The eighth and final season of Outlander wrapped up filming just the other month, and the wound is still fresh for the cast members. “It’s sort of hit everyone in peaks and troughs and at different times” star Sophie Skelton (Briana) told TV Insider. “It’s like going through the five stages of grief.”
"It’s been 10 years of people’s lives, so whether it’s for your character or for your job or for you as a person, there’s so much that we’ve all gone through and had it come in and out of our lives. And so I think everyone’s just been dealing with it in different ways."
Many of the actors on Starz's time-traveling romance series thought they would be dealing with it a lot earlier; as Skelton explains, there was a time when everyone thought that the show's seventh season might be the last. "We’d kind of had a taster of how it might feel to be ending before we even got to 8,” she said.
Happily, Starz decided to keep going with Outlander at least one season longer. Ending with season 7 would have been a bummer, since it would have only gone through the end of the seventh Outlander book, An Echo in the Bone, plus a bit more. Having one final season will allow the cast and crew to dig into the meat of the eighth book, Written in My Own Heart's Blood, although it's still unlikely they'll get through the whole of author Diana Gabaldon's series; the tenth and final book isn't even out yet.
But whether you've read the books or not, the series finale will be an emotional experience when it comes, although it can't be worse for fans than it was for the actors. "We all shed some tears, which I don’t know if we were necessarily all expecting to do that,” Skelton said. “I think we made our peace with it. But it’s amazing what comes out when you see people you love around you breaking down and everything else. Cast and crew alike were just feeling the mourning of this beautiful thing that we’ve been making for the past 10 years.”
It's a little odd to think that Skelton is already talking about filming the final episode of season 8 when the second half of season 7 hasn't even aired yet; new episodes will start airing on Starz beginning Friday, November 22. And then begins the wait for the eighth and final season. “aybe the press tour for Season 8 you’ll see us all crying,” Skelton suggested.
Outlander has been very good to Starz these past 10 years, and the network isn't going to let it go just yet. The network is working on an Outlander prequel series that will follow the lives of Jamie and Claire's parents, exploring how they fell in love just as their kids will years later. That show is set to air between the seventh and eighth seasons of Outlander, so fans can get hooked on another version of the story that will last beyond the Outlander series finale.
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