Spoilers ahead for Outlander Season 6, Episode 5, "Give Me Liberty."
Along with change in the wind, Claire sensed something else in the wind at the end of "Give Me Liberty" — a man whistling the "Colonel Bogey March." The thief whistling in prison on Outlander is Wendigo Donner, the time traveler who was part of Lionel Brown's gang. And with his stolen emerald from Flora MacDonald's necklace, it seems like the time traveler Donner is willing to risk a lot to get back to his own time of 1968.
The hint that Wendigo was back started when Flora, the famed Scot who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape after the Battle of Culloden, shared that she had discovered a thief in her room at the inn stealing her necklace. The authorities arrested him at her insistence (for someone who once helped someone evade Redcoats, she certainly likes them now). But though they retrieved her necklace, there was one emerald missing that they couldn't find on the perpetrator.
Emeralds are expensive, so I'm sure Flora and the sheriff didn't even consider what the thief's motives were for stealing her necklace. But Outlander fans know only a certain type of person would want a gemstone not for its monetary value but for its time-traveling properties. And Donner seems quite happy indeed to have a gemstone in his hand at the end of 605, even if he is in prison and even if the Native American is whistling a rather British tune (though, to be fair, it had infiltrated American culture in the mid-20th-century due to the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai).
In "Never My Love," Donner figured out that Claire was a time traveler by asking her who Ringo Starr was. Once the truth that they were both from the future came out, Wendigo frantically told Claire, "I need to get home. I've been trying for too long. I need gemstones." And though he denied Claire's offer of gemstones then, he's got one now.
Time travel works slightly differently in the show versus the books since, in the latter, gemstones aren't required but do help the traveler "steer" to their intended destination. But the fact that Donner said he needed "gemstones" on the show (emphasis on the plural) and that he only managed to pry one from Flora's necklace very likely means he'll be on the lookout for more once he gets out of prison. And as Claire told him in the Season 5 finale that she had some, he may be desperate enough to come back to Fraser's Ridge to steal some more.
The actor who played Wendigo in Season 5, Brennan Martin, wasn't listed in the credits and you don't see his face. So it's possible COVID-19 or other conflicts stopped him from coming back to the series for Season 6. And if so, perhaps his brief appearance at the end of "Give Me Liberty" is teasing a plot that's to come in Season 7. That could mean that certain events that happened in the sixth Outlander book, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, will have to wait until the 16-episode Season 7. But clearly, the show doesn't want audiences to forget about Wendigo Donner and his mission to get home.
Images: Starz