Outlander: Who’s Watching Bree and Roger?

This article contains major Outlander spoilers from the books

In the seventh season of the popular Starz series Outlander, time travel is once again a big plot device that separates the Fraser family across the centuries, and this time it’s Roger (Richard Rankin) and Brianna (Sophie Skelton) who are in “the future” with their children Jem and Mandy, while Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) are still in the past, facing the onset of the American Revolutionary War. But Roger and Bree seem to have some mysterious company at Lallybroch!

In the latest episode of the show, “Singapore”, Brianna is having a hard time at her new engineering job, where she faces misogyny from her male co-workers. On her first day in her new supervisory position, the men haze her by locking her in the dark during a dam inspection and driving off with the keys. While making her way out the other side, Brianna is surprised and a little fearful to find a time portal underground that she must forge her way through to escape without traveling.

Brianna does make it out the other side, and she goes home to Roger to express her fury at being pranked and humiliated just because she is a woman. The men do not seem to respect her, so the next day she goes to the pub and acts fine with the hazing, but privately she tells the ringleader co-worker Rob Cameron (Chris Fulton) that if they attempt to undermine her again, she’ll have them all fired. He seems shocked but receptive, and Brianna seems happy with the outcome, having taken back some of her power.

Meanwhile, Roger has noticed some strange things happening at the Lallybroch estate. The children have also encountered rare occurrences around the house, which Roger has thus far brushed off as fibs. In the current episode, Roger still isn’t sold on the concept of “fairies” around the house (as Mandy tells it) but he does now think a stranger has indeed been on the property. He finds litter on the side of the driveway while he is chatting with Jem, and the children scream and yell when they see someone hanging around Lallybroch outside in the dark through the window. Roger investigates, but he doesn’t uncover the culprit.

So, who is stalking Roger and Bree at Lallybroch? There are some spoilery answers in the book that Outlander season seven is based on, “An Echo in the Bone,” which does follow the same basic plot of the season to date, with only minor changes to Diana Gabaldon’s original story. But before we get fully into it, it’s important to remember that only Bree and Roger’s son JEM knows the location of the gold that Jamie buried before leaving Fraser’s Ridge!

In “An Echo in the Bone”, it is William Buccleigh, Roger’s Scottish ancestor, who is lurking at Lallybroch. If you’re straining to remember William, he was the one who caused Roger to be wrongfully hanged after the Battle of Alamance in that unforgettable episode in season five. We find out that William has managed to accidentally travel through the stones to 1980, but he doesn’t seem to be a threat to the family in these circumstances. All he wants is to return to the past.

Now, if that’s all you wanted to know, stop reading here, as there are further book spoilers to come in the next paragraph, and therefore potential season seven spoilers!

Still reading? Alright. While Roger and Bree are figuring out what to do with William, Bree’s co-worker Rob Cameron kidnaps Jem to try and find out where the gold is hidden and claim it for himself. Roger and Bree think he has taken Jem into the past using the stones, so Roger and William travel back to the past to try and rescue him, however, Rob did not travel back in time, and has simply locked Jem underground in the dam, just as he did with Bree on her first day.

Rob demands that Bree make Jem tell him where the gold is hidden, but Jem has escaped into the unknown. We don’t yet know whether Jem has gone to the past using the portal under the dam, or somewhere else. Neither do we know what has happened to Roger and William in their misguided quest to save Jem. These cliffhangers are resolved in later books.