Season 3, Episode 1: ‘The Battle Joined’

As romantic as “Outlander” can be, it’s always been most fascinated by who people become when they’re suffering. It’s one of the show’s most interesting threads, although it goes wrong as often as it goes right.

And since its earliest episodes, the series has operated under the long shadow of history. Most of Season 2 was spent dismantling Claire’s mission to change the past. There was a glimmer of hope in the final minutes, as the 1968 Claire finally learned that Jamie had survived the Battle of Culloden and swore to find him again. But Jamie and Claire’s best-laid plans failed all season. In the end, all they had was their courage as the inevitable barreled down on them. And the Season 3 premiere, “The Battle Joined,” takes its time setting up the mutual devastation that comes after.

For Jamie (played by Sam Heughan), it’s the horror of the chaotic, bloody defeat at Culloden that wipes out his clan — and even that isn’t the end of his troubles. For Claire (Caitriona Balfe), pregnant with Jamie’s baby and trapped in another era that’s trying to smother her, it’s the struggle to shake the past and start again with Frank (Tobias Menzies).

The show has long threatened that the disaster at Culloden was looming, and it’s every bit as horrible as Claire feared, although the calm and orderly execution of the survivors by the British is somehow worse. Director Brendan Maher lingers on the genteel brutality of asking for volunteers and politely filing boy soldiers out to their deaths. That faux civility almost succeeds despite our revulsion — we’re relieved they’re shot like soldiers and not hanged as traitors. But after a gruff, tearful farewell from Rupert (Grant O’Rourke), it’s no wonder Jamie starts demanding that somebody just shoot him. (That debt of honor from young William Grey last season comes in handy, but Jamie definitely doesn’t appreciate it yet.)