Traditionally, a sin eater was a person (usually a man) who was paid to eat bread that sat upon the corpse at a funeral. Thought to have soaked up their sins, when eaten by the sin eater, it absolves the dead of their sins leaving them free to enter heaven unburdened.
Folklore tales of sin eaters – people paid to perform a ritual believed to allow them to take on the sins of the deceased – have been passed down through generations, although the practice died out many years ago.
The young Malva then later claimed Jamie was the father of her baby, and was eventually found dead in the Fraser's vegetable patch. In a particularly harrowing scene, Claire tries to save the unborn baby but is tragically unable to.
The hubbub surrounding the impending arrival of Malva Christie on Fraser's Ridge has been rather ominous, but I'm here to tell you, despite everything that might go down in Season 6, Malva Christie is not a villain.
Later, after Claire has returned to the Ridge, she is confessor to Allan Christie, who explains that he was the one that fathered Malva's child, and then murdered her.
Jamie denies having slept with her, but the damage to his and to Claire's reputation is done—and the bond between the Frasers and Malva is severed, until just a few weeks later, when Claire finds Malva murdered in the garden.
The haircutting was part of the process. Malva wanted to make Claire undesirable. She wanted to make Jamie turn to her instead of to his wife. We can get a sense of that from the way Claire worried about Jamie seeing her with the short, jagged hair.
Malva Christie might have only been introduced in Outlander Season 6, but she has a central role in the drama. The daughter of Tom Christie, she is both naive and sinister, and many Outlander fans have struggled to work out her true intentions.
In the TV series, we get to see how Malva knows all about Jamie's scars. She spies on Claire and Jamie when they're in the barn, which is going to lead to all of his scars on show. The TV show gave us this scene so that it would clear up questions later on.
People typically hired a Sin Eater in situations where the deceased died unexpectedly. By consuming bread and a drink (usually wine or beer) placed on, or ritually waved over, the dead body, onlookers believed the dead person's sins were digested by the eater after he or she consumed this beggar's feast.
Sin eaters risked their souls to soak up the misdeeds of the dead. When a loved one died in parts of England, Scotland, or Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries, the family grieved, placed bread on the chest of the deceased, and called for a man to sit in front of the body.
When revived by Kindred, Sin-Eater wielded a special gun that removed their powers and destroyed their sins. In addition, he can turn the sins into actual monsters, teleport, and absorb the powers of anyone he shoots.
Claire eventually realizes that Malva is lying because she knows her husband well enough. Tom seems to question Malva's story. You can see it in his face that he's trying to figure out if this story is true. And then there are the reactions at the funeral when Allan refuses to let Claire carry the baby's coffin out.
Claire knows that she didn't have the same thing, but she can't get to the bottom of the cause. It's Tom who eventually finds out. Malva, before her death, tells him that she made them sick. She'd collected parts of the dead Sin Eater and poisoned Claire and Tom.
Jamie doesn't really help matters by choosing this moment to confess that he has cheated – but not with Malva. Instead, he spent one night with someone else before going to prison, long ago (and when separated from Claire by 200 years).
Allan's father Tom later took the fall and falsely confessed to killing Malva in the hopes of ending Claire's trial.
As readers of Diana Gabaldon's books know, Jamie is not the father of the baby and it was all a ploy on Malva's part to hide the identity of the baby's real father. Malva was also sleeping with a number of other men on Fraser's Ridge to deflect attention from the real father of the child.
Tom Christie's biggest confession, however, is that he is deeply in love with Claire. It is still unclear if Tom Christie has identified his son (and Malva's half-brother), Allan, as Malva's true killer when he falsely confesses or if he only takes the blame because he knows Claire to be innocent.
She's never seemed curious about the intimacies of a couple before. This suggests that she's up to something. Watching the two gives her information to use in the future.
Tom Christie tells Claire that Malva did the love charm to try to steal Jamie, and tried to kill Tom and Claire with the virus. . .but at the end, Allen Christie tells Claire that Malva loved her and was going to tell the truth because of it.
Claire's ability to use shadow magic was limited in Trollhunters, but her magic became more powerful in time and so the whiteness in her hair grew.
They don't know the character like we do, and Claire has dealt with a marriage that included infidelity. However, Claire knows the truth deep down. Jamie didn't cheat on her.
Claire Saves Jamie's Life by Giving Him a [NSFW] in Outlander Season 5, Episode 9. Forget CPR! So, this entire episode of Outlander basically revolved around an evil snake (Lord Voldemort, is that you?) biting Jamie's thigh, and it was all extremely dramatic and angsty so let's get right to it.
Director Brendan Maher told Vulture that while both Menzies and Heughan had stunt doubles for the physically demanding sequence, neither used them much. “We had people for safety, just in case, but the nature of the work is that you want the actors to do as much as they possibly can,” Maher said.
One book reader in the comments confirmed: “Malva uses fluids from the dead Sin Eater to poison Claire and her dad after Claire tells her about how germs and illness work.”