The Outlander book series still has two novels to go, but the Starz adaptation may be on course to its conclusion. At least, according to its leading man. In a March 2021 interview for Square Mile, Sam Heughan said he knows the direction of how Outlander will end, and, uh, cue the freaking alarms.
It's rather optimistic to hope the Outlander TV series will last 10 seasons to match the 10 books about Jamie and Claire that Diana Gabaldon has planned, and Heughan's comments sure to seem to emphasize that. When Tom Ellis, actor and friend of Heughan, asked him if he knows when Outlander will finish, Heughan answered, "I think I do. I can see the direction it's going."
Heughan gave a similar statement to GoldDerby in July 2020 when he said, "As we get further on in the sort of the lifetime of this show, we're going into Season 6 now, I think, yeah, I can see where the end might possibly be."
In both interviews, Heughan spoke of how grateful he is for the role of Jamie Fraser and the career growth it has afforded him... but there was a "but" in his response. "I don't want it to end prematurely. I love the character. I love the part. I love my job. It's changed my life," Heughan said. "But I'm ready for other things."
Ahead of the Square Mile interview, Heughan made a promising remark about a potential Outlander Season 7 and how he wanted to make the show for "many more" years. So the safest way to interpret all of this may be that Season 6 won't be the last, but the show may have an endgame in the near future planned.
When it comes to how the show will end the saga, Gabaldon told The Dipp in June 2020 that no one knows the book series's ending other than her, but she did let Heughan in on how Jamie's ghost will come into play at the end. "I showed the final scene to both Sam and [show creator] Ron Moore for a specific reason, which I won't tell you," the author said. "They don't know any more than that."
Considering Heughan's comments, the show is probably building toward its own unique end — blending book storylines, eliminating others, and perhaps mainly ignoring what will happen in Book 10. But at least at the end of the Starz series, how Jamie's ghost visits Claire in the 1940s will be true to Gabaldon's vision.
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Images: Starz