It's a big month for fans of Outlander, Starz's time-traveling romance series based on the bestselling books by Diana Gabaldon. In a few short days, the show will premiere its eighth and final season, bringing the sweeping saga of Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe), Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), and their ever-growing family to a close. Outlander has always been a show steeped in emotional drama, but nothing plays the heartstrings quite like a powerful ending.
But when that ending does come, it will be different than however it plays out in Gabaldon's novels — and as executive producer Maril Davis revealed during a press roundtable attended by Winter Is Coming, that is very much by design.
So far, Outlander has had quite a run. It first debuted all the way back in 2014, when there were few other fantastical epics on prestige TV aside from HBO's Game of Thrones. It has proven time and again that it deserves all the love fans have piled on it, but here at last, the series has to answer the big question that all good shows eventually face: can it stick the landing?
Outlander is in a somewhat unique situation in that, like Thrones, its source material remains unfinished. To date, Gabaldon has written nine books out of an expected 10 for the series; she's currently hard at work on the final novel, A Blessing For A Warrior Going Out.
The show, however, is cutting things off a bit sooner. Season 7 primarily adapted the events of the seventh book, Echo in the Bone. That leaves the main events from books eight and nine, as well as Gabaldon's unfinished 10th novel still to go. That's a borderline impossible task for any series to fit into one season of television — and somewhat surprisingly, Outlander isn't even going to try. Instead, it's forging its own path to the finish line.
How much was Diana Gabaldon involved in the ending of the Outlander show?
One question I was curious to put to executive producer Maril Davis and showrunner Matthew B. Roberts is exactly how the end of the show lines up with the end of Gabaldon's work-in-progress final book. Was the author heavily involved in planning out the show's ending, or did it break new ground?
"I see what you’re trying to do—you’re trying to get us to tell you how the books end," Davis joked, before going on to explain the show's approach to crafting this final season.
"I know at least Sam [Heughan] and I have read the last couple pages, and I know Matt didn’t want to know what that was, understandably," she said. "[Diana Gabaldon] knew, or she knows, how we are planning to end it, because I think we were so sensitive to Diana, we didn’t want to step on her toes. We certainly didn’t want to do an ending that she might do. But it was also kind of impossible since we are, as you said, ending it a book early."
This is an interesting approach. Rather than rush to reach that same end point that Gabaldon is aiming for in the books, it sounds like the show is purposely aiming for a different conclusion. This way, the book ending that Gabaldon has been working toward for nearly 35 years will remain unspoiled, so diehard fans can experience it fresh whenever A Blessing For A Warrior Going Out releases.
Despite that, Maril said that the team behind the series was careful to keep Gabaldon informed about their plans for the final run of the show.
"We looped her in the whole way, 'cause I think we wanted her to be be able to let us know if she wasn't comfortable with something, or felt like we wanted to do a few different things, so along the way we've kind of kept her in contact and just to make sure she was okay, which she total was," Maril explained. "So it's hard to end it before...I mean, there's still a whole other book to go out, and as you said, we just kind of had to try to wrap some things up. Some things we will not be able to wrap up, just because there's so much still to go."
"This is just a really good season, and we took it to the television series’ logical ending. Whether that fits into, you know, the books, we don’t know. We don’t know what that last book’s going to be," Roberts said. "But we are a separate entity. We are the television show and we’ve diverged from the books multiple times because we’ve had to."
Not even Outlander's stars know the show's ending yet
Outlander has added plenty of material to the core story along the way, but it's overall always felt like a show that very much captured the spirit of Gabaldon's story. Even if it's not shooting for the exact same ending as the author's books, I have no doubt that however the show chooses to wrap things up will feel satisfying in its own way, capping off an exceptional television journey of more than a decade. Fewer shows than ever get the sort of run that Outlander has enjoyed, and reaching this final season is worth celebrating in its own right.
As for what exactly the show's ending will be, even its lead stars have no idea. Outlander filmed multiple endings for the series, each so convincing that Balfe and Heughan are totally in the dark about which one is the real deal. The show's cast will find out along with the rest of us how it all ends over the next few months.
Outlander season 8 premiers Friday, March 6 on Starz.