Subtly Tragic Outlander Season 7 Storyline Pretty Much Everyone Missed
When did you first spot it?
Tom Christie (played by Mark Lewis Jones) is a complex character in both the Outlander TV series and the books by Diana Gabaldon on which the show is based.
Life has not been kind to Tom, with his wife being killed and him spending years in prison. And to be fair, he hasn't always been a kind man. But there were signs in Season 6 that he was beginning to mellow - and fall for Claire.
Yet it was not until the beginning of Season 7 that he finally revealed that he was in love with her. His confession to Claire that he killed Malva didn't really convince her that he was guilty. But it did allow him to open up and share his true feelings.
There has always been a sense that his marriage was not a happy one and that he was jealous of the unbreakable bond that Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) shared. And it seems that there was a symmetry between the two relationships.
Like Claire, Tom's wife was accused of being a witch. But he either couldn't or didn't want to be her hero, the way Jamie so often proved to be for Claire.
The confession scene was an emotional one. When Tom said that he had 'yearned always for love given and returned,' he acknowledged that his feelings for Claire could never be reciprocated. And accepting his fate, he chose to give his life to save hers.
He had spent his life, he said, trying to give his love to those who did not deserve it. But in Claire, an educated woman who captivated him simply by being who she was, he had discovered someone worthy of it - even if he knew it was in vain.
While his love for Claire can now be traced back to Season 6, it was only then that it became clear that he cared for her. For all his misdeeds, he was starting to show empathy for her. It was something we hadn't really seen before, and it was part of a character arc that was beautifully portrayed by Mark Lewis Jones.
And now that we know the true extent of his feelings - and what he did to protect the woman he loved (but who he knew would never love him back), I'm sure we all feel a tinge of sadness for him. Something that few of us could have predicted would ever happen.
Catch the next episode of Outlander on July 14th on Starz.