This article centers on Season 3, Episode 12 of Outlander, “The Bakra.” If you’re not yet caught up with the show, be warned: Spoilers abound.
I am simply going to tell you, up front, that this week’s episode of Outlander is even more absurd than last week’s, which is saying something. A lot of the Frasers’ old friends and frenemies just happen to be lurking about in Jamaica and it borders on hilarity because it’s not like air travel was a thing back in ye olden days.
Young Ian resurfaces and is being kept alive by the Portuguese pirates because someone called “The Bakra” likes young boys. When the Bruja gets to Jamaica, Young Ian is thrown into a cave cell where he meets a couple other young men being held. There is some ominous talk about how the boys thrown in the cell keep being taken away, though to where, no one knows. Before long, Ian is taken to a lovely estate, a colonial fever dream, where a woman is bathing in goat’s blood because, “the protein and iron keep my skin young.” She is The Bakra but we know her as Geillis Duncan. Yes. You just read that correctly. The same Geillis Duncan who was burned as a witch in Season 1—but not before Claire discovered she was also a time traveler. (And the same Geillis Duncan that we last saw passing through the stones in 1968 in Season 2.) As Young Ian watches, kind of dumbfounded, Geillis rinses the goat’s blood off, posing seductively, then dons a robe like this is all fine, nothing to see here. A manservant brings in some treats and tea, which after a brief pause, Young Ian takes to eagerly. He is a growing boy, after all.
Long story short, Geillis is looking for three sapphires, of which she has two. She asks Ian about what happened on Selkie Island while he was going for her treasure. Before long, he is spilling his guts. Turns out, there was some kind of truth serum in the tea and Geillis learns that Young Ian’s uncle might have taken the sapphire. She marvels at what a small world it is when she learns the identity of Ian’s uncle. Geillis also waxes poetically about how sex with virgins keeps her young, as it does for all of us. Ian defiantly shares that he isn’t a virgin. There was that one time, in his uncle’s print shop, and Geillis is fine with that because, she says, he’ll know what to do. (As if.) She reclines in bed and Ian crawls toward her, but they mercifully don’t show the sex scene. Young Ian is very young, after all.
The Frasers arrive in Jamaica and immediately start searching for young Ian. As they are strolling through the streets, they see that slavery is alive in well in 18th-century Jamaica. Claire is appalled and rightfully so, but it highlights one of the realities of the Outlander premise. The show only works because Claire is white. A black woman would never want to return to the 18th century, no matter how dashing and handsome Jamie Fraser might be. It’s interesting that it takes until the third season for the show to try and grapple with this but I suppose it’s hard to be an adventure romance and politically engaged with historical realities.
At the slave market, a young black man being sold by slavers captures Claire’s attention. She causes a scene and demands that Jamie do something to help the young man. Jamie ends up buying the young man. That’s right. The Frasers become slave owners, but the good kind so it’s fine I guess. Apparently, it is easy to buy a slave but far more difficult to set one free. They’ll set the poor guy free, “when it means he truly can be,” Jamie says after detailing, for Claire, the difficulties of just giving a man his freedom. The Frasers then ask the young man, Temeraire, for his help. While they are mingling at the governor’s ball—to which they have been conveniently invited—he will go to the slave quarters and ask if anyone has seen young Ian. He agrees to do so because, well, he is a slave! He has to! The show is just trying to make his slavery seem more palatable to our modern sensibilities.