This post contains frank discussion of Outlander Season 3, Episode 3, “All Debts Paid.” If you’ve not yet watched the latest episode of Starz’s time-traveling Scottish romance, now is the time to leave.

Most actors working in television these days would kill to have one morally complex death on a well-watched, well-regarded series like Outlander. But Tobias Menzies got to have two. The actor stole the show in the Season 3 premiere, especially when Menzies improvised his villainous character, Black Jack Randall, reaching out in futile yearning as he collapsed into the arms of Jamie Fraser (Sam Hueghan) during the Battle of Culloden. And this week, it was Claire (Caitriona Balfe) who wrapped a dying (well, already dead) Menzies in her arms as Outlander fans said a final goodbye to poor Frank Randall.

The showrunners have spoken at length about expanding Claire’s story in Season 3 from the books so that she and Jamie can share equal screen time during their long separation. But in the end, they also wound up creating a compelling and emotionally rich story for Frank—at times, at the expense of sympathy for Claire. It was a risky move, but one that paid off beautifully in Frank and Claire’s final moments.

In the novels, the twenty-year-long marriage of Claire and Frank Randall is told largely in flashback. As show watchers did last season, readers learn that Frank died suddenly in the late 1960s via a passing comment from Claire. But in Season 3, Outlander wound back the clock to show us the long slow death of the Randall marriage. Claire, it’s clear, is never able to let go of Jamie. (This would hardly be a story about star-crossed soulmates if she could.) During a series of confrontations that spool out over decades, Frank observes, accurately, that their bedroom is “far too crowded” with the memory of Jamie. In his final confrontation with Claire, Frank theorizes that it was their daughter Brianna, with her bright red hair, who kept the memory of Jamie alive all these years. Without Brianna, could Claire have forgotten Jamie and found happiness with Frank over time? Claire dramatically responds: “That amount of time doesn’t exist.”

Her steadfast devotion to Jamie is romantic, sure, but it also makes her outrage towards Frank often feel unjust. She lashes out at him for an instance in which his mistress, Sandy, shows up at the house and embarrasses her. But it’s hard for Claire to have the moral high ground when, time-travel-induced excuses aside, she cheated on Frank and gave her heart away, forever, to another person. She then chose to continue to live with Frank. Denying her husband both love and his right to achieve that kind of happiness for himself makes Claire seem enormously unsympathetic. At least for a time.