This post contains frank discussion of Season 4, Episode 5 of Outlander, titled “Savages.” Proceed with care.

If Outlander author Diana Gabaldon’s time-traveling romances depend on anything, it’s a strong current of serendipity—or, if you prefer, fate. How else would characters lose and find each other again and again, across centuries and continents, in a time when there was no social media, text messaging, or e-mail to help reconnect?

Viewers got a heavy dose of that special brand of destiny this week, when two characters were reunited after years of painful separation. We’ll offer up one last chance to leave before the spoilers come flying fast and furious, courtesy of the episode’s surprise guest star, in the article below:

Ever since it was announced that he would be coming back, Outlander fans have been eagerly awaiting the return of Jamie’s long-lost godfather, Murtagh Fitzgibbons Fraser (Duncan Lacroix), who was last seen in early Season 3 looking worse for wear and on his way to the colonies. In the books, Murtagh died in the Battle of Culloden—but the show has prolonged the character’s life due to his popularity with fans (and with the writers themselves). “Not to be bigheaded about it,” Lacroix told Vanity Fair with a laugh and some false bravado via phone earlier this week, ”but I’m great!”

The fan favorite dove into the visual references of his reunion with Jamie, Murtagh’s new look, and even gave some slight hints about his character’s future on the show.

According to Lacroix, there was an earlier plan to bring Murtagh back to Jamie’s side long before this episode: “He was meant to come back in Season 3 in Jamaica, and they would find him up in the hills somewhere with a ragtag band of escaped slaves. That didn’t quite work out. I think this is better.” That chance meeting would, perhaps, have been just a tad too serendipitous. Instead of stumbling upon Murtagh in the hills, Young Ian and his uncle Jamie find the Scotsman working as a blacksmith in the colonies, in a pair of scenes that intentionally recall the emotional highlight of both the novel Voyager and Season 3 of the show: the famous print-shop reunion of a long-separated Claire and Jamie.