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Spoilers for Wilmington, episode eight of the fourth season ofOutlander,lie ahead.
Outlanders eighth episode this season, Wilmington, puts two scenes in conversation with each other.
It is romantic, andlike manyOutlandersex scenes, its also explicit.
The second scene shows a rape.
A woman pours beer for the men.
Someone knocks over a pair of boots in a hallway and then props them back up.
Men play a card game, and they occasionally turn around, listening to Brianna screaming in the background.
One man gives a half-shrug, and continues staring at the table.
Bonnet gives her the ring, and then Brianna walks away, injured and stunned.
When Bree and Roger have sex, itssexy.
It is physically specific, and its focalized through Brees experience.
Tell me if it stops, he tells her.
There are no obscured bodies rubbing against one another in baffling, physically inexplicable ways.
But the scene also goes to extensive lengths to illustrate its participants joy and lust, particularlyBriannas.
They follow each other so closely that the two events seem to go hand in hand.
The rape scene in Wilmington is different.
There is no possibility of a visual echo between the scenes, no ghost of a similar pattern.
One is about pleasure; the other is only about power.
On some level, it works.
Four seasons intoOutlander, though, the question becomes whether that distinction is enough.
The core skeleton of the story has stayed remarkably faithful.
The opposing argument makes sense too.
Still, I wouldnt be mad if in the futureOutlanderhad many fewer opportunities to draw that distinction.
