Is Jamie Really Gone?

And will Claire marry Lord John Grey? Starz's twisty timetravel drama Outlander gets messier than ever before

- KATE HAHN

WE DINNA BELIEVE IT. Outlander's hot Scot Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), who has survived battles, torture, floggings, fire, bullets, a duel and a snake bite, has died in a shipwreck. The tragic news that the Highlander hero perished while sailing from Scotland to the New World to reunite with his wife, time-traveling surgeon Claire (Caitríona Balfe), reached her and his old friend Lord John Grey (David Berry) at the end of the second episode of Season 7's return.

But reports of Jamie's demise have been exaggerated before. In the second season, a pregnant Claire returned to the 20th century and grieved Jamie for 20 years, thinking he had been killed in the Battle of Culloden. After discovering he was alive, she returned to the past. That indicates that anything could happen, including more time travel, in the remaining episodes of this winding season, which draws from two novels in Diana Gabaldon's bestselling series: An Echo in the Bone and Written in My Own Heart's Blood.

"One of the hardest things for Claire is that she doesn't feel like she thought she would," Balfe says. "She always felt that, if Jamie died, it would be a physical and spiritual loss that she would feel instantly. Because she doesn't [sense his loss], she feels almost betrayed by her own body."