Diana Gabaldon Got Candid About Outlander Season 7 Midseason Finale
Guess which scene was the Outlander author's favorite.
If you're a fan of the Outlander book series, you've probably been following Season 7 with a copy of An Echo in the Bone in your hand. While it is always exciting and a little nerve-wracking to watch the showrunners bring your favorite novels to the screen, imagine how emotional it must be for the author.
Fortunately, Outlander rarely disappoints and usually manages to take the best of the books and fit the story into an hour-long format. The Season 7 midseason finale was one of the best examples of this. With plenty of twists and turns taking place in both the 18th and 20th centuries, the finale felt much longer than the usual episode.
Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander book series, shared this sentiment in an interview with Parade, discussing the finale and Season 7 in general.
'I thought [the season] was amazingly successful at taking an immense amount of material, distilling it into vivid strands and weaving them into a mostly coherent and very absorbing story,' she said.
Adapting the seventh novel is not an easy task, as the book is nearly 900 pages long and has many storylines and characters beloved by readers. How would you choose what to bring to the screen? Fortunately, showrunner Matthew B. Roberts and the creative team behind the show have done an excellent job, with Gabaldon giving them high marks:
'While it necessarily had to abbreviate and condense — and in some cases simplify or omit complex incidents and plotlines — they mostly refrained from making up extraneous things that weren't in the books, while including an immense amount of the original dialogue and incidents. I really appreciated that.'
The word 'mostly' in the author's appraisal might suggest that there was something in Season 7 that Gabaldon was not happy about. However, nine years of watching her bestselling books being adapted to the screen, and participating in the writing of the show from time to time, must have taught the author that lapses in judgment happen in even the best projects.
Overall, Gabaldon sounds very pleased with the creators' work this season. She even praised a scene that was changed from the books, when Jamie meets his son William in the Redcoat camp and gives him his hat. That moment felt very powerful on screen, according to the author.
'I thought they did a great job with the hat scene — an important one, and one the book readers will be thrilled with,' Gabaldon said.
Source: Parade.