What happens to Roger next in the Outlander books?

The most recent Outlander was a rough one. (Caution: SPOILERS incoming.) Not only did Murtagh, Jamie Fraser’s godfather, die on the field of battle, fighting for the Regulators against the British Redcoats, but at the end of the episode, we saw a body hanging from a tree with a bag over his head, a body that looked a lot like it belonged to Roger Mackenzie (Richard Rankin), husband to Brianna Fraser and son-in-law to Jamie.

Why is Outlander pouring on the grief like this? Give us a break, people, yeesh.

Outlander is taking a week off, so we’ll have to stew in our uncertainty until it returns on Sunday, April 12 with “Famous Last Words.” In the meantime, showrunner Matt Roberts is happy to tease what comes next to Vanity Fair. “We leave it in a place to where you want people to question, Oh, my God. Did they just do that? And then to sit on that and go, They didn’t, they couldn’t. No way.”

Mission accomplished, you diabolical mastermind.

Outlander — Courtesy of Mark Mainz, STARZ

Star Sam Heughan (Jamie) was on hand, too, and said that “Famous Last Words” would go a little off the beaten path. “It’s a really interesting episode, actually. You’ll see it’s quite stylized,” he said. “The next few episodes are really strong and really work well together. There are elements that fans are not expecting and characters that will be really exciting for them. Little Easter eggs.”

That reminds us of what Sophie Skelton (Brianna) said about the episode:

"Episode 508 is done in a really interesting way. It’s very different. We haven’t really done an episode in this format before, so I think it’s quite cool. It’s a little love letter, in a way, to the ‘60s. It feels very different. It’s a very cool episode."

Alright, so prepare for a different sort of episode when Outlander finally returns.

But it’s all well and good to say that the next episode is going to be different. What actually happens? Is that Roger hanging from the tree? And if so, is he dead?

Well, there are no guarantees, but there are nine Outlander books out there on shelves — they’ve been coming out since 1991 — and this incident with Roger is taken right from their pages. If you want to know what happens in the book, keep reading. If not, now would be the time to get out of dodge, lest you be exposed to SPOILERS.

Okay, still here? Here we go: In the books, that is Roger on the tree, but he doesn’t die. However, being hung by the neck is not good for you, and while Roger survives, he loses his voice…permanently. This is a nasty twist of the knife, because in the books, Roger loves to sing. He does it on the show, too, but not as much.

Now, just because this is what happened in the books doesn’t necessarily mean it will go down on the show. The series has changed things before. For example, in the books, Murtagh doesn’t die at the Battle of Alamance as he does on the show. He dies decades before at the Battle of Culloden. Roberts said that this is part of his strategy to “give the book fans what they want, just not the way they expect it. So they may know what’s coming, but we throw a little twist on it, and it may not happen in the exact spot they think it’s gonna happen.”

"One of the biggest things we do in the writers room is [discuss] how to tell a story where much of our audience knows what happens next, and the other half of the audience has no idea. It’s something most television shows don’t have to deal with. Game of Thrones ran out of books, so they were just telling new stories after a while, and the fans didn’t know it was going to happen. We’re never going to run out of books—and Diana is still writing, and she’s going to continue writing. So we’ll never catch up."

So there you have it. If I had to guess, I’d say Roberts and company will follow through with the book’s versions of events here, but there’s always the possibility of a twist. Maybe Roger comes out of this unscathed…

…or maybe he’s just plain dead. I don’t think I helped here. Come on, April 12.

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