Jerry MacKenzie’s tragic end was explored in the most recent season
Outlander season seven has wrapped up with fans racing straight back to the start of the series again.
Those on their latest re-watch of the hit Starz series may have noticed a small detail included by the writers alluding to a storyline later on.
After Claire Fraser (played by Caitríona Balfe) returned back to the 20th century, she spent some time at Reverend Wakefield’s (James Fleet) home.
During her convalescence and explaining to her first husband Frank Randall (Tobias Menzies) where she’d been for the past two years, she also saw the reverend’s adopted son Roger Wakefield (Rory Burns) playing around the house.
One key detail the programme-makers included was young Roger running around the house with an aeroplane in his hands.
While it may have simply been a toy the child played with, it seemed to also allude to the fate of his father Jeremiah ‘Jerry’ Walter MacKenzie (Nicholas Ralph).
Roger was adopted after his parents were killed during World War II by the kindly Inverness clergyman.
However, he may also have been aware his father was a fighter pilot and so playing with an aeroplane would have given him a link to his now deceased parent.
For those unfamiliar with the Outlander books, the toy aeroplane seemed to be a clear nod to this storyline which would be explored later on.
Both Outlander season seven and the short story A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows by Diana Gabaldon shed light on Jerry’s tragic fate.
Jerry served as a Spitfire pilot between 1939 and 1941 with the Green Squadron, ending up with a wound which required rest at home.
He was later recruited by Frank to go on a top secret mission to Poland and take photos of the Nazi concentration camps.
Prior to the mission, Jerry was sent to Northumberland to practice his manoeuvres but during his training the fighter pilot’s aeroplane crashed on Halloween.
Jerry’s crash occurred near a set of standing stones and he found himself thrown back into the past after leaning on one of the towering rocks for support in the aftermath of his accident.
In the past, Jerry had several mishaps with the locals in the 18th century with his dog tags – his only form of identification – stolen from him.
Luckily, he was eventually helped back to the stones and his own to time by his son Roger MacKenzie (Richard Rankin) and Buck MacKenzie (Diarmaid Murtagh) who’d also ended up in 1739.
Jerry returned to the 20th century and got to his wife just as an air raid hit London, managing to save his infant son but getting killed in the process.
Due to the loss of his dog tags in the past, Jerry’s body was unidentifiable and so he was always thought to have gone missing.
This suggests in some ways Frank may have been inadvertently responsible for Jerry’s death.