Next month, Outlander will return with the second half of its seventh season, as Jamie and Claire Fraser return to Scotland while their children face a harrowing family drama far in the future. After that, there will be one final Droughtlander before fans take in the eighth and final season, which wrapped filming last month.
Naturally, the end of this long-lived series is getting fans, cast and crew members emotional. Caitriona Balfe, who has played Clare Fraser since the beginning, spoke on how her close working relationship with costar Sam Heughan (Jamie) has gotten them through this journey. "Our friendship and our working partnership has been really special and really important for us. We made a pact at the very beginning that we would always have each other's backs and I think we've stuck to that, she said at New York Comic Con, per Scottish Daily Express." "It's just been such a privilege to do it for this long."
You'd figure that if the final season has been shot and everyone has said their goodbyes, the cast and crew know the ending, right? Somehow, that's not exactly true, at least according to executive producer Maril Davis.
Per the Daily Record, Davis talked at NYCC about wanting to let as few people as possible see the script for the series finale so as to prevent the unintentional spread of spoilers, which makes sense. But apparently it goes beyond that. “ hasn’t decided the ending,” Davis said. “We purposefully are doing that because there are leaks."
Again, that raises the question: if they've shot the entirety of season 8, and season 8 contains the series finale, then how could they not have decided what the ending will be? I suppose it's possible that the ending could change in the editing process; perhaps there's some important detail they haven't yet decided whether to include or exclude yet.
Outlander ending: Books vs show
Another quirky thing about the Outlander ending is that it will break with the ending contemplated by author Diana Gabaldon in her Outlander book series; there's still one book left to publish in that series, so the show will reach the finish line before the books do. The producers of the show have chosen to dream up a different ending of the show rather than go with whatever Gabaldon has planned, something the author has said she is "not upset" by.
“We were very careful,” Davis said at NYCC. “We didn’t want to step on her toes. There is another book. So, we’re ending it the way we are, we just wanted to be respectful of not ending it the way she would.”
So that's yet more confirmation that the show will end in a different way than the books. It also sounds like Davis knows the ending to come, which kind of contradicts what she says about Roberts not having decided yet. But the devil may well be in the details.
In any case, the second half of season 7 premieres on Friday, November 22 and wraps up on January 10. Then we'll have another long wait for the final season. That should give Roberts plenty of time to decide whatever needs deciding.
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