Is Jamie's ghost connected
to Claire's future powers?
ByCaitlin GallagherOctober 13, 2020
In Outlander, Claire once said, "When confronted with the impossible, the rational mind gropes to find the logic." Well, throughout the five seasons, Outlander fans have indeed been faced with the impossible – the entire series is centered on time travel! But when it comes to rationally explaining the remaining unknowns in Jamie and Claire's world, perhaps we should look beyond logic and more towards magic.
Besides all the ~time travel~, there are two magical/paranormal elements of Outlander that still leave fans with a lot of questions: Jamie's ghost and Claire's potential powers. With these two plots causing so much speculation, it got me thinking about a theory in which Claire's powers and Jamie's ghost on Outlander could be connected. (Remember, we don't think logically here.)
Let us take a step back and look at the two situations before us. In the first episode of Outlander, Jamie's ghost appears outside Claire's window in Inverness in the 1940s. Separately, in season 4, a Native American healer delivers the prophecy that Claire will get her full power as a healer when her hair is completely white. What do these two things have to do with each other?
Some fans believe that the answer to Jamie's ghost will be simple in that Jamie's ghost spirit is simply visiting his wife. It's a normal thing that ghosts do, right?
However, Diana Gabaldon, has created some vagueness when it comes to explaining Jamie's appearance in the 1940s, after saying that she would reveal how Jamie's ghost fits into the story of the last Outlander book.
With this kind of anticipation, are we really to believe that Jamie is just a ghost doing his ghostly duty to lovingly haunt his wife? With Outlander so steeped in fantasy, there are reasons to theorize that there might be something more mystical. So here are some thoughts on how Claire might be what invokes Jamie's mind.
Claire has already saved Jamie (a lot)
Claire is often there to save Jamie from death, something Sam Heughan recently discussed with co-stars David Berry and Tim Downie.
"It often happens that Jamie reaches imminent death and then [Claire] saves him, and she's the first thing he sees," Heughan said.
In addition to all the times she patched it up, we saw Jamie return from the brink of death after Black Jack Randall's abuse at Wentworth, Laoghaire's gunshot wound, and poisonous snake bite.
As for the last moment, which was featured in Outlander season 5, she appeared to resurrect Jamie with the help of a manual caress. (If it's not magic, what is it?)
Claire's healing powers almost sometimes lean towards the supernatural. And after surviving the snakebite, Jamie said to Claire, "I knew you were the only thing that could bring me back."
What if on his deathbed, Claire was able to "bring him back" in another way?
His powers continue to grow
Although Claire can travel back in time, this surgeon has a scientific mind and is quick to dismiss superstitions, but even she seemed intrigued in Season 4 when she heard Adawehi's dream.
In it, Claire appeared as a white raven that swallowed the moon and laid an egg that contained a magical, healing stone inside. What to remember from this dream? "You have powers now, but you will have more. When your hair is snow-white, you will have wisdom beyond time. »
In the book "The Drums of Autumn", it is Nayawenne who has this dream and the prophecy is slightly different: "When your hair is white like his, this is where you will find your full power". In both, it is prophesied that Claire has more medicinal power when her hair is completely white.
And it is very possible that Adawehi/Nayawenne was not talking strictly about scientific medicine. After all, the stone that came from Claire's raven had "great magic" and since Adawehi/Nayawenne were both shamans, they could have foreseen that Clare possessed a mystical means of healing.
Claire can't stop death
Another part of Adawehi's prophecy was this message to Clare:
"You must not be troubled. Death is sent by the gods. It won't be your fault."
At the time, it seemed that Adawehi was warning about what happened in the next episode when measles killed Herr Mueller's family and that he was seeking revenge by murdering Adawehi, but what if it foreshadowed another death in the future... say, around the time Claire came into full power when she was an old woman?
Saving Jamie once again
There will come a day when Jamies dies... This is an irrefutable fact since he appears as a ghost (and uh, gloomy alert: everyone ends up dying).
If Jamie dies before Claire (a popular theory), she will no doubt be by her husband's side when he passes by doing everything she can to cure him one last time.
No one – not even Claire with her powerful healing abilities – will be able to save Jamie from the inevitability of death, but could his white-haired magic somehow allow Jamie's spirit to live?
Ultimately, Claire's "full power" could be that her love for him on his deathbed allows Jamie's ghost to manifest and find her in the 20th century.
Perhaps the culmination of all the medicinal healings she has brought to Jamie over the years is what makes her spirit exist in another realm... until Claire's spirit is ready to meet hers in the afterlife.
While there is no guarantee that Claire will have magical powers, an ending where Claire's final attempt to save Jamie's life leads her soul to find her in the afterlife would certainly fit Gabaldon's criteria for a "happy ending" that leaves "readers in floods of tears."
Not to mention, it would give fans a resolution on Claire's powers and Jamie's ghost.
If you don't know that we'll all feel like we've lost something when Gabaldon finishes Claire and Jamie's love story, this theory is a win-win supernatural situation.