This Is the Sexiest Scene in ‘Outlander’ So Far

Outlander has spent the last nine years quietly revolutionizing the concept of the sex scene. When the series premiered in 2014, it wasn’t radical for media to use sex and sexuality as another tool in its vast storytelling toolbox. What once was a pearl-clutching shock in the face of old-fashioned conventionality (gasp, naked people going at it!) was now old hat for cable television and streaming platforms. Simultaneously, the rising proliferation of unnecessarily graphic sexual violence had become impossibly exhausting (I’m looking at you, Westeros-sized elephant in the room).

Entering this landscape was Outlander Season 1, Episode 7, a breath of fresh — and properly steamy — air that cast its love scene in a refreshingly intimate yet brazen light. Done properly, sex scenes highlight important characterization and prioritize emotion as much as they titillate. For most of the population, sex is an inherent part of the human experience and should be explored in fiction with delicate (and sometimes searingly candid) care. Outlander‘s “The Wedding,” directed by Anna Foerster, set an Olympic Gold Medal template for the series to follow. And because Outlander is an unabashed romance first and foremost, there’s been no shortage of raunchy scenarios of varying intensity, purpose, and consequence (including simple, carefree fun!).

However, one scene among that multiplicity reigns supreme. Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan‘s out-of-this-world chemistry has always been Outlander‘s skeleton key to success. Thanks largely to their audacious honesty and a perfect concoction of thematic purpose and character-building, nothing in Outlander has yet to surpass the payoff of this long-awaited moment.

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Claire and Jamie’s Reunion in ‘Outlander’ Season 3 Is Heartfelt and Subversive

Outlander Season 2 ended in the kind of tragedy only a top-notch time-traveling sci-fi romance can deliver. Star-crossed lovers Claire (Balfe) and Jamie Fraser (Heughan) parted, seemingly forever: a pregnant Claire returned to her original time while Jamie fought in the Battle of Culloden, a historical conflict where British soldiers slaughtered Jacobite loyalists in the thousands. For the next two decades, Claire assumed the love of her life had perished while Jamie operated under the understandable presumption he would never again see his wife. Both endured loveless marriages and failed to move on, carrying their loneliness like a thousand hatch-marked scars. After learning Jamie survived Culloden, Claire made the perilously fraught decision to return to the past and reunite with her beloved.

Season 3, Episode 6, entitled “A. Malcolm,” has the unenviable and complicated task of chronicling the Frasers’ reunion. To twist a phrase, it wastes no time doing so in meticulous, utterly unhurried detail. The episode unfolds with a teasing quality that doesn’t sacrifice the emotional stakes: director Norma Bailey and writer Matthew B. Roberts know that audiences are hanging off the couples’ every tremulous breath, and they milk the proceedings for that’s worth. For one, Jamie’s grand reaction to Claire’s shocking reappearance is to flat-out swoon. There’s no racing into each other’s arms backed by swelling music, no instant amorous kissing in said muscular arms. Instead, Jamie’s dead-away faint knocks over papers and ink pots. How is that not the most endearing, subversive reaction a guy could have?

Once Jamie wakes, the pair can barely touch one another. They’re hesitant, their palms hovering. That long-awaited first kiss after twenty years apart is achingly tender, and both cry. Forget fairy tales — look up the definition of “true love’s kiss,” and the accompanying picture will be the Frasers locked in a poignant embrace. At this moment of reunion, something as simple as brushing their fingers together is transcendent. The atmosphere of being in one another’s presence again is a spiritual experience. Outlander understands that this couple’s unquenchable passion stems from love first, lust second (although lust is hot on its heels; good for them). Balfe and Heughan’s sincere chemistry — sometimes quiet, sometimes urgently broiling — sells every narrative circumstance they’re put through no matter how outlandish. To that end, Claire and Jamie are, to evoke a well-worn trope, soulmates. Sex just for sex’s sake can be appealing to watch for obvious reasons, but the emotion tethering two people across centuries is a one-in-a-million passion.

“A. Malcolm” Lets the Intimacy Build Through Character Beats

Deliciously, the episode makes both the Frasers and the audience wait for that inevitable consummation. Frankly, the entire episode — one of the series’ best — constitutes emotional foreplay. The surface-level satisfaction of watching them fall into bed is replaced with two adults navigating their abnormally unique situation. Scenes breathe and intimacy builds as Jamie cries over pictures of Brianna (Sophie Skelton), the living proof of their love. (Get you a man like James Fraser.) He admits to siring a bastard son with a woman he didn’t love while Claire candidly discusses her frigid relationship with Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies) before his death. Both characters are mature enough to recognize that spending half of their lives apart makes them nearer to strangers than lovers.

Their shared histories are a tangible, weighted string between them, but honesty prevails as they strip away the romantic gauze and navigate a marriage’s emotional complexities — even wondering if the work involved is worth the end result. There’s a true sense these characters are backed with decades of lived-in experience, and it’s refreshing to watch adults re-cultivate an emotional understanding. Plus, the scenario brings about lines like this: via Jamie, “I have burned for you for so long, do you not know that?” Cut to Claire’s response: “Whoever you are, James Fraser, I do want you.” Woof. Please assemble twenty fans in a circle around my prostrate body.

‘Outlander’s Sex Scenes Are a Fantasy Done Right

The slow burn intensity kicks into overdrive once the pair decides The Thing Is Happening. Balfe and Heughan’s expressions and body language convey the desirous undercurrent underneath their conversation, that acknowledged knowledge that “we’re boning soon.” “A. Malcolm” is already an oversized episode, but never once does the editing rush. In fact, the patience displayed is astounding. The lead-up is thematically reminiscent of the pacing, staging, and cinematography of their Season 1 wedding night. Every removed layer of clothing happens almost in slow-motion, and every detail of brushing fabric and bared skin is savored with relish. The camera lovingly focuses on their respective jittery excitement. It’s somehow both poignant and heady, the Frasers’ feelings vacillating between eagerness and fear in nauseating waves. They even acknowledge their nervousness, which demonstrates how Claire and Jaime remain on empathetic, egalitarian ground despite twenty years of separation.

Balfe and Heughan were still in their thirties for Season 3. As such, there’s some unavoidable giggling when the characters joke about looking old. Despite the age disconnect and its leads’ bodies still looking fit as fiddles, Outlander showing middle-aged sexual desire is as revolutionary as that iconic wedding night. The usually proactive Claire even timidly balks about her naked body, a fear Jamie dismisses in no short order. (Again, I say get you a man like Jamie. Especially when he needs reading glasses, which is world-shatteringly hot.)

With two decades of want and history stretching between them, the couple finally gives way to that familiar, overwhelming passion — but not before Jamie bonks his head against Claire’s nose. Their resulting laughter is beautifully normal and quickly forgotten. As with prior love scenes, Claire is the camera’s focal point and the scene’s emotional centerpiece. This is a woman who never loses her sexual agency or dignity when she’s with her husband, and who also hasn’t been touched with desire in two decades. The female gaze is a layered concept worthy of its own piece, but the term serves as an easy descriptive shorthand for the sensitivity women directors have displayed in Outlander‘s sex scenes. Zeroing in on feelings, the necessary backbone of all storytelling, over blandly humping bodies makes all the difference. The result for Claire and Jamie is character ecstasy and a narrative culmination treated with as much solemnity as any fight scene or outlandish plot twist.

Outlander‘s impact and retained presence in the media landscape remain more critical than ever during debates over the role sex plays in fiction. Its love scenes always execute an intentional story. Attraction and consummation are as complicated as any human emotion and deserve healthy exploration onscreen, and Outlander is the reigning champion of that accomplishment. All those complex layers in “A. Malcolm” make for something memorable and truly damn sexy.

Outlander Season 7 is currently airing on Starz as well as the Starz app and streaming/on-demand platforms, as well as Lionsgate+ internationally.