Outlander Season 8 premieres Friday, March 6 on STARZ. New episodes drop weekly on Fridays.<\/p>\n
After 12 years, the Outlander team is saying \u201cfeumaidh mi falbh\u201d \u2013 Gaelic for \u201cI have to go\u201d \u2013 to its fans with this eighth and final season. Overall, the series has been a pretty faithful adaptation of author Diana Gabaldon\u2019s bestselling Outlander books, which document the time-traveling love affair between Scottish Highlander Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan) and former WWII Army nurse Claire Randall (Caitr\u00edona Balfe). However, what\u2019s most interesting about this final season is that the Outlander TV series writers have found themselves in a Game of Thrones situation. They\u2019ve caught up to the storylines in Gabaldon\u2019s 2021 book, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, and now they\u2019ve had to forge their own original ending. And though Gabaldon is a series consultant and sometime episodic writer, she has yet to complete her last book to close out her Fraser chronicles, which has book purists sweating. <\/p>\n
In the first three episodes of Season 8 made available for review, there\u2019s a compelling balance in following the everyday lives of the core characters at Fraser\u2019s Ridge, North Carolina, with the forward movement towards resolving outstanding story arcs like the impending Revolutionary War and the more supernatural elements of the series present from the very first season. The loyal audience is also subtly rewarded with clever inclusions of the show\u2019s deep bench of characters that add to the sense of finality driving this season\u2019s storytelling. <\/p>\n
Smartly, Outlander has always been brave enough to craft several original storylines over its eight seasons. Both creator Ronald D. Moore (God of War<\/a>) and current showrunner Matthew B. Roberts<\/a> have diverted from Gabaldon\u2019s text before, and this final season features one of its most dramatic departures with the revelation that Jamie and Claire\u2019s first child, Faith \u2013 who they thought was stillborn \u2013 may have survived. In fact, she may have grown up to have her own children, one of which is named Fanny and came to live with the Frasers at the end of Season 7B<\/a>. It\u2019s a brain-bender for sure, but it\u2019s also in keeping with the story\u2019s central conceit that Claire and her kin can travel through time via standing stones. The opening episodes add more substance to that mystery and showcase the great work of actress Florrie Wilkinson, who imbues an \u2018old soul\u2019 quality into young Fanny. Her scenes with Balfe and Heughan are some of the most memorable of the early episodes. <\/p>\n