“Stephen Bonnet is a bad, bad man,” Outlander author Diana Gabaldon tells Parade.com exclusively. “The entire Fraser/MacKenzie family wants him dead. So, once he’s finally been caught…who gets the privilege of killing him?”
Who wants to kill Stephen Bonnet on Outlander?
The list of people who want Bonnet dead is long, and the Fraser/MacKenzie clan are on it with good reason. He robbed Jamie and Claire–leaving them destitute–after they rescued him from hanging. Roger (Richard Rankin) had to watch as Bonnet threw women and children overboard to drown on their journey to the New World. And he raped Brianna. “Brianna’s case is arguably the strongest,” Gabaldon continues. “Still, her 18th-century father and 18th-century-in-training husband want to do it for her, feeling that killing someone in mostly-cold blood isn’t something a young woman of good family should have to do. Unless she really wants to, of course…in which case it’s totally her right to cut his throat, knife him in the guts, or otherwise dispose of him according to her fancy.” https://parade.com/1026647/paulettecohn/outlander-season-5-episode-9-diana-gabaldon-jamie-snake-bite-death/ Jamie is surprised when Roger insists on accompanying him to Wilmington to take part in the trap they have set for the pirate, and Young Ian (John Bell) also agrees to take part in the charade, dressing up as Alexander Malcolm, the merchant who is allegedly there to make a deal, to lure Bonnet in.
What did Bonnet do to Brianna in Season 5?
“Bree has her 20th-century values firmly in hand, and understands her male protectors well enough to know that while they’d totally kill for her, doing so would be hard on them—if not as hard as it would be on Stephen Bonnet,” Gabaldon continues. Unfortunately, the plan to capture and kill Bonnet goes awry when Bonnet spies Claire and Brianna in Wilmington, so he sends his men to meet with Alexander Malcolm, and he follows Claire and Bree to the beach, where he knocks out Claire and kidnaps Brianna. This is where it gets interesting, because in Bonnet’s mind, he truly believes that fate keeps bringing him and Brianna together–he doesn’t understand she won’t get over the fact that he raped her because he doesn’t believe it was rape – and he thinks they can have a future together with Jemmy at River Run, which Jemmy will inherit upon Jocasta’s (Maria Doyle Kennedy) demise, an occurrence which Bonnet will, of course, help expedite. Brianna plays along with Bonnet, hoping to give her family enough time to rescue her, and she almost has Bonnet fooled that she is in with his plan, when he asks for it to be sealed with a kiss. Brianna does her best, but her best doesn’t fool him and he is adamant that he can get Jemmy without her. https://parade.com/1022926/paulettecohn/outlander-season-5-episode-8-diana-gabaldon-ian-suicide-roger-bond/ Infuriated his plan has gone awry, Bonnet decides to sell Bree into slavery to a ship’s captain and they are walking down the beach for his payment, when Jamie, Roger, Claire and Ian arrive and capture Bonnet, with Roger actually being the one to battle it out. But then, it is Brianna who decides they should turn him in to the authorities, hoping that Governor Tryon (Tim Downie), even though he is now in New York, will make sure that Bonnet is punished for his deeds. After all, Tryon owes them big time for almost killing Roger by mistake. “Brianna understands (whether consciously or not) that one important reason for the existence of government is that it assumes an impersonal collective identity for the administration of justice,” Gabaldon says. “So, justice can be done, but without the damage, distress or sense of guilt that might result from a single person’s being obliged to mete it out. Government in the Colonies is beginning to fall apart, but there’s plenty of local courts left to condemn Stephen Bonnet out of hand–for piracy.”
How did Stephen Bonnet die on Outlander?
And here is where another interesting twist ensues. While he had her captured on the island, Bonnet confessed to Brianna his deepest fear: drowning. He told her, “The sea is hungry for souls.” And the death sentence for piracy in North Carolina calls for the pirate to be tied to a stake in the tidal river, to drown slowly as the tide comes in, thus providing an edifying spectacle for the public and—just possibly—a warning to other pirates. “Over the course of the last two seasons, Stephen Bonnet has told both Claire and then Brianna that he’s mortally afraid of drowning, and has always had a presentiment that he’d die that way. Now his fears have all come true," Gabaldon points out. https://parade.com/1012687/paulettecohn/outlander-season-5-episode-6-diana-gabaldon-sex-scene/ As the water rises, the crowd on the shore dissipates, and at the end, we just see Roger with Brianna, who is holding a rifle. “Brianna isn’t a vindictive woman, though, and she listened to her father when he told her that the only way she could find peace with what had been done to her was to find a way to forgive,” Gabaldon adds. “She meant to do that, going to the jail to tell him about the baby, but it didn’t work quite as she’d expected. Now she goes to the river with a rifle in her hands, knowing she’s the only person in the world for whom this death isn’t vengeance, but mercy.” As she kills Bonnet with a single shot to the head, Roger turns to her and asks, “Was that mercy or to make sure he is dead?” So, was it mercy? You decide. Outlander airs Sunday nights on Starz.com. You can sign up for $5.99 a month to watch every episode when they drop. Sam Heughan has been through a lot lately, and his Outlander family is right beside him. Find out what’s in store in Season 6 of Outlander.
