‘Outlander’: A History Lesson on Ian’s First Wife & Son After Season 8 Surprise
War touches everyone in unexpected ways, and Outlander just showed one of the most unpredictable ones. (Warning: Outlander Season 8 spoilers ahead.)
In the sixth episode of Season 8, titled “Blessed Are the Merciful,” Young Ian Murray (John Bell) and his wife Rachel (Izzy Meikle-Small) travel from Fraser’s Ridge to New York after getting news that there has been a massacre in Ian’s former Indian community with the Mohawk. He fears his first wife, Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa (Morgan Holmstrom), and their son, Swiftest of Lizards (aka Ian), are among the dead, and Rachel agrees to accompany him on the journey, given the grave news that could await him on the other side. By the end of the hour, however, the Murrays have not only gotten their answer but also welcomed a new child into their family.
But how did we get here, and what does the expanding Murray family mean for the final episodes of Outlander? Let’s break it down.
Why did Ian join the Mohawks in Outlander?
To understand why Ian is so tied to the Mohawk, you have to go all the way back to Season 4 when he becomes the newest member of their tribe. Through a monumental misunderstanding — thanks to the timeless trait of men using their fists instead of their words — the arrival of Brianna (Sophie Skelton) is complicated by Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Young Ian’s assault on her future husband and the father of her unborn child, Roger (Richard Rankin). Thinking he was the man who raped Brianna (that was Stephen Bonnet, mind you), they hand Roger over to Ian’s local native friends. He is eventually sold as a prisoner to the Mohawk, who come to use him as a workhorse.
Only later does everyone learn that Roger was mistakenly beaten to a pulp, and the family sets off to rescue him. But after one of their men dies in the chaos of the Frasers’ arrival, the Mohawk aren’t willing to part with Roger, so Ian strikes a deal. He will join the Mohawk in New York and adopt their customs as a replacement body. He believes it shouldn’t be too bad, considering he has become friendly with a young member of the tribe, Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa, whom he nicknames Emily.
What happened between Ian and Emily in Outlander?
With Ian starting a new life with the Mohawk, it completely transforms the cheery, once hopeful young man. As he says in Season 8, a part of him died at Shadow Lake, where he officially assumed his Mohawk identity, but a part of him was reborn there as well. He later informs the Frasers that he and Emily are married, and she is carrying his child.
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But in Season 5, Ian returns to the Ridge, unwilling to say why he left the Mohawk, only to soon reveal it is because he and Emily could not have children. He was asked to leave his tribe after multiple miscarriages. In Season 7 Part 1, however, he visits his ex-wife, meets her new husband and her five-year-old son, Swiftest of Lizards. He is unmistakably the boy’s father after all, so Ian decides to give him his own name.
When did Ian and Rachel get together in Outlander?
Just prior to his discovery of his son, Ian meets Rachel. While traveling north through the Great Dismal Swamp, he encounters an injured and stranded William Ransom (Charles Vandervaart), whom he knows to be Jamie’s illegitimate son, and takes him to a nearby Quaker community for medical assistance. To their great fortune, they knock on the door of the Hunters: doctor Denzell (Joey Phillips) and his sister, Rachel. They take kindly to their guests, and in time, William and Ian both catch feelings for the pacifist girl in the bonnet.
But as they each continue to encounter the Hunters over the years — the American Colonies were a small world, apparently — it is Ian who wins her heart. When he is summoned back to Scotland with his aunt and uncle, Ian entrusts his new fiancée, Rachel, with his beloved dog, Rollo. It gives them a reason to reunite and, in Season 7 Part 2, the pair find each other in Philadelphia against great odds — including a vengeful Arch Bug. They get married in a tender ceremony with Jamie and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) as witnesses in Philadelphia, and learn they are pregnant by the time they return to Fraser’s Ridge. Their son was born in early Season 8.
Robert Wilson / Starz / Everett Collection
What happened to Ian’s son, Swiftest of Lizards?
After Rachel sees a newspaper article detailing the Patriot massacre of several Indian villages along the Susquehanna River, where Ian lived with the Mohawk, the Murrays decide to go north — with their newborn son — to learn whether Emily and the even younger Ian have survived. Rachel is supportive but understandably nervous about the reunion of her husband and the first wife he didn’t choose to leave, but from whom he was torn apart. “She is the mother of thy children. The women who shared thy bed and thy body,” she says. To which Ian reassures her, “But our souls were not meant to be one.”
When they arrive, they are given an audience with a well-funded native leader, who has sided with King George and the British. Given Ian’s ties to the Continental Army’s Patriot cause, he reveals Emily and their son are alive but refuses to let Ian see them. Despite being shaken by the news that their marriage might be haunted not by a ghost but by a flesh-and-blood first wife, Rachel swallows those fears and pleads with the leader to let Ian reunite with Emily. When they finally do, she reveals the American Revolution continues to plague their communities, and she had a dream that their son would be captured and forced to fight in a war that would claim his life.
Hoping to change the course of that premonition, she asks Ian and Rachel to adopt him as their own and take him far from this threat. Ian is beaming with this turn of events, and even Rachel promises to love him unconditionally. The youngest Ian even comes with another surprise, a puppy that Emily reveals descends from the late Rollo. Emily even returns the favor of naming Ian and Rachel’s son, bestowing upon him the spiritual name of Hunter, not knowing that it is Rachel’s maiden name.
With that, the Murrays grow from a family of three to a family of four, plus one fluffy pup. When they finally return to the Ridge in the final four episodes, they can add yet another name to the Fraser family tree just in time to say goodbye.
Outlander, Season 8, Fridays, Starz
