Outlander: Blood of My Blood Recap: The Woman of the House

Outlander: Blood of My Blood
Rabbits Can’t Swim
Season 2 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★★★
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Ellen MacKenzie rules. While most of the Ellen lore we’ve learned from the Outlander mothership told us as much, it’s nice to see Blood of My Blood finally let her rip. And by “rip,” I guess I mean “defend her home by devastatingly and creatively killing seven dudes — including one she feeds to her dogs.” I mean, Castle Leoch is under attack; you think Colum and his pithy quips are going to save Clan MacKenzie? Ellen is forever cleaning up messes her brothers make, and this attempted coup is no different.

Oh, so you thought MacKinney — the guy who made a failed play for the lairdship before Colum and Dougal tag-teamed the job (another Ellen plan, by the way) — was just going to be cool with bending the knee and moving on? No, this guy is pitching a little bitch baby fit. He, his son, and seven of his men come strolling into Castle Leoch during family dinner time, murder the guards, and demand Colum hand over the keys and the cash. He is the rightful heir (in his head). 

Right off the bat, we, but especially Colum, should be grateful to Ellen for two reasons. First, prior to MacKinney’s dramatic entrance, Ellen, fed up with Colum repeatedly negging her for the Grant mess, leaves early. This means she’s wandering around the castle when the MacKinneys arrive, watches the initial interactions from a hiding space above the dining hall, and then, when she sees one of MacKinney’s guys moving all the other women (Jocasta, Janet, Leticia, Maura, and Mrs. Fitz), she shoots that guy dead with an arrow and ushers the ladies into a hidden chapel. She informs them that it’ll be up to them to save Castle Leoch, and those MacKinneys will never see them coming. 

Second, Colum better realize how fucking lucky he is that Ellen had him sign over Leoch to her. At the time, it was to protect the Clan MacKenzie lands from the English, but once Colum drops that news on MacKinney, the would-be usurper realizes he’ll be “laird of nothing” unless Ellen signs the deeds over or, more to his liking, marries him. Colum needs to be kept alive in order to not only track down Ellen but get her to sign the land over. He should be giving her whatever she wants for the rest of their lives — and that’s even before she goes assassin on everyone’s ass. 

Let’s talk about this, shall we? We get multiple flashbacks to a young Ellen with her father in which he’s teaching her a lesson that doesn’t just serve her well as an adult, but has completely formed who she is. As a little girl, Ellen quickly comes up against the rules and boundaries that society places on her because she’s a woman. Her father tells her to use those expectations and assumptions against them. “Let their blindness be their downfall,” he tells her.  As a kid, it means hiding in places where a girl isn’t supposed to go in order to win a game of hide-and-seek. Here, in this instance, it means luring the invaders close enough to her in order to kill them, whether by stabbing them after the slip on an oil slick she’s set out, releasing the hounds on them, or leading them to the belfry and setting off hundreds of bats to distract them enough so that she can slit their throats. When will the men learn? You don’t mess with Ellen MacKenzie. 

Now, just because Ellen is able to stop all seven of MacKinney’s men doesn’t mean there aren’t casualties. Let’s be honest, though: the minute Janet, Ellen’s younger sister, started talking to Ellen about admiring her bravery and not wanting to be seen as some fragile thing, that she wants to be useful in this fight, you knew this broad was a goner. Too sweet for this world, that Janet. And when the ladies work together to trap two men and stab them (teamwork makes the dream work), Janet can’t get out of the way fast enough, and one of the men gets her with his knife. They all know immediately that Janet won’t survive that wound. Ellen holds her sister as she dies in her arms, promising to name the child she’s carrying (news to us!!) after her if she has a girl. We know eventually Ellen makes good on that promise. 

But the horrors aren’t over for the MacKenzies. MacKinney and his son are still holding Colum and Ned hostage in the dining hall. Colum does attempt to scare MacKinney off with the threat of an unnamed man who would basically burn it all down in order to save Ellen. It’s real rich for this guy to use Brian like this when he attempted to have him murdered not that long ago. It doesn’t matter; It doesn’t scare MacKinney. Maura walks into the room and has a real Reese Witherspoon “do you know my name?” moment that fails miserably. But good on her; even after butting heads with Ellen for the entire episode, she doesn’t turn the other women in. Maura is complicated and prickly and maybe one of the best characters on this show so far. Remember when the gals suggested putting on The Taming of the Shrew to pass the time, and she immediately looked at Ellen and said: “How fitting?” Never change, babe.

When Maura’s let’s call it a “plan” doesn’t work, it is up to Ellen to end this attempted coup once and for all. She, flanked by the other women, arrives in the hall and, with a surprise assist from Colum (remember, it’s best never to let your assailants see you coming), Ellen shoots an arrow right through MacKinney’s heart. His son survives and makes a run for it, but Castle Leoch remains in MacKenzie hands. 

And yet, there’s still another wrinkle for Ellen to deal with. MacKinney, in his hubris, informed Colum that Lord Lovat had aligned himself with the English and was going to double-cross Dougal. Ellen realizes this is why he came to Leoch with so few men — the others are fighting alongside the MacKenzie clan until it’s time to turn on them. If this plan comes to pass, most of the MacKenzie men will be killed. Since we’ve seen Lovat make moves to enact this plan when he meets up with Dougal and Brian and their men and decides the Frasers and MacKenzies should split into two groups on their way to Inverness, we know that someone needs to warn them ASAP. Ellen, knowing that Brian would never go back on his word and would never choose his father over her, wants to race there to save her man. But she’s not the only one: Maura pleads with Ellen to make sure she saves Dougal too. God, she loves her husband so much. It would be so annoying if it wasn’t these two ding-dongs. 

And so Ellen, with an assist from Jocasta’s maid Grace, races out of the castle in the hopes of finding Brian and Dougal before the unthinkable happens. 

Clan Business

• Just when you thought Julia’s situation couldn’t get any worse, Seema enters the picture. Not only does Lovat force Julia to watch Seema give him a blow job to pick up some pointers, but Seema also starts yapping about how she knew the guy who tried to kidnap Julia intimately. Julia is devastated. She believes she’ll never see her husband again, and she has to hear about him sleeping with someone else? Julia deserves at least three days of happiness soon, okay? 

• What’s Seema’s deal? She seems unhinged. What’s this woman going to do when she learns that Julia actually is Henry’s wife? Will she rat her out?

• I love that moment when she stands up to MacKinney in the name of the MacKenzies. Mrs. Fitz has always been a real one.