Why Outlander's Tom Christie Made That Bold Move For Claire, According To The Actor
We gotta give it up for Tom Christie, OK?
Warning: SPOILERS ahead for the Outlander Season 7 premiere! Step away for some whiskey until you’ve had time to catch up.
We are now a few days past that big Outlander premiere, with Season 7 delivering lots of surprising drama and a big save for Claire…which, shockingly, didn’t come from Jamie, despite him being “like a bull” in trying to rescue the imprisoned Mrs. Fraser. While he, Young Ian, and their Cherokee allies were certainly working on it, it ended up being Tom Christie who came through with the ultimate save, sacrificing his own life for Claire’s. Now, actor Mark Lewis Jones has opened up about why his character made that bold move for her.
Why Outlander’s Mark Lewis Jones Thinks Tom Saved Claire
If you’re all caught up on Season 6 (and I definitely hope you are by now), you’ll remember that Tom Christie hardly gave the outward appearance of being a big softie when he arrived at Fraser’s Ridge with his children, Allan and Malva. But, it also became clear before too long, that he’d developed an attachment to Claire, in spite of his past troubles with Jamie. And, that truth was finally revealed to the doctor when he told her in the Season 7 debut that he was confessing to Malva’s murder in order to save her.
When speaking to TV Insider about Tom’s actions, Mark Lewis Jones noted that those feelings are truly at the heart of his decision to take the fall for a crime neither he nor Claire are responsible for:
Though it’s possible Tom has had some thoughts of being a bit responsible for this, as he did seek out Fraser’s Ridge when looking for a place for himself and his family to stay, that’s not the basis of his confession. As co-star David Berry noted when talking about new and returning characters’ priorities this season, love really was the impetus behind Tom’s bold move to save Claire.
After Tom has an emotional, air-clearing chat with Jamie, where he reveals his plan, he later meets up with Claire to give her the same information. It’s then that he tells her what he’s about to do for her, and why. A lot of other truths come out, as well, and Jones says that, because of the situation they found themselves in, it was almost inevitable that things would end this way for Tom and Claire:
Book readers know what ultimately happened to Tom, but we’ll have to wait and see if the series will reveal his fate. Until such a potential time as that, however, we can rest assured that Jamie and Claire will continue to live life to the fullest and honor his sacrifice.
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Covering The Witcher, Outlander, Virgin River, Sweet Magnolias and a slew of other streaming shows, Adrienne Jones is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend, and started in the fall of 2015. In addition to writing and editing stories on a variety of different topics, she also spends her work days trying to find new ways to write about the many romantic entanglements that fictional characters find themselves in on TV shows. She graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Photojournalism.