Fergus dies in fire after saving kids, hot sex scene

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for The Evidence of Something Unseen, Season 8, Episode 7Outlander,” now streaming on Starz.

Cesar Domboy wants Outlander fans to know one thing after this week’s episode: “I take no responsibility for any of this.”

He laughed as soon as he said it, not because it wasn’t true, but because he knew that after nearly a decade of being part of a global phenomenon, fans would have some strong feelings about the episode. In the upcoming moments, readers of the Diana Gabaldon series are bracing for one of the most tragic turns in her decades-long story. But what they got was one of the biggest twists in the show’s 12-year history.

Fergus (Domboy), the adopted son of Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe), made a heroic sacrifice and met a tragic end while trying to save his son from a fire. However, in Gabaldon’s book, it was his son Henry Christian (Benjamin Moss) who died in the fire.

“The way it’s written in the book doesn’t lend itself to packaging the show the way it is now,” Domboy said. type. “When they asked me to come back for Season 8, which was obviously for sure, they reminded me of what happened in the book but said, ‘Maybe we can turn this into a really heroic send-off for Fergus.’ Saving his kids definitely adds another layer of heroism to his character, and I’m happy about that. I’ve never done anything like this before in my career as an actor. So I’ve never done anything like this before.”

Fergus now lives in Savannah, where he and his wife Marsali (Lauren Lyle) are raising their four children while he runs a successful printing press at home, following in the footsteps of Jamie’s printing career in Edinburgh. But Fergus also secretly produced inflammatory material to advance the Patriot cause in the American Revolution, making his family the target of escalating threats to his home and business. When someone makes good on these threats, Fergus and Marsali wake up to find their house on fire.

Massari and their daughters escape safely, but Fergus races to find his young sons Germain (Robin Scott) and Henri Christian, who are trapped on the roof. In Gabaldon’s book, Henri Christian, who was born with dwarfism, faced constant persecution in an intolerant era, fell to his death from a roof while trying to escape a fire. The show initially looked like it would stick to the book, with Fergus lowering his sons from a pulley on the roof, resulting in Henry Christian losing control of his brother. But at the last second, he cleverly pretends to be caught by Roger (Richard Rankin). Fergus breathed a sigh of relief that they were out of danger. He looked down at Marsali, but fell to his death from the burning roof. This is a huge change to the storyline of the book, especially considering that Gabaldon’s series wasn’t finished yet while Fergus was still alive. It’s also the biggest death since Jamie’s Uncle Murtagh (Duncan Lacroix) in Season 5 – which itself was a big departure from the original.

But on the day of the shoot, Domboy and Lyle needed some convincing Why It has to happen.

“This is a challenge for Lauren and me,” Domboy said. “When you read their final look in the script, it’s so beautiful. But when you do it, we’re like, ‘Why the hell didn’t he just jump up instead of taking the time to give each other this look?'”

“They really had to explain to us why there was no way out for him, and she knew that,” Lyle added. “They said to me on set that she knew this was what was going to happen, but nothing can prepare you for what that actually means. But it’s an iconic ending, and it feels really iconic.”

The nighttime shoot was one of the biggest scenes in the show’s final season. When a fire broke out at Fergus Fraser & Sons, a group of background actors swarmed the scene, and a colonial-era hand-pump fire engine rolled in to help put out the blaze. “It’s crazy,” Lyle said. “It felt really big, like a movie. There were people everywhere.”

As Fergus falls from the roof while Marsali looks on, Lyle has only a brief moment to capture the terror she experiences.

“The night we shot his death, we had seven minutes left to shoot, and I said, ‘Don’t cut, just roll,'” she said. “So they rolled, and I just let them tell me the beat when he fell and my reaction, and I really went for it and unleashed it in the most guttural way you could ever experience. Even though fans may be upset, hopefully this will hit hard in a way that feels very real and impactful, like you’re experiencing it with us.”

Fergus’s death affects everyone around Fraser, and everyone learns of his death by the end of the episode, which ends with a montage of Fergus’ greatest hits. Jamie was closest to his adopted son and after raising the lad who was born in a brothel, he publicly gave him his surname. Jamie breaks down while making a coffin for Fergus, even though there is nothing to bury.

Domboy said he might have seen this play out had this not been the final season of Outlander. “This is Outlander,” he said. “If they did another season, they could easily give you a scene where we see Fergus fleeing the fire and Jamie putting the ashes in the coffin, but it’s really about protecting his family because people want him to die for the revolution. I’m just fan fiction right now.”

“Or Fergus the Ghost,” Lyle speculated. “Masari went crazy and started seeing his ghost.”

“Or the evil twin, with a stronger French accent!” Domboy suggested, exaggerating his French dialect.

While he admitted that he did half-jokingly plead with the creative team to let Fergus live, Domboy was happy to send his character off as a hero, which is an incredible arc for a character who’s made it this far.

“Not many times in your career do you get the chance to play a character for that long,” he said. “Fergus on Outlander is one of the characters with the most arcs. I grew up with him, and I was able to often match whatever I was going through or feeling as an actor on set with what Fergus was going through. I’m so proud. I’m a Frasier, man!”

Meanwhile, Marsali will have to adjust to a new normal after returning to Fraser’s Ridge with the kids in tow as she ponders her next steps and whether she will carry on the legacy she learned earlier in the season about Fergus, the surprising son of a French dignitary. “As a woman of that era, she had to be selfish to survive,” Lyle said. “Take the money, girl. That’s the modern way of thinking.”

“Fergus wants her to,” Domboy assured.

Whether she’ll come to terms with it all will take the final three episodes of the series to resolve. Currently, viewers are reeling from the loss of a beloved character, which has given some insight into the upcoming series finale on May 15. But Domboy and Lyle don’t want to say goodbye to Fergus and Marsari without expressing their love in the right way. In the script, their final love scene – a rarity for the couple despite the show’s reputation – was meant to be quick. “Passionate and expressive,” Domboy said. But the actors advocated for a softer touch.

“We asked them to step away for a minute to give us a little time to choreograph with the intimacy coordinator,” Lyle said. “We convinced them that the story should start a minute earlier than the script so that everything would be fun and interesting, because I thought it would be good to show a version of a couple who have four children but still love each other. You are reminded of who they are because a few minutes later you see them die as an entity. For a moment you see who they were, ten years ago when they first started, always fun and romantic, not just in this thing and sexy

In that spirit, if Fergus had the chance to say goodbye to his other half, Domboy knows exactly what words he would choose.

“I love you, my love,” he said.