When Sam Heughan arrived on the set of historical drama Outlander for the very first time back in 2014, he thought it’d be over as quickly as it began.
“I remember saying to Davey, my driver, on the first day when he asked me how long it would last and I said, ‘Oh, maybe two seasons max,’” the Scottish actor revealed recently in a chat with news.com.au. “And there we are, 12, 13 years later. It’s amazing.”
It has been a great run, indeed. The time-travelling Starz series went on to become a global smash-hit, with viewership reaching more than 40 million in the US alone.
But all good things must come to an end and the eighth season of Outlander, which premieres locally on BINGE on March 7, will serve as its final bow.
“It’s a kaleidoscope of emotions really, fractionated between bittersweet and a happiness that it’s over, that we can go on and do other things, but also sadness to say goodbye to everyone that we love,” the 45-year-old actor said.
Co-star Caitriona Balfe, 46, also spoke to us ahead of the show’s Season 8 premiere. She has played the female lead in the series – which is based on the novels by Diana Gabaldon – since day one alongside Heughan, and will miss turning up to the Scotland set every day.
Stream Outlander Season 8 from March 7 on BINGE, available on Hubbl.
“It’s bittersweet, isn’t it?” said the Irish actress, who scored four consecutive Golden Globe nominations for her role from 2016 to 2019.
“There’s an enormous amount of pride about what we achieved and gratitude for the fact that we got to play these characters for these many years. And it’s sad to say goodbye to them. I feel like we gave it our all for over a decade.”
The series follows Balfe’s character Claire, a married British WWII nurse from 1945 who is accidentally transported to 18th-century Scotland, where she falls in love with dashing Highland warrior Jamie Fraser (Heughan).
She is forced to marry him to survive, but the pair’s relationship quickly goes from arrangement to passion, leaving a time-travelling Claire torn between two men in different centuries.
Years pass and Claire and Jamie build a life together while experiencing love, loss, war and adventure.
“[Their] love is eternal. And I think we’ve proved already, and I think fans know that their love is,” Heughan said. “They cannot survive without each other, but they will always be together. And I think that’s what we hope for them.”
“But there’s also the whole community and the family that are now part of this story. And I think their love encapsulates or encapsulates all of them. I think we hope for the best for all of them. It is a love story ultimately, so hopefully it’s happily ever after.”
The trailer for Season 8 teased the potential death of Jamie, but neither Heughan nor Balfe knew of their characters’ fate as they were being drip-fed the scripts by executive producer and writer Matthew B. Roberts.
“When I think about the pressure and the kind of responsibility that Matt was under to be able to carry this show to the end, it’s a really tough job,” Balfe said. “I think he wanted to not have the peanut gallery telling him what they wanted, and so he kept his cards quite close to his chest.”
“It meant that as the season was going on, we were just getting the knowledge of what was happening script by script, which sort of gave it an interesting new challenge for us.”
But despite the epic journey their characters have gone on, both Heughan and Balfe agree that if they could time-travel to any era of Outlander, they would return to Season 1.
“It’s hard to not think of the magic of the first season,” Balfe said. “I think just because it was so new and I think that that newness and that sort of excitement about all of the firsts, it’s sort of hard. But I also, I think season five … Season seven was also really great to film.”
“Just mention them all,” Heughan added with a laugh. “Season three was great: South Africa. Number two … There were so many, but I think you’re right. Going back to those first days, it’d be kind of cool to be a witness to watch it and see ourselves going, ‘What are we doing?’ And that would’ve been really cool to go back and watch.”
As for the show’s legacy, Heughan believes the TV show will live on, especially in Scottish history.
“It’s created a great interest in Scotland. It has its own spin-off TV show [Blood of My Blood] and I hope people just remember what an amazing love story that Katrina and I were part of,” he said.
“I’m very proud of the legacy that it’s leaving, the people that’s employed, the industry that it’s created in Scotland and the tourism there. I’m really happy with where it’s at and now I think it’s really cool that we can now sit back and become fans ourselves.”
Outlander Season 8 will be available to stream from Saturday, March 7 on BINGE, with new episodes dropping weekly.
Outlander Season 8 will also be available on demand with episodes premiering express on Showcase at 4pm on Saturdays as well as at 8:30pm.