One of the things that bestselling author Diana Gabaldon, who created the Outlander franchise, always explains to fans is, “The show is the show, and the books are the books. The show can just possibly use about 10 percent of any of the books. Obviously, there will be differences.”
And that is what happened with the series finale. Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts did consult with Gabaldon to get her take on what could unfold. But in the end, the final decision was his, and she’s fine with that, especially since Gabldon credits Roberts with actually being responsible for Outlander coming to the TV screen.
As she tells the story, several years ago, Roberts read the first three novels and wrote a 29-page treatise on how great they were. But Paramount, to whom he presented it as a potential film, passed. But he didn’t give up, and while it took him several years to find a studio and partners – Ronald D. Moore and Maril Davis – to get it made, he finally found the right partners in STARZ and Sony Pictures Television.
What happened in the Outlander finale?
As for the finale, yes, Frank Randall’s book, The Soul of a Rebel: The Scottish Roots of the American Revolution, was right, Jamie (Sam Heughan) did die in the Battle at Kings Mountain. But then his eyes opened and he gasped for air, so it appeared that just like in the book, Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone, Claire (Caitríona Balfe) brought Jamie back to life after he was killed at Kings Mountain.
And it works because in Season 4 of Outlander, when the Frasers first moved to the Ridge a wise Cherokee healer named Adawehi predicted to Claire that she would come into her full powers when her hair turned grey – and sharp eyes will see in Episode 810, the morning after Jamie died, Claire’s hair has turned completely grey.
Did Diana Gabaldon write the ending to Outlander?
Some of what happens in the Outlander series finale is based on ideas that Gabaldon suggested, and some came directly from Roberts, but it was a collaboration based on mutual respect, and it will be interesting to see what the fans think.
Here is what Gabaldon told Parade about her contribution to the finale:
“I suggested that Claire might — as she does in the book — refuse to be separated from Jamie, and (per book) lie on top of his body, as Matt did. But let her blue light grow stronger and stronger, engulfing both of them…and fade out on that. As a note, this season Claire began to come into her blue-light healing power when she helped birth the twins, and the second one wasn’t breathing when it first came out of the womb.”
Then Gabaldon went on to remind Roberts about Jamie’s ghost, which appeared in the very first episode of Outlander.
“And I concluded, ‘You probably don’t want to hear this, but you’re paying me for my professional opinion — which is that they’re gonna crucify you if they don’t get the ghosts.’ So I suggested fade out on two entwined and glowing lovers without further action or comment and go black. Then begin again with Jamie emerging from the stone on Craigh na Dun, where he stands for a moment, then begins to walk. And blue flowers spring up silently in his footsteps, including one at the foot of the stone.
“But then the light fades as he goes along, and the scene shifts to the night scene from Season 1, where Frank sees Jamie’s ghost (briefly) and we see Jamie looking up at Claire in the window. But the main thing is that they both die on Kings Mountain, and they end up together.”
Outlander‘s finale is a good sign for books to come
While Roberts didn’t take all of Gabaldon’s notes, the ending that he gave us is good news because it means if Jamie and Claire are both alive, when Gabaldon finally publishes A Blessing for a Warrior Going Out, Book 10 in the series, there could be another season of Outlander or maybe a movie.
That said, it will be a while before A Blessing for a Warrior Going Out will be published, but Gabaldon assured us that she’s “working hard on Book Ten and it’s going very well, but there’s no way on earth that it could possibly have come out before the end of the show.”
And just as the show doesn’t feel any constraints to change what’s in Gabaldon’s books, she also makes it clear that “I don’t feel any constraint to adjust the books to what the show does or will have done.”
So, how Gabaldon wraps up the Outlander story is still known to only a few, Heughan and Davis among them. But the rest of us will have to wait for the book.
