Unity's Horrific Views Shock the Nation as 'Outrageous' Continues

Unity's obsession with fascism, and with Adolf Hitler specifically, finally becomes too much for her family to ignore in Outrageous's fourth episode, and the Mitford family is rocked by scandal when the actual depth of her commitment to Nazism is made public. The first half of this season has largely soft-pedaled the darker aspects of what Diana and Unity's interest in fascism means in concrete terms, refusing to get too specific about the more odious views these women either hold or don't care enough to protest. Instead, the show, much like the Mitford family, has treated their flirtation with authoritarianism as a sort of genteel fad, something that most seem to assume will pass with time. 

It becomes glaringly apparent this week that this is not the case, and it is horrifying. 

Perhaps it's because Unity's behavior becomes both public knowledge and a public embarrassment that finally jolts her family out of their "it's just a phase" malaise, where their middle daughter is concerned. The Mitford parents are genuinely shocked to receive a letter detailing not only Unity's highly orchestrated meet-cute with Hitler but also the effusive joy she took in their conversation. Most of the family is, for some reason, thoroughly shocked by all of this—Nancy even insists it must be a joke, because I guess she has no memory of the events of the previous two years—but not Diana, who simply heads to Munich immediately to see her sister and to finagle an introduction of her own. 

(Not to put too fine a point on it, but if your child is gushing about how meeting Hitler is the most beautiful day of their lives, you have failed in some profound and horrifying way at raising them.) 

Diana's trip to Germany brings her and Unity closer together as she confides in her younger sister about her complicated relationship with Mosley (who's suddenly sleeping with his dead wife's sister again). The pair scheme to get Mosley a meeting with Hitler in the hopes that such a maneuver will enable him to see what an asset Diana can be to his political as well as his romantic life. Unity, for her part, seems to feel similarly about her own relationship with Hitler. 

(Her family is already worried about whether they're having an affair; it's likely they're not worried enough.)

She flirts with a handsome SS officer and pumps him for information on the Führer's relationship with Eva Braun, a shopgirl who secretly comes to the Munich residence but whom Hitler doesn't acknowledge publicly. Per her new friend, Braun knows nothing of politics or government or "the Jewish question," and Unity seems to find all of this borderline offensive, insisting a great leader needs a woman who understands and is totally committed to the cause. (Three guesses who she thinks that is in this case.) To prove this point, she writes a letter to a German newspaper, in which she grotesquely applauds the country's "approach to the Jewish problem." 

The global reaction is explosive. The letter is immediately headline news at home. Her parents are harassed by both reporters and friends, asked about everything from whether their daughter is Hitler's mistress to whether they agree with her opinions about Jewish people. The Mitfords order Unity home at once, but the damage has, unfortunately, been done.

Although most of this episode is dedicated to Unity's exploits in Germany, this is the first hour during which we spend a significant amount of time with the younger Mitford sisters, Jessica and Deborah. It's Jessica's debut year, though it's possible she's even less interested in all the ceremony than Unity was a few episodes back. She's presented at court and is fully unimpressed by everything from the king and queen ("They look like old stuffed puppets") to the "cattle market" that is essentially meant to find her a husband and acceptable friends. Unsurprisingly, Jessica doesn't exactly share a ton of interests with most of her peers and thinks none of them care about what matters in the world at large.

Youngest Mitford sibling Deborah, meanwhile, is learning to drive and taking herself on long horseback rides around the country estate. (She's the only sibling who seems to care about it.) While doing so, she makes the acquaintance of a man named Derek Jackson (Jack Michael Stacey), who compliments her horsemanship and flirts with her despite being considerably older than she is. It seems evident fairly quickly that this isn't going to be a forever sort of romance; however, it allows Deborah to finally feel as though she's growing up, experimenting with lipstick and cute outfits in preparation for a fishing excursion. She also introduces Derek to her older sister Pamela, a meeting that will prove fateful later on in the story. 

Unity's return is as confrontational and ugly as you might expect. She refuses to apologize and appears unaffected by the notion that most of England dislikes her for what she said. She endures an offscreen dressing down from her father, but immediately decamps for Diana's London house, where she feels that she'll be more welcome. The rest of the clan struggles to process not only the things that Unity has said, but the person she's apparently becoming. Her parents insist she can still be reasoned with, Nancy seems to think she'll come to her senses as soon as she's not so infatuated with Hitler, and Jessica immediately starts fantasizing about using her sister's relationship with him to get close enough to assassinate him. 

But at the heart of things, really, isn't the question of Unity's belief system, as horrid as it is. It's the much more complex question of how to navigate a world in which they're on such opposite sides, ideologically speaking, but still clearly mean so much to one another.  "What do you do when someone you love does something really awful and vile like this?" Jessica asks at one point. "Can you still love them?" It's perhaps the key question of the show, and it's something that, perhaps more than the showrunners intended, resonates with audiences today.

Historically speaking, we know the answer isn't always a positive one. The real Jessica and Diana, for example, spent most of their lives estranged, only speaking for a brief period once at the deathbed of one of their sisters after the war. But in the fictional world of Outrageous, it still seems as though reconciliation — or, at least, an emotional detente — must be possible. 

It's the tension between Diana and Nancy that's particularly difficult to watch. The pair is the strongest sibling bond on the show, and Nancy has gone out of her way to keep Diana in her life, unlike various other members of her family who have not always done so. She's supported her through a divorce, an abortion, and an untold number of smaller scandalous moments. Yet, because she cannot bring herself to agree with Diana's politics, the two find themselves at the most serious odds that they've ever faced. 

(In truth, it doesn't seem like that big of an ask for Diana to at least lukewarmly condemn Unity's antisemitism. But, that's probably more difficult than it should be when your primary claim to fame at the moment is the girlfriend of the most famous fascist in England.)

The hour ends with the sisters having their biggest argument yet as Nancy's attempts to make peace between the family fail utterly. Unity refuses to speak with Nancy outright, and Diana refuses to get involved in her younger sister's rift with the family. Unity's abhorrent views are her own, she says, and while she and Oswald "have nothing against the Jews as a race" (🤮), how Germany decides to handle them is their business. The sisters end up shouting at each other; Nancy's adamant that Mosley has brainwashed Diana, while the latter insists that she and her fellow siblings are allowed to have their own lives and beliefs. 

Diana's so upset that she drinks more than she should at a party before getting behind the wheel of a car. She ends up in an accident, and the hour ends on a rather pointless cliffhanger. (For some reason, Outrageous seems to love to pretend Diana is about to die, even though the real woman lived to be 93.) But while we know she'll recover physically, the question of how her relationship with Nancy will evolve remains to be seen.

Outrageous continues with new episodes every Wednesday on BritBox through the end of July 2025.