The Season 7 finale of Outlander is nearly here in the 2025 TV schedule, and the penultimate episode raised the stakes just about as high as they've ever been for Claire and Jamie. Claire was shot in the belly, and unfortunately, the best surgeon for the job of saving her life is the ailing Claire herself. Jamie was a combination of furious, devastated, and panicked, with a pretty masterful performance by Sam Heughan. That said, what should have been a stressful cliffhanger just made me sigh ahead of the finale, because I'm maxed out on near-death experiences.
Okay, technically Outlander hasn't yet guaranteed that Claire will survive and make her gunshot wound a near-death rather than certain death situation, but short of Caitriona Balfe playing a ghost or appearing exclusively via flashbacks in Season 8, we can safely say that her character isn't going to perish in the Season 7 finale. (Plus, both Heughan and Balfe are in the video about the final day of filming.) And that just makes me wish that the show would lean harder into cliffhangers that actually give reason for concern.
Claire being shot might have stressed me out more if Outlander hadn't previously tried to sell suspense about Jamie's "death" when his ship went down during the passage from Scotland to the future United States. That wasn't long ago, after all, and there was so little doubt that he would come back that the only tear-jerking moment of that episode for me was the death of the elder Ian Murray.
If anything, Jamie's "death" was interesting for putting relationships to the test once he came back and the pure chaos of William learning the identify of his real father. I just couldn't quite go along with Claire's grief the way I did in earlier Outlander losses, such as her miscarriage back in Season 2, because I didn't believe it.
Of course, Claire believing that Jamie was dead led to some standout performances from Caitriona Balfe as well as David Berry, just as Claire's situation as of the end of the penultimate episode had Sam Heughan more than rising to the occasion of showing Jamie's devastation and his fury as he quit his command to stay by the side of his (as far as he knows) dying wife.
None of this is to say that it wasn't a big way to end the last episode before the Season 7 finale, and I'm definitely curious to see how Outlander can wrap anything up by the time the final credits roll. If there are any more incidents that seem to lead to the deaths of major characters, though, I just hope that those characters aren't Jamie, Claire, or Young Ian. (I'm not too worried about Ian either.)
I was nervous for Lord John's life a few episodes ago, since he's an important but not necessarily essential character to make it to the final season. Even William's end could have been nigh after he was taken captive by Hessians, and I'd be keeping an eye on Denzell Hunter in the upcoming finale if not for the fact that he might be the only one who can follow Claire's instructions capably enough to save her. Come on, Outlander, and save the scary near-deaths for characters who might actually die!
Will I be eating my words by the end of the Season 7 finale? That's entirely possible, and Outlander has certainly delivered tragedies that are much harder to watch than some of the deaths. Whatever happens to end the season, at least the wait isn't too much longer. The final episode of Outlander's seventh (and second-to-last) season will air on Friday, January 17 at 8 p.m. ET on Starz.
