‘Inside Outlander’ Aftershow: Charles Vandervaart on William’s New Dynamic With Jamie & Final Season Hopes (VIDEO)

Outlander: Claire & Jamie’s Love Story For The Ages

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[Warning: The below and video above contain MAJOR spoilers for Outlander, Season 7 Episode 16, “A Hundred Thousand Angels.”]

Outlander‘s penultimate season went out with quite a bang in its final chapter, “A Hundred Thousand Angels,” which saw the Frasers following a collision course toward a mind-blowing family revelation, in which Jamie’s (Sam Heughan) biological son, William (Charles Vandervaart) played an integral role.

We’re referring, of course, to the cliffhanger which hinted Jamie and Claire’s (Caitriona Balfe) first daughter, Faith, actually survived and was the mother of their new ward, Fanny Pocock (Florrie May Wilkinson), and her sister, Jane (Silvia Presente). As viewers will recall, in Season 2, Claire gave birth to a stillborn Faith after Jamie was caught dueling Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies).

In this episode, as Claire was recovering from her high-risk surgery at the hands of Denzell Hunter (Joey Phillips), she was visited by Season 2’s Master Raymond (Dominique Pinon), the apothecary owner who mysteriously healed her following Faith’s gruesome birth and vowed to see her again someday after a fateful encounter with King Louis (Lionel Lingelser).

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When he returned to her in the middle of the night amid her recovery, Claire’s exchange with Master Raymond was quite mysterious as he begged for forgiveness and vowed she’d one day understand. The next morning when she awakens, Jamie is at her bedside and swears no one had come into the church where she’d been resting.

But as Claire ponders Master Raymond’s words, she wonders aloud to Jamie if, when she dies she’ll see Faith again, and Jamie believes she will. So, how do Fanny and Jane factor in? William is eager to save Jane after she’s been imprisoned for the killing of Harkness (Adam Jackson-Smith). While he initially seeks Lord John Grey’s help, poor William’s efforts are met with too much red tape as he learns of the more gruesome nature of the killing.

This leads William to seek help from someone he never would have imagined: Jamie. “I do think that initially, William goes to Jamie out of desperation because he feels he failed Jane and it’s his responsibility to save her,” Vandervaart tells TV Insider for the Inside Outlander aftershow. “But… there’s a lot going on for William still when it comes to Jamie. I don’t think he has completely abandoned his identity as an English Lord, and Jamie kind of represents the antithesis of that.”

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But in terms of building a bridge between this father and son, that was certainly started in this finale episode, which saw them team up to jailbreak Jane, but sadly, both men were a touch too late. The young woman had downed a bottle of booze before breaking the glass and using it to slit her wrists.

It’s a hard reality for William to swallow, but with redcoats lurking, he and Jamie are forced to make an escape, pulling a single lock of hair from Jane’s body to give to little Fanny. “It was devastating for him,” Vandervaart says. “I think that he felt like this was his moment to save himself and to prove to himself that he was worthy of love and of all of these things, especially coming off the back of learning who his true dad is. And there’s a lot of turbulent feelings in William’s head.”

While William trusts Jamie and Claire to look after Jane’s younger sister Fanny, there’s still a tension between the young man and his father. As viewers see in the episode, William questions Jamie about his relationship with Geneva (Hannah James) and receives answers he’s not entirely thrilled with.

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“That conversation comes from William trying to figure out if he was truly loved as a child,” Vandervaart shares. “He wanted to know if his parents loved each other… And he kind of gets the answer that it wasn’t. And that’s devastating for William to hear, and I think it pushes him away from Jamie.”

But as William sends Fanny off with Jamie and Claire, there’s a small piece linking them together, and it’s hard to imagine him abandoning the young girl altogether. So, maybe one day William will set out for Fraser’s Ridge, but that’s for viewers to wait and find out when the eighth and final season rolls around.

When Jamie and Claire prepare to set off for Fraser’s Ridge after his defection from the army, she overhears a voice singing a familiar tune. It’s Fanny singing, “Oh I Do Like to Sing Beside the Seaside,” the song Claire had sung to her stillborn Faith. The tune is wildly out of date for the 18th century, leading Claire to ask the girl how she knows it. It turns out the girl’s mother taught her. But how could that have anything to do with Claire? When Fanny is presented with Jane’s belongings, a locket belonging to her mother has the name Faith etched into it.

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In other words, William’s introduction of Fanny to the Frasers may have just cracked open a centuries-spanning mystery about Jamie and Claire’s first child. How would he feel to know he was responsible for such a thing? While Vandervaart ponders the family ties between these characters, he says, “I hope that’s not true for William’s sake.” Because if Fanny is Claire and Jamie’s granddaughter, that would mean Jane was William’s half-niece. Still, Vandervaart says, “There is a side that is kind of beautiful, and this was always meant to be, and William’s suffering could have been for a reason to bring family together and to strengthen that family.”

Only time will tell how the mystery will unfold in the final season. For now, fans can look forward to Outlander‘s upcoming spinoff Blood of My Blood, which will debut in the summer, and in the meantime, check out Vandervaart’s full interview in the Inside Outlander Aftershow, above.

Outlander, Season 8 Premiere, TBA, Starz