‘Outlander’: That Bathtub Scene Was the Most Decadently Romantic Thing Ever Aired on TV

The bathtub scene in Outlander Season 4, Episode 6, “Blood of my Blood” is hands down the most decadently romantic thing ever made for television. It is almost obnoxious in its celebration of true love. There is not a smidge of cynicism to be found in the whole five minute scene. It’s just Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) declaring their profound love for each other in the most tender way. I watched it half-swooning, half-cringing in horror at the lovelorn fool I had become. In short, it was the most perfect scene in Outlander‘s four season run so far.

Outlander has always been known for bringing the romance, but there was something transcendently different about that bathtub scene. It starts off simply enough. After another emotionally exhausting day, Claire and Jamie are chilling out in their cabin. Claire is in the bath, Jamie is helping bathe her, and he cracks a joke about her cooking. Then…it shifts. As Jamie keeps pouring more and more hot water down Claire’s back, she starts to moan, and he grunts in reply. This carnal exchange goes back and forth until Jamie finally, extremely eloquently says, “So often I’ve burned for ye, but this water on your skin, caressing you, makes me jealous of the rain itself.” Then they kiss and Claire says, “Your kisses raining down on me, is it a drizzle or a torrent.” To which he replies, “I’ll bathe you in them.”





After that, Jamie amps up the romance factor even more by revealing that he has fashioned a new wedding ring to replace the one Stephen Bonnet stole. It’s a glorious silver band, made out of one of Jamie’s mother’s silver candlesticks, engraved with a message in French that translates to “Give me a thousand kisses.” This, naturally, leads to Jamie carrying Claire out of the bath and gracefully putting her in bed where he proceeds to kiss her all over her body.

This is definitely not how I communicate with my beaus. I get embarrassingly coarse sexts, not poetic musings on how someone wants to bathe me in kisses. I get happy hour drinks as gifts, not silver tokens of eternal love. But then, this is what makes Outlander so enchanting. Jamie and Claire are able to live out romance the way we wish it could be, full of bold declarations and flowery lines, candlelit bathtubs and magical bonds.

The bathtub scene is so overwhelmingly romantic that it’s even Caitriona Balfe’s favorite moment in the show’s run. (I mean, I still kind of like the wedding night, but that’s just me.) But it’s easy to understand why the actress would love it so since it distills in perfect measure what makes Outlander so great. Outlander is a show that carries you away from the mundane pain of the day-to-day and introduces us to people capable of expressing their heart’s desire without fear of rejection. Outlander is a show about what the power of love could be if we surrendered to it.





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