Outlander author Diana Gabaldon has stated that the TV series will have a different ending to the books.
The writer began the time-travel romantic drama all the way back in 1991, and the upcoming 10th novel will be the finale, at least in terms of main characters Jamie and Claire Fraser's storyline. The show has been adapting one book per season, but with season 8 announced to be its last, something's going to have to change.
On her Facebook page, the author explained to fans that, due to the combination of a shorter-than-usual season and three books (one unpublished) unadapted, the showrunners are going to have to chart their own course, and potentially end up somewhere quite different.
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"I think people will be OK with it, but it won't resemble much of Book 10," she said, "only because there isn't room.
"Even if the show-folk had a full copy of the whole book (I told them as much as I knew about it), there's no way the show would resemble it. The basic constraint is that season 8 has only 10 episodes – and in terms of book/show generally, they can't possibly get more than 10% of each book into a season.
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"For Season 8, they have ALL the material from [Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone] (Book 9), a working synopsis of Book 10, and about 3/4 of Book 8 that they haven't used. That's a Whole Lot of Stuff to have to cram into 1- hours and have it make any kind of sense.
"So what they've done is essentially what they've done with the earlier books; pick out specific scenes or storylines, then create a sort of brief framework to tie them together in some more or less logical way."
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In another comment, Gabaldon expressed her hope that fans will enjoy the way both versions of Outlander wrap up.
In the same post, the author shared an excerpt from early on in Book 10, noting that the novel still doesn't have a name at this time.
Work on the eighth season began earlier this year, while a table read for one of the final episodes (and the show's 101st in total) took place earlier this month. Of course, we've still got season 7 part 2 to come later this year.
While the main show is ending, a prequel series titled Blood of My Blood is in the works, and will focus on Jamie and Claire's parents.
Outlander airs on Starz in the US, and streams via MGM+ on Prime Video Channels in the UK. Season 7 part 2 premieres on November 22.
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Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
