Allow me to quote a great woman: Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, this week’s Outlander: Blood of My Blood is hot.
Brian and Ellen meet up at a Beltane festival, where the ceremonial bonfire looks like a blow-out birthday candle in comparison to the flames coming off Jamie Fraser’s smoldering folks. Elsewhere, a fortune teller spins a prophecy about Julia’s child that has Simon seeing crowns and threatening murder.
Read on for the highlights of Episode 5, “Needfire.”
NO BELTANE FOR YOU! | Remember how Julia was planning to help Brian at the Beltane festival, in exchange for his aid in escaping Castle Leathers? That plan goes to hell when Davina intercepts them and forbids Julia to go, because a seer named Maisri is coming to the castle. “Lovat holds reading for all his bairns,” she adds, which is how Brian learns that the baby in Julia’s ever-expanding belly is his half-sibling. “I didn’t have a choice,” she quickly says after seeing the look on his face; he understands that she was in a rough position, but maintains that she should’ve told him. And he’s clearly hurt: When he tells her to stay, because his Beltane problem is “no longer a concern of yours,” his tone is a little sharp.
When Brian eventually sets out for the festival, Murtagh joins him in hopes of seeing Ellen. As his cousin moons over the out-of-reach redhead, Brian merely shakes his head and reminds him that there are plenty other lassies… yet says nothing about how he’s fully planning a future with this woman he’s talked to twice.
GANG’S ALL HERE | Ellen, Jocasta and Ned arrive at the festival sans Jocasta’s husband, Hector Cameron, who’s sick at home (and whom she doesn’t really like all that much, it turns out). Ned pulls Ellen aside and reminds her that she’s there to strengthen the Grant/MacKenzie ties — and if she sabotages it, and somehow manages to survive the wrath of Isaac Grant and/or her brothers, she will wind up married to someone, someday. Anyway, happy Beltane!
Malcolm Grant also is there, with Henry in tow. The Brit’s interest is piqued when he learns that they’re near a stone circle rumored to have otherworldly powers. Their conversation also turns up some new info about Simon: He’s accused of the kidnapping and rape of a noble woman.
THE MAY QUEEN IS CROWNED | Ellen plays her part and acts happy to see Malcolm, who soon squires her onto the dance floor so she can be in the running for May Queen. Apparently the best and prettiest dancer gets chosen, but the only thing Ellen really cares about is that Brian also makes his way into the ceilidh and winds up her temporary partner during the group dance. She whispers that they have to pretend to be strangers — uh, I’d wipe that glorious smile off yer face then, Ellen — and they make plans to sneak off and meet up at an abandoned church nearby.
Ellen is chosen May Queen, and Malcolm — as well as Brian, Murtagh and a few other bachelors — line up in hopes of becoming her king. She picks Malcolm, which pleases him greatly and which sends Murtagh directly to the ale tent to drown his sorrows.
Though Malcolm hopes to spend some alone time with his betrothed, Ellen talks him into helping build the needfire, a wooden structure that will be burned in celebration after dark. He hesitates, she turns her flirt dial up to 12, and he relents. Then she makes a pact with Jocasta in which they can both do whatever they want, and neither will narc on the other, then she slips off to rendezvous with Brian.
‘RUIN ME’ | When they find each other near the church, both of their hearts are beating like hummingbirds in their chests. However, “my soul’s never been more at peace,” he tells her, right before he tips her chin up and kisses her for the first time. The pair of them are so taken with each other that they don’t realize Murtagh is watching nearby, fuming over Brian’s betrayal. He nearly cries, then gets real mad and stomps off.
But that’s a problem for Post-Beltane Ellen and Brian, because During-Beltane Ellen and Brian have some truly fan-yourself canoodling to do. Inside the church, the longing between the two is palpable; well done, Harriet Slater and Jamie Roy. This is romantic and swoony and good. “The fire you’ve lit within me is bright enough to put the moon and the stars to shame,” he says, prompting her to say that she doesn’t fear the dark, either: “It’s where I find you each night. I pray this is no dream.”
Things heat up until he forces himself to pull back a beat. “If we keep going,” he warns her, “I willna be able to stop.” But she doesn’t want him to restrain himself, even though he warns her that if they’re found out, “you’d be ruined, Ellen.” She gazes at him and barely hesitates as she replies, “Ruin me.” GAH HOW I LOVE THIS.
SPRING HAS SPRUNG | They start ripping off each other’s clothes (man, there were so many layers in Ye Olden Days) but Brian stops them once more. I mean, barely — these two are on a MISSION. But there’s one important thing he wants to do before they make the Loch Ness Monster With Two Backs: He tears a length from his plaid and wraps it around their fists, engaging in the ancient tradition of handfasting, or getting kinda married with the intention of getting really married at some point in the future.
They both say their vows (“blood of my blood” etc.), there’s a moment of holy reverence for their love… and then it’s back to the disrobing! In the great Outlander tradition of centering the female gaze, Ellen gets Brian’s shirt off first. There’s a lot of mutual palming of chests. At one point, Brian exhales, “My GOD.” They both get Ellen down to her shift, hands are up skirts, then they’re eventually both on the mossy ground.
How do I say this in a non-gross way? The moment of truth, as it were, is PERFECTION. They both pause. Her face reflects sharp discomfort for a fleeting moment, then awe. His shows concern, shaded by a near inability to hold on as she adjusts. There’s some artful draping of fabrics. They both still have their shoes on. THEY ARE SO CUTE AND I LOVE THEM SO MUCH.
Afterward, they spoon and talk about why Brian spent a year away from home (short answer: Simon) and what he did while he was gone (walked the Camino de Santiago, partly to find his purpose). He said he came home having had made peace with his station “but then I met you and find myself wanting again, to be worthy of you, to be the kind of man you’d choose.” She looks at him, completely besotted. “I do choose you,” she says.
THE RUSE CONTINUES | Back at the festival, Ellen’s maids work to de-moss her and get her into her May Queen outfit. Malcolm swings by to give her a brooch he made after they first met, back when they were children. It’s cute… until he looks at her like she’s a Barbie in the box and says, “I canna believe you’re mine.” Ew.
Once they’re both in their finery (her dress really is gorgeous), they march out to the blazing needfire. There’s dancing and torches. Brian watches Ellen. Murtagh watches Brian. And when Malcolm kisses Ellen, she only has eyes for her real soulmate in the crowd.
‘I WANT TO BE WANTED’ | Let’s back up to see what Murtagh’s been doing since witnessing his cousin and his crush sucking face among the trees. He continues drinking, gets beat up by Arch Bug (man, I hate that guy) and winds up sulking in his tent, where Jocasta finds him. By this point we’ve established that she has feelings for him — that look at the Gathering, a close dance they shared earlier at the festival — and she immediately tries to help him when she sees that he’s hurt. “It’s not the sort of pain you can sooth with a cloth,” he moans as she attempts to clean his cuts. “I want to be wanted, ye ken?” Oh, she kens. She puts her hand on his, he looks into her eyes, and then he kisses her. She’s INTO IT… until he calls her “Ellen” and she halts the proceedings, immediately leaving to cry outside while Murtagh looks like a dog who peed on the carpet: sheepish and hoping to skate by on his cuteness.
WHAT DOES MAISRI SEE? | Maisri holds her reading at Castle Leathers and — shocker — gives Simon a fortune that sounds like he’ll come out on top. She says his return to the position he once held is “imminent.” She sees two babies in his future: a girl with dark curls and blue eyes whose “time is still to come” and the boy Juilia’s carrying, who is “of great importance… uniting clans for centuries to come… When the face of our nation is in peril, he’ll have his part to play.” When she mentions that a throne is involved in the boy’s future, Simon nearly drools. “Then it is as the prophecy foretold!” he cries, sure that there’s a Scottish ruler about to rise from his bloodline. He paws at Julia’s belly, delighted. “You’re carrying a future king!”
Later, Davina interrupts Simon’s gloating and drinking by trying to cast aspersion on Julia. “Did you notice Maisri never called him yours?” she points out, She adds that she suspects Julia was already pregnant when she arrived at the castle. Simon thanks her… then threatens to have Balloch kill her if she breathes a word of her skepticism to anyone.
Source: tvline.com