Outlander’s seventh season has concluded, with fans eagerly returning to the beginning of the series for another viewing.
During their latest re-watch of the popular Starz series, viewers may have picked up on a subtle detail inserted by the writers that hints at a future plotline, reports the Daily Record.
After Claire Fraser, portrayed by CaitrÃona Balfe, makes her way back to the 20th century, she spends some time in Reverend Wakefield’s home, played by James Fleet.
While recuperating and explaining to her first husband Frank Randall, played by Tobias Menzies, about her two-year absence, she also observes the reverend’s adopted son Roger Wakefield (Rory Burns) playing around the house.
A significant detail included by the show’s creators was young Roger running around the house holding an aeroplane toy.
Although it might have been just a toy for the child to play with, it seemed to hint at the fate of his father Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Walter MacKenzie, played by Nicholas Ralph.
Roger was adopted after his parents were killed during World War II by the kind-hearted Inverness clergyman.
However, he might have known that his father was a fighter pilot, so playing with an aeroplane could have provided him with a connection to his now deceased parent.
For those unfamiliar with the Outlander books, the toy aeroplane appeared to be a clear reference to this storyline, which would be explored later on.
Both Outlander’s seventh season and Diana Gabaldon’s short story A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows shed light on Jerry’s tragic fate.
Jerry served as a Spitfire pilot between 1939 and 1941 with the Green Squadron, ending up with an injury that necessitated some downtime at home.
He was later enlisted by Frank for a top-secret mission to Poland to photograph the Nazi concentration camps.
Before embarking on the mission, Jerry was sent to Northumberland to hone his flying skills, but during training, his plane crashed on Halloween.
The crash happened near a group of standing stones, and after leaning on one of these massive rocks for support following his accident, Jerry found himself transported back in time.
Once in the past, Jerry had several run-ins with the locals in the 18th century, and his dog tags – his only means of identification – were stolen.
Fortunately, he was eventually guided back to the stones and his own time by his son Roger MacKenzie (Richard Rankin) and Buck MacKenzie (Diarmaid Murtagh), who had also ended up in 1739.
Upon returning to the 20th century, Jerry reached his wife just as an air raid struck London. He managed to save his infant son but was killed in the process.
Because his dog tags were lost in the past, Jerry’s body couldn’t be identified, leading to the belief that he had gone missing.
This implies that Frank may have indirectly contributed to Jerry’s death in some ways.