Outlander Fans on Edge: Is the Show Racing Ahead of the Books?
So far, each Outlander season has been based on one of Diana Gabaldon's novels. But this is about to change.
Outlander Season 7 is finally here with the continuation of Claire and Jamie Fraser's story, and fans can't help but feel a little overwhelmed by the beloved series. Don't get this wrong, the first episode of the new season is as gripping and brilliant as ever, but it also got people worried that the show's action will race ahead of the book series on which it is based.
It has been announced that Season 7 will be the penultimate chapter of the time-hopping story, and that Season 8 is set to air the grand finale. But what plot will this finale have?
Diana Gabaldon's books are dearly loved by fans and provide perfect source material for the adaptation. There is one problem, though — the author has written nine novels in the series and is working on the tenth, which may or may not be the last. This raises the burning question of whether Starz's adaptation will run ahead of the novels for the next two seasons to bring the story to the book ending, and whether Gabaldon will provide the filmmakers with a different ending she has in mind.
Unfortunately, it looks like the current and future seasons will indeed be supersized with storylines from the three most recent Outlander books.
'Season 7 is actually a melding of Books 6, 7 and 8,' Outlander executive producer Maril Davis told TV Guide. 'Season 8 will be all Book 9 pretty much. We might bring in some stuff that we didn't do in Books 7 and 8. But it will mostly be us doing Book 9.'
As for the unreleased Book 10, the executives decided to leave the finale for Gabaldon readers only.
'We won't do what [Gabaldon's] done, just because I think we feel that would be slightly disrespectful. Obviously, she has the last book coming out, and we want her to have that ending for herself,' Davis said at the ATX Television Festival (via Slash Film).
Though the executive producer sounds confident in the writers' success, fans fear that changing the storylines and speeding up the books for the adaptation may harm the beloved story. Taking creative liberties when adapting popular novels proved to be a disaster for Game of Thrones, so now people are worried that Outlander could repeat its fate if the showrunners stray too far from the source material.
Source: TV Guide, Slash Film.