‘Outlander’ Season 8 Episode 8 Exclusive Clip: Roger Counsels Fanny During Her Crisis of Faith

In the final season of Outlander, Roger MacKenzie (Richard Rankin) has finally found clarity when it comes to his role in the church as he sets out to become an ordained minister. But the same can’t be said for another member of Jamie and Claire’s family.
In this exclusive clip from “In the Forest” (Season 8 Episode 8), Fanny (Florrie May Wilkinson) speaks to Roger about her sister Jane’s mortal sins. In last week’s episode, Outlander confirmed definitively that Fanny is Jamie and Claire’s granddaughter via their daughter Faith, who survived in Paris all those years ago. But rather ironically, Fanny is struggling with her own faith now as she fears that her sister Jane is in hell after murdering Captain Harkness and dying by suicide while she was in prison waiting to be hanged. Thankfully, Uncle Roger is there to help her work through it.
As Jane had been protecting her young sister from being sexually assaulted, one doesn’t have to be a reverend to argue that she was in a moral gray area when killing the British captain. (One might even argue she was in the moral right!) But as Fanny points out, some sins are rather black and white in the Bible.
Yet, Roger tells her that different Christian denominations hold different beliefs. For instance, he’s Presbyterian — a religion where suicide is not necessarily a sin. But like her grandda Jamie, Fanny is a Catholic, a denomination that does believe suicide is a sin. Roger counters that the church has been known to change its position on certain things… and with his 20th-century knowledge, he knows that better than any other minister living in the American colonies. These stances change, “Because a church is made up of people. Some of these rules were put in place by man, not by God.” Amen to that. Because what man could say what God thinks of Jane’s actions?
It’s not clear if Roger knows that he’s Fanny’s uncle. But this clip proves how much a part of the family Jamie and Claire’s grandchild has become — and that Roger had found his true calling as a reverend. See if Fanny finds comfort in his words when Outlander Season 8, Episode 8 “In the Forest” drops on the Starz app tonight at midnight or airs on the Starz network tomorrow night at 8 PM.