Is this really the end of Outlander?

Starz announced in 2023 that season 8 would be the series’ last, as the network promised to “bring Claire and Jamie’s epic love story to a proper conclusion.” Now that the final episodes are beginning to air, the question on fans’ minds is whether Sam Heughan and Caitríona Balfe would ever consider reprising their beloved roles of Jamie and Claire Fraser down the line.

“I think we always say, never say never,” Balfe, 46, tells PEOPLE.

Heughan, 45, agrees: “Never say never.”

That said, they wouldn’t agree to just any concept that would bring them back to the Frasers’ world. Heughan suggests that the spinoff should be set in Hawaii, giving him and his costar of more than a decade the chance to film somewhere tropical.

On a more serious note, though, Balfe says of the idea, “I think, definitely, it would have to be, if there was a great script and it gave these characters a good reason to revisit them.”

When filming wrapped on the final season in 2024, the cast had to take some time to decompress and process what they’d been through — and the weight of the goodbye. “We all went and did something right after,” Balfe tells PEOPLE. “I went off and did a retreat, and [Heughan] went and climbed the Himalayas. Sophie [Skelton] went to Africa, Richard [Rankin] learned how to fly. I think we all had that initial … I wouldn’t say exorcist, but it’s like that [process] of releasing it.”

“All of us took some time off as well,” she adds. “Because I think you do — well, at least for me, I’ll speak for myself — but I wanted to process it and I wanted to honor the experience of the character by letting it go, in a healthy way. I don’t know, I think you can maybe make yourself a bit mad sometimes if you don’t sit in the experience for a while.”

It had been “an emotionally taxing nine months” during filming, she says, because she and Heughan “felt so much responsibility to make it right, and everything felt heightened.”

The series stars said they “came back to do this season to give an ending that was satisfactory — or tied up some things” for fans.

“At the end of season 7, I certainly felt I wasn’t ready to walk away,” Heughan added. “I still had an itch to scratch, and I think the fans would’ve felt that as well, but it’s hard. How do you tie up something like this?”

His feelings about how it all ends are complicated. “I don’t think you could ever be satisfied,” Heughan said. “I honestly think you couldn’t, because we haven’t done all the books and we haven’t fully realized the book series.”

Outlander was adapted from Diana Gabaldon’s book series, which began in 1991 and is not yet complete. Gabaldon announced that the 10th book in the series, A Blessing for a Warrior Going Out, would be the last, but no details about its release have been confirmed.

New episodes of Outlander premiere Fridays on Starz