Home / celebrities people / Is jack randall gay
Positioning him as a predator reinforces incredibly harmful stereotypes about queer men, who are vilified merely for existing. At the age of 39, he died of a heart attack while shooting a riding scene in The Royal Mounted Rides Again (1945).
BornMay 12, 1906
DiedJuly 16, 1945(39)
Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series has been widely praised for its time-traveling romance between Claire Beauchamp and Jamie Fraser.
After a few musical Westerns, Randall continued playing leads in B-Westerns, but not as a singer. Last updated by Diana’s Webmistress on Monday, May 18, 2015 at 1:01 a.m. Actually (and obviously, I would have thought…), it’s because she’s looking at him and laughing, and he finds this unnerving.
If you look at his behavior throughout the book (and I emphasize book, though it’s almost the same in the show), he’s shown as attacking four people: Jenny, Jamie, Claire, and another prisoner at Fort William (who we don’t hear about in the show) named Alex.
Two men, two women—he’s an equal-opportunity sadist.
In that moment, Jenny had found a way to take back the power. There, she encounters her husband's direct ancestor, Jack Randall -- and quickly learns that he isn't the upstanding man Frank believes him to be.
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In their first encounter, Jack Randall attempts to rape Claire when she stumbles upon him in the woods, wearing a 1945-appropriate dress (which resembles little more than a shift in 18th century fashion).
Black Jack attempted to rape Jamie's sister, Jenny, but she saved herself by mocking him outright.
In the meantime, Jamie was arrested and whipped to within an inch of his life. Actor Tobias Menzies does a phenomenal job portraying two men -- Frank and Jack -- with the same face, but entirely different demeanors, moral compasses and relationships.
However, Jack Randall is one of just two queer characters in Outlander.
That is to say: if Randall had indeed sexually assaulted Jamie, it wouldn’t make Black Jack gay. His reaction to the humiliation he feels when his power plays fail seems to be the same for both Fraser siblings: more violence.
For once, I’m actually glad that a character is not queer. Second, Randall only ordered Jenny to turn around after she started laughing at him.
When he meets Claire, there's a price on his head that's equivalent to a year of wages for any farmer in the area, so Jamie is using a fake name and generally trying to hide out at Castle Leoch.
(Personality, yes—gender, no.)
I see reviewers assuming that he told Jenny repeatedly to turn around, during their encounter in a flashback—and they assume it was because he’s gay. He wanted Jamie to be defeated and to beg for mercy, but Jamie refused. But he’ll take women when he can get them—vide his reaction to finding Claire wandering around by herself.
(In the Scottish Highlands, communities were small and tight and people really didn’t move around that much.
We saw many new things: from more of Jamie than we ever have before and Jack Randall’s crown jewels, to Lallybroch in the present tense and Jamie admitting just how long he’s been interested in Claire. His career rapidly faltered, however, and he moved into supporting parts and villain roles.
Posted by Delia Harrington under Feels, Gifs, Rant, Review, Television Form
Warning: this post includes discussion and gifs related to the depiction of rape and violence on the show Outlander.
Last Saturday’s Outlander episode, “Lallybroch,” brought several shocks.
Jack Randall doesn’t want Jamie to “give over to [him]” because he finds him attractive; it’s because Randall wants to break Jamie and exert complete power over him. Against his better judgment, Jamie agrees, but he breaks that promise when Randall goes after his adopted son, Fergus. Moreover, the illusion of choice given to Jamie would likely haunt him, filling him with increased feelings of shame.