was discussed quite a bit by fans.

And fans didn't write the buiks. But clearly Roberts and company decided to go with that for what? I've lost ALL RESPECT for every single person involved with this show. And am side-eyeing Sam and Cait. Unless they were overruled if they spoke up about the fuckery of doing this. And of course the actors.

[Ziggy]

3 hours ago, Night Cheese said:

Oh, most definitely. I wasn't denying it was discussed, I was one of those discussing it. I was just providing some context. It seemed so fast to me in the book when DG brought it up and then waived it off.

Oh, me too! (providing context). I was surprised so many were discussing it, but then I thought Dianna’s written more far fetched story lines than this.

Curious to see where they’ll go with it.

Edited Saturday at 04:25 AM by Ziggy

[oceanblue]

I'm trying to remember what was in the book and she teased that Faith might have survived but she did not.   

[NeenerNeener]

1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

I don't remember the book well, but whatever was in Bees was enough to have Outlander fans discussing the possibility of their daughter being Fanny's mother.  It really was all over the internet in 2021.

I must have blocked that from my memory. The thing that stuck with me from that book was 

Spoiler

the bear that ate Bree's friend when they were picking berries.

 

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, Night Cheese said:

Oh, most definitely. I wasn't denying it was discussed, I was one of those discussing it. I was just providing some context. It seemed so fast to me in the book when DG brought it up and then waived it off.

1 hour ago, Ziggy said:

I don't remember the book well, but whatever was in Bees was enough to have Outlander fans discussing the possibility of their daughter being Fanny's mother.  It really was all over the internet in 2021.

It's not just the book, though. There was a preview chapter on the website from Fanny's perspective that ended on the revelation her mother's name was Faith (it was the last word of the preview). So that would have gotten people talking before the book was released.

3 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

And if he did it before he was killed, hid the baby and didn't tell Claire?

"Killed"?

Edited Saturday at 02:00 AM by Noneofyourbusiness

[Quickbeam]

I read all the books but am not involved with the fandom. This episode seemed like it was shot out of a cannon of WTF. Maybe I didn’t remember the books as well as other people but that is absolutely not the direction I saw this going. 

[NeenerNeener]

5 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

There was a preview chapter on the website from Fanny's perspective that ended on the revelation her mother's name was Faith

Faith is a fairly common name, and was probably even more so back then. I thought nothing of the name on the locket. It was the kid singing a song from 200 years in the future that had me rolling my eyes.

Edited Saturday at 02:05 AM by NeenerNeener

[nodorothyparker]

Gabaldon doesn't seem very happy with the maybe Faith lived as Jane and Fanny's mother thread on Facebook, but she is the one who wrote Claire speculating about it in Bees on the basis of a miniature in a locket labeled Faith before eventually and reluctantly conceding that it sounded pretty far fetched even for the Outlander universe. It comes there after they think maybe Claire resurrected a dead baby of some minor characters that makes her start contemplating Faith and Master Raymond and what his powers might have been, so who knows? It's just a really odd season ender for what's really a pretty minor thread in that book.

It also makes me laugh that the show apparently went to the trouble to get the same actor from all the way back in season 2 for about 30 more seconds of Master Raymond being cryptic and mysterious for the sake of being cryptic and mysterious.

Beyond that, this episode steamrolled through so much of the back of the eighth book that very little had time to resonate at all. Roger and Bree are treating the dangers of time travel with all the seriousness of trying to figure out which movie to go see, where their book counterparts eventually land on going to Claire and Jamie mostly because they don't believe there's anyone in 1980 they can all focus on hard enough to get there. Plus the whole Rob Cameron thing. Claire's on death's door, no wait, she's fine. Brian Fraser briefly gets to meet his descendants without knowing his descendants, check. Rollo dies and Ian cries, check. Jamie and John don't exactly leave things on a friendly everything's good now note so Jamie will still be bitching about Claire and John well into the next book, check. 

William and Jamie's scenes were also so truncated that beyond the brief mention of Brianna, it was nigh impossible to convey any sense that this is where William starts to really consider that there's a whole blood family beyond just Jamie after years of insisting it didn't matter at all that the Greys as the only living family he knew he had were of no biological relation. This is also where the seeds are laid for him to start to appreciate that Jamie was more than just a groom and maybe actually somebody worth knowing, but there's really none of that here.

 

Edited Saturday at 02:06 PM by nodorothyparker

[GHScorpiosRule]

16 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

“Killed"?

Oh right. Sorry, it was the Compte who Raymond using sleight of hand. Fixed. But my point still stands. And what I’ve read above just gives me more rage blackout.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

27 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Oh right. Sorry, it was the Compte who Raymond using sleight of hand. Fixed. But my point still stands. And what I’ve read above just gives me more rage blackout.

Right. And a short story revealed that Raymond faked the Comte's death because he sensed the Comte was one of his descendants, like Claire and Geillis.

28 minutes ago, nodorothyparker said:

It also makes me laugh that the show apparently went to the trouble to get the same actor from all the way back in season 2 for about 30 more seconds of Master Raymond being cryptic and mysterious for the sake of being cryptic and mysterious.

My assumption is they got him back because he's going to be in the next season.

Edited Saturday at 02:45 AM by Noneofyourbusiness

[Jodithgrace]

Arggh! I was really enjoying this episode right up until the Faith thing! Why did they have to go there? I just reread Bees a few weeks ago and there was nothing in there to justify wasting time during the final 10 episodes dealing with more mystical mumbo jumbo.

Also, since when are there Northern lights in Monmouth, NJ? True, there were some a few months back in northern NJ which I missed, but I’ve lived in this area my entire life and the Northern lights were never a thing. 
 

I don’t remember how Roger and Bree get enough jewels together to get the whole family to Fraser’s Ridge. 

[FnkyChkn34]

Did only show watchers definitively know that Master Raymond was/is a time traveler?  I think we did, but I can't really remember back that far.  Claire having a dream about him is a perfectly logical plot point... Faith surviving is not.  

I really hope that they fix this next season, in the first 3 minutes of the first episode, with Claire realizing that she was just hearing things or it was wishful thinking, or whatever.  I don't care how they explain it away, but let's do that and then never speak of it again.

Rollo was the saddest death of the show so far.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

7 minutes ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

Did only show watchers definitively know that Master Raymond was/is a time traveler?  I think we did, but I can't really remember back that far.  Claire having a dream about him is a perfectly logical plot point... Faith surviving is not. 

No, it was only implied by some of the things in his shop and being able to see auras.

[Jodithgrace]

He had the same gift of healing that Claire has, though they are ignoring Claire’s gift in the show. He healed her after Faith was born, and she comes into her full healing powers by the end of Bees. There may be a relationship between healing and time traveling. Geilis was a healer of sorts, but it’s unknown if she had any magical power or just used herbs plus the power of knowing about 20th century hygiene, etc.

[Linderhill]

I agree with previous posters about the possible Faith resurrection.  I hope that is a point that is dropped immediately in the new season.  

Alas William is still as much of a dick as he is in the books.

On the upside I got a kick out of them mentioning Colts Neck.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 hour ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

Claire having a dream about him is a perfectly logical plot point... Faith surviving is not

<snip>

 

Rollo was the saddest death of the show so far.

 

1. WORD! Especially since Claire held her stillborn baby for hours-refused to let her go to be buried. This is such utter ridonkulousness, and a bridge too far for me. And that’s saying a LOT.

2. I 😭😭😭😭 when it happened in the buik so I’m dreading watching it.

And after I’m done, I’m canceling STARX. I know I won’t be chomping at the bit for the final season.

[areca]

I remember this arc from the books, and I think it's more than possible that Raymond did something.  It's clear he was asking for forgiveness for seperating them.  At this point, we have to accept that the showrunners know how the story ends, and we do not.  Further, I think they committed to ending the series differently so that the show's ending would not affect Gabaldon's future book sales.

Edited Saturday at 03:44 PM by areca

[oceanblue]

Well that's a good point, they are ending the show before the book series is done.   I actually thought the perfect ending was when Roger Brie and the kids return to the ridge and Jamie and Claire spot them as they come down the mountain after a romantic interlude.   "And they all lived happily ever after".   

Jamie and Claire have built a wonderful family of people who are not blood relatives.  And at this point Ian is more theirs than not.  Why do we have to make Fanny a blood granddaughter?   

[virginia blue]

The Faith reveal seems to me like a last-minute pivot after they found out that there would be a Season 8. Book 9 has relatively little storyline for Claire and Jamie; there’s a lot of Lord John, William and their family, if I recall correctly. Even Roger and Bree have relatively little to do. Maybe the showrunners felt they had to come up with a new plot line, however implausible, for J and C.

it’s such a tragic story, though! So we are to believe that Master Raymond stole her from Claire for reasons, arranged for her to be raised by people who somehow know the same song Claire sang to her, she somehow makes it to Pennsylvania and has two daughters while still in her teens before tragically dying, forcing her older daughter to become a prostitute? 
 

‘If they wanted to go that route, they shouldn’t have made Jane a love interest for William. So gross.

On another topic, it’s so annoying that on top of nine massive books there are multiple novellas and short stories and websites you need to keep on top of to understand the whole story. I knew there was a whole series of Lord John books that I have chosen to ignore; now I find out that there are Master Raymond books too?

[nodorothyparker]

Gabaldon has made a point of saying that the show ending would be different from the series ending, I always thought at least partially because she was very aware of the backlash over how Game of Thrones flamed out. But now she seems to be conceding in different social media discussions that the whatever happened to Baby Faith story is based on something she had talked about doing even if she's now quick to say she doesn't think the show did it very well.

Almost everything I've seen this morning written about the finale with interviews with the actors and Matt Roberts is telling us this is going to be a continuing story in season 8, even if there doesn't seem to be much there to go on.

 

Edited Saturday at 05:47 PM by nodorothyparker

[andidante]

13 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

1. WORD! Especially since Claire held her stillborn baby for hours-refused to let her go to be buried. This is such utter ridonkulousness, and a bridge too far for me. And that’s saying a LOT.

2. I 😭😭😭😭 when it happened in the buik so I’m dreading watching it.

And after I’m done, I’m canceling STARX. I know I won’t be chomping at the bit for the final season.

I cancelled Starz as soon as I watched this episode! 

[GHScorpiosRule]

What bullshit. I’m going to have nightmares after how this show handled Rollo crossing the Rainbow Bridge. Really, Roberts? With his eyes WIDE open as if he were some stuffed taxidermy??!🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 And Wee Ian cries for…10 seconds?

I see William still is an ungrateful petulant man-boy twaddle.

Yeah, like I’m supposed to swallow that a stillborn baby heard Claire singing to her and would understand and recall those words. This is a fantasy show, Not a horror series.

Didn't give any shits for Jane and don’t care about Fanny.

This show is going to crash and burn for its last season, I can just see it. Gabaldon and the writers did not NEED to go to this well and write such nonsense. They could have just given us Roger, Bree and the kids returning to the Ridge.

I need to cleanse my palate and remember how guid this show was in the beginning. And now I’m off to rewatching season 1.

[AheadofStraight]

On 1/17/2025 at 10:48 AM, GHScorpiosRule said:

Since this is the buik talk thread, it ended with Bree, Roger, and the kids showing up on the Ridge, in a horse cart, with Roger saying "Hello Home!" or something like that. It made one think, oh, okay, so this is how the series ends? for those not familiar by that time with Gabaldon's teasing. Because we know it has to circle back to buik one, where Frank sees Jamie's ghost.

That rings a bell, thank you! 

[FnkyChkn34]

I didn't cancel Starz yet; I'm going to watch Sam's "new" show that has 6 episodes... even though I googled it and saw that it got horrible reviews. 🤣

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 minutes ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

I didn't cancel Starz yet; I'm going to watch Sam's "new" show that has 6 episodes... even though I googled it and saw that it got horrible reviews. 🤣

When I went to cancel, they offered me .99 through May!😂😂😂 

[Ziggy]

8 hours ago, nodorothyparker said:

Gabaldon has made a point of saying that the show ending would be different from the series ending, I always thought at least partially because she was very aware of the backlash over how Game of Thrones flamed out. But now she seems to be conceding in different social media discussions that the whatever happened to Baby Faith story is based on something she had talked about doing even if she's now quick to say she doesn't think the show did it very well.

Almost everything I've seen this morning written about the finale with interviews with the actors and Matt Roberts is telling us this is going to be a continuing story in season 8, even if there doesn't seem to be much there to go on.

 

This is one of the things about Diana that baffles me.  I wish I could find a quote from 2021, but right now the internet is flooded with Season 7 finale statements.  But in 2021, Diana said something like, "I supposed you could read Bees and think that Faith could have survived, but I certainly wouldn't read it that way."  And then she says, "They [the show runners] actually did get the (general) idea from me, though," and then goes on to explain how Faith survived.

She did the same thing with Frank.  There were so many things that happened in the books that seemed to really point towards Frank not being faithful, but Diana says, "I never said Frank cheated."

It just seems like she's trying to act as though this is the craziest story and where did the writers come up with it, when it was really her story all along.

[NeenerNeener]

I wish this forum had a "WTF" emoji/response. This particular episode really needs one. "Mind blown" doesn't really cover it.

Edited Sunday at 03:04 AM by NeenerNeener

[Cdh20]

2 hours ago, Ziggy said:

This is one of the things about Diana that baffles me.  I wish I could find a quote from 2021, but right now the internet is flooded with Season 7 finale statements.  But in 2021, Diana said something like, "I supposed you could read Bees and think that Faith could have survived, but I certainly wouldn't read it that way."  And then she says, "They [the show runners] actually did get the (general) idea from me, though," and then goes on to explain how Faith survived.

She did the same thing with Frank.  There were so many things that happened in the books that seemed to really point towards Frank not being faithful, but Diana says, "I never said Frank cheated."

It just seems like she's trying to act as though this is the craziest story and where did the writers come up with it, when it was really her story all along.

Diana, who is big of ego, was quick to say the idea was hers! Then later, in case viewers don’t like it, she criticizes what the show writers do with it! 🤦🏼‍♀️

[Noneofyourbusiness]

7 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

What bullshit. I’m going to have nightmares after how this show handled Rollo crossing the Rainbow Bridge. Really, Roberts? With his eyes WIDE open as if he were some stuffed taxidermy??!🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬 And Wee Ian cries for…10 seconds?

He still seemed affected by it when he was packing.

[FnkyChkn34]

This episode was given a suicide trigger warning, but I know that the death of an animal, specifically a beloved pet dog, is also a strong trigger for people.  Maybe the scenes were short for that reason.  

(I do agree that his eyes should have been closed, though, so that he died peacefully in his sleep, and not looking at Ian...)  

[Noneofyourbusiness]

50 minutes ago, FnkyChkn34 said:

This episode was given a suicide trigger warning, but I know that the death of an animal, specifically a beloved pet dog, is also a strong trigger for people. 

Yes, exactly. My Mom for one. There should be a trigger warning for animal death or animal injury.