Category: Series

Our questions about the context of the #BonnieComeback in Outlander‘s season 6 seem to be answered with the following tweets by actress Shauna MacDonald who revealed she will play Scottish heroine Flora MacDonald on the show.

In A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Diana Gabaldon’s 6th novel in the Outlander series, main characters Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) are invited to a barbecue at River Run, the plantation of Jamie’s wealthy Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy). Guest of honour is none other than the “Heroine of the Highlands” Flora MacDonald.

“Flora MacDonald, the woman who had saved Charles Stuart from the English after Culloden, dressing him in her maid’s clothes and smuggling him to a rendezvous with the French on the Isle of Skye, was a living legend to the Scottish Highlanders, and her recent arrival in the colony was the subject of vast excitement, news of it coming even as far as the Ridge.”

(Source: Diana Gabaldon – A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Chapter 53 “Principles”)

Shauna MacDonald’s tweet seems to confirm that we will see Aunt Jocasta’s barbecue, which is the perfect opportunity to show Flora’s connection to Bonnie Prince Charlie (Andrew Gower) through flashback scenes.

In another tweet, Shauna MacDonald also thanked director Christiana Ebohon-Green, who directed episodes 6×04 “Hour of the Wolf” and 6×05 “Give me Liberty“. Taking this into consideration, we are pointing a speculative finger at one of these two episodes that will see our #BonnieComeback.

Season 6 of hit TV series Outlander will return after a long “droughtlander” period to our screens on 6 March 2022. The new episodes will be based in parts on Diana Gabaldon’s 6th novel A Breath of Snow and Ashes (other parts of the book had already been covered in the previous season).

The Outlander_Starz Instagram account has now released all Season 6 episode titles:

• 6×01 Echoes (6 March 2022)
• 6×02 Allegiance (13 March 2022)
• 6×03 Temperance (20 March 2022)
• 6×04 Hour of the Wolf (27 March 2022)
• 6×05 Give me Liberty (3 April 2022)
• 6×06 The World Turned Upside Down (10 April 2022)
• 6×07 Sticks and Stones (17 April 2022)
• 6×08 I am not Alone (1 May 2022)

It is yet unknown which of these episodes will see the #BonnieComeback but we can’t wait to see Andrew Gower reprise his role as Bonnie Prince Charlie in the upcoming season.

Judging by Andrew Gower‘s filmography on his agent’s website, it seems like he’ll reprise his role as Bonnie Prince Charlie in the upcoming 6th season of Outlander which is currently in post-production and rumoured for a release in early 2022.

Season 6 of the historical drama series is based on the 6th book of Diana Gabaldon‘s Highland saga A Breath of Snow and Ashes which is set just before the American Revolutionary War. Time-travelling WW2 combat nurse Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and her 18th century Highland warrior husband Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) now live in the American colonies and try to build a life for their extended family and a number of Scottish refugees, who used to fight alongside Jamie in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 under the “Young Pretender” Prince Charles Edwad Stuart (Andrew Gower).

In August 1774, Claire and Jamie are invited to a barbecue at River Run, the plantation of Jamie’s wealthy Aunt Jocasta (Maria Doyle Kennedy). Guest of honour for the occassion is none other than the “Heroine of the Highlands” Flora MacDonald, who famously helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape Government troups by dressing him up as her Irish maid Betty Burke.

When Claire meets Flora at the party she reminisces about what became of the Prince after the Battle of Culloden where his Highland army was devastatingly defeated by British forces led by Prince William, Duke of Cumberland (also known as “Butcher Cumberland”).

Odd, that it should have been the defeat of Charles Stuart, and his ignominious flight, that made a heroine of Flora MacDonald and united these Highland exciles in a way that they could never have achieved – let alone sustained – had he actually won.

It struck me suddenly that Charlie was likely still alive, quietly drinking himself to death in Rome. In any real way, though, he was long since dead to these people who had loved or hated him. The amber of time had sealed him forever in that one defining moment of his life – Bliadha Tearlach; “Charlie’s Year,” it meant, and even now, I heard people call it that.

(Source: Diana Gabaldon – A Breath of Snow and Ashes, Chapter 54 “Flora MacDonald’s Barbecue”)

It is possible that the TV adaption will use this encounter with Flora MacDonald for a brief flashback to show the Prince’s flight from Scotland in 1746 or maybe it will give us a glimpse at the aged Prince, “quietly drinking himself to death in Rome” as the novel says.

Either way, it’ll definitely be a scene worth seeing – and dare we hope for a final (and 18th) “mark me”?

ETA:

Andrew’s official Spotlight CV now also confirms the news.