There's only one season left before fans say goodbye to Outlander forever. No more Jamie. No more Claire. No more Jamie and Claire. We don't know exactly when the eighth and final season will air, but filming has been done for a while and the clock is ticking.
Outlander is based on a series of books by author Diana Gabaldon. By and large, the TV show has adapted one book per season. But with only one season left, it's going to have to skip over some of the source material. “The brief was: Nothing that doesn’t affect Jamie and Claire gets in. It’s gotta affect Jamie and Claire," co-showrunner Matthew B. Roberts told TVLine about the final season. He said that while the winding plots of the books make them "readable and fun...when you have 10 episodes, you have to stay literally on track.”
That means some things are going to get cut. One of those things will be Jenny Fraser Murray, the sister of lead character Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan). Jenny was first played by Laura Donnelly in the show's earlier seasons but was eventually recast with actor Kristin Atherton. In season 7, Jamie invites his sister to cross the ocean and stay with him and Claire in North Carolina, but she inclines. In the books, she doesn't; Jenny crosses the ocean, stays in Philadelphia for a bit, and eventually joins Jamie and Claire at Fraser's Ridge.
But not so in the TV series. Outlander season 7 marked the final appearance of Jenny Fraser Murray. “Again, with 10 episodes, there’s a lot less you can do," Roberts said.
It's a shame that the entirety of Gabaldon's book series won't be translated to the screen, especially after so much of it made it in. Then again, eight seasons is a long time for a show to be on TV. Things were further complicated by the fact that Gabaldon has only written nine out of a planned 10 Outlander novels, with the final one in the works. So even if Roberts and company wanted to adapt the series in its entirety, the source material doesn't exist yet.
Hopefully the ending of the TV show will strike a good balance. And if fans are still heartbroken over losing their favorite series, Starz has a Band-Aid for them: this summer, the network will premiere a prequel show called Outlander: Blood of My Blood, about how Jamie's parents and Claire's parents got together. So there will still be a show about love transending the meager bonds of time on the air. The eighth and final season of Outlander will air sometime after the first season of Blood of My Blood.
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