Note: This story contains spoilers from “Outlander” Season 8, Episode 10.
In the leadup to the “Outlander” series finale, even star Caitriona Balfe admitted she didn’t know how the time-traveling romance series would come to a close, given that she filmed multiple endings. For showrunner Matthew B. Roberts, there was a never a question.
“This was the ending that … I’ve always had in mind,” Roberts told TheWrap. “The other endings that were written were just really for security reasons, to print and get out and to put on call sheets and things, because those kinds of things somehow get disseminated out into the world, so that was more protection for the ending.”
Roberts started thinking about how to wrap up the series at the end of Season 6, sharing that the series was originally planning to end with Season 7 before Starz extended the run. Specifically, he began tossing around ideas related to Jamie’s ghost seen in the series premiere — featuring Jamie’s silhouette watching Claire outside of her window — which has been atop fans’ minds through the years.
“The television show had to honor that, because … that needs to be explained to the TV viewer who’s never read the book … we kind of owe that to them. And the book reader … they have Diana [Gabaldon] to finish that story in the books,” Roberts said. “That’s always been a fine line.”
With that in mind, the “Outlander” series finale does give another glimpse into that scene, but first, the finale gives some closure to Season 8’s central mystery.
After a season of the Fraser family speculating whether Sam Heughan’s Jamie would, in fact, die in the battle of Kings Mountain, the series finale sees Jamie defy Frank Randall’s prophecy and survive the battle, leading to a joyful reunion with Balfe’s Claire. “It’s over Sassenach,” Jamie tells Claire. “Frank was wrong.”
The triumph becomes all the more painful however, when he is then fatally shot by a captured red coat officer — a blow that Claire feels right in her heart from a short distance. Jamie’s men — including Young Ian — immediately shoot the officer, but it’s too late to save Jamie, who bleeds out and collapses on the mountain top, as Claire rushes back and tries to save him. Claire, in denial of his death, collapses on top of him, staying with him through nightfall and the next day, later telling Roger “he is home.”
It’s then, after Claire collapses on Jamie even further and seemingly dying of a broken heart — that the finale flashes back to that premiere scene. The flashback shows a young Jamie looking up at Claire before being approached by Randall. Jamie then walks to the stones, putting his hand on one as blue flowers bloom on the grass.
What follows is a highlight reel of Jamie and Claire’s love story throughout the years. We then see the couple once again, laying side-by-side, and they both open their eyes and gasp for air just as the finale cuts to the credits.
While Roberts hopes to leave the finale’s final moments up to interpretation, he did nix the idea that Jamie time traveled to see Claire first, instead embracing the idea of a ghost.
“If you watch the pilot again … Frank goes, ‘Where’d he go?’ And then when you watch him walk down the hill, if you watch carefully, what happens to him … he kind of fades,” Roberts said. “Our fans watch with a very discerning eye. They’ll they’ll pick these things and go, ‘Oh, that’s what that means.’ I want them to have their own feelings about it. I don’t want to sit there and go, ‘This is exactly what we were trying to do and what we mean.’”
Roberts underscored their love story is “magical,” noting they wove in several threads of that magic into the season, which is certainly seen when Claire feels the shot that hits Jamie in the heart.
“There’s a great conversation Jamie and Claire have looking up at the stars, and Jamie says … ‘That’s us — we never burn out,’” Roberts recalled. “That’s what we do with things we love … we put them in the sky, the constellations … because we can look up and they’re always there. I think maybe Jamie and Claire are always there too. And this is just one way of showing that, but everybody gets to interpret it their own way.”
Another moment left up to interpretation is Claire’s collapse onto Jamie, which could be seen as a sort of death, or, in another perspective, a transfer of life. “In that moment where she gives her soul to him … he gives it back, and the magic happens,” he said. “I don’t know what that is. You get to decide, but that’s what I think is going on on that hill.”
Of course, it was always going to end with Jamie and Claire together, with Roberts noting “the last image before the credits was always going to be on them …. we were never going to cut away from that moment — that was never in the cards.”
It’s why the team wrapped up any plotlines with other characters beyond the couple prior to the episode, with the start of the finale seeing them say goodbye to their family. “This is Jamie and Claire’s story,” he said. “All the character beats are with them … and that was super important to finish their story and not really finish, to tell you the truth.”
That final moment with Jamie and Claire seemingly coming to life is something that Roberts also had in mind for a while, and is a way to “leave the door open for a lot of things: interpretation, the future, everything.” “I never wanted to close the door and lock it,” he said.
“I’ve seen a lot of TV in my life … I’ve fallen in love with shows, and I’ve watched them, and you get to the end, and something happens at the end, and you go, ‘Hmm,’ and I don’t want people to feel that. I want people to feel some hope,” Roberts said.
“I want them to feel everything — I want them to have a million feelings … I want them to be sad. I want them to be happy. I want to be raptured. I want to [them to be] excited and everything,” Roberts continued. “I didn’t want to take that away by going, ‘This is the end. This is how it ends.’ Because to me, it doesn’t.”
In leaving things open-ended, Roberts confirmed he is exploring potential spinoffs in addition to the “Blood of my Blood” prequel series — which returns for Season 2 later this year.
“We’re trying to figure out how to expand the universe,” Roberts said, adding that a Lord John Grey spinoff series is still a possibility that he “would love to do.” “There’s other characters within the universe that we would certainly like to expand upon — we definitely have the time. But it’s the appetite … the audience — do they want to see these series?”
Roberts also leaves viewers with a post-credits scene featuring a cameo from Gabaldon at a book signing for “Outlander” — a scene the showrunner said is a “thank you” to the crew that worked on the show across its eight-season run, and that serves as a handoff as Gabaldon closes out the book series, which will have a different ending than the Starz drama.
“Everybody in the bookstore had been there from Day One … and all the books were created individually for them, for whatever job they had, and we made up titles for them and written by them,” Roberts said, noting the crew members were given the books as a thank you.
“Diana created the world — she created this universe — I think the right thing to do is to have her on the last show,” Roberts said. “I kind of closed the loop there, and hand this and the ‘Outlander’ story … back to her to for her to go finish and the books.”
“Outlander” Seasons 1-8 are now streaming on Starz.
