Warning: Contains spoilers on Outlander Season 8, Episode 1
Diehards fans of the Outlander book and TV series have expressed their disappointment with the eighth and final season of the hit show.
After an agonising two-year wait, the last ever season of the Starz series premiered last week – streaming locally on BINGE – much to the excitement of viewers, who have predominantly given the time-travelling series their thumbs up.
However, some fans were not happy with the first episode as they’d prefer for the storyline to match up to Diana Gabaldon’s book series. Notably, Season 8 is the first ever season to diverge from the plot of the beloved nine novels (book 10 is the last but has yet to be written).
Viewers will recall the Season 7 cliffhanger introduced the idea that protagonists Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire’s (Caitríona Balfe) first child Faith Fraser, who was stillborn in Season 2, is still alive.
Stream Outlander Season 8 now on BINGE, available on Hubbl.
The first episode of Season 8, titled “Soul of a Rebel”, continued on this story arc, making it clear that Jamie and Claire believe Faith survived the birth and therefore new characters Jane and Fanny are their biological granddaughters.
But fans have cited on social media that there’s no way Faith could be alive given the series is set in the 1800s where medical advancements were non-existent to help save the baby.
It remains to be seen how the Faith storyline plays out over the course of the final season, as it appears to have been resolved in the first episode. But fans are still outraged that the series even dared to stray from Gabaldon’s books.
“I really hope it’s a red herring,” one wrote on Reddit of Faith potentially being alive. “It cheapens the whole faith story in season two which in my opinion was the best episode of the entire series.”
Another added in a Reddit forum about how the change to Faith’s story “cheapened the significance of the loss of a child”.
The sentiments were similar on X with users also piping up.
“I wouldn’t say I’m outraged but I’m definitely annoyed and want it to go away,” one tweeted, as another wrote, “I watched the season 8 premiere and I’m not sure i like the whole Faith storyline. It just seems forced.”
“The Faith thing is rubbing us all the wrong way,” another tweeted, as one agreed, “This is the Outlander series at its worst. They’ve got to get back to their roots and get better. I was mad at the Faith storyline is unnecessary and serves what point?”
There has also been uproar over an apparent shift in Claire’s character in the opening scene of the first episode where she and Jamie meet a man called Vasquez.
They pretend they want to conduct business with him and are interested in going into the prostitution market. But really the pair want to get information out of him regarding Jane and Fanny, and thus their daughter Faith.
When Vasquez reveals that he stole the sisters from their father, who was the captain of a ship he looted before throwing their mother, Faith, overboard to her death, an enraged Claire quickly grabs a knife and in a murderous rage stabs Vasquez to death.
This personality shift in Claire did not sit well with fans, who recalled Claire taking the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm back in Season 4.
“I hated the first scene. It seemed overly melodramatic, like they’re trying to hook people who haven’t seen the show before. It bordered on corny; I was cringing,” one tweeted, as another echoed, “The first scene was TERRIBLE! Felt like an afterthought added later.”
“Also, the fact that Claire killed that guy when she had taken an oath not to kill just didn’t make sense. Next scene, she’s waking up to the grandkids! What!?!”
The show’s leading stars are the first to admit that they were also surprised with some storylines in the last ever season.
In a chat with news.com.au ahead of the Season 8 premiere last week, Balfe said neither she nor Heughan knew of their characters’ fate as they were being drip-fed the scripts by executive producer and writer Matthew B. Roberts.
“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,” the Irish actress told us.
Added Scottish actor Heughan, “We finish season seven on a huge cliff hanger that shows that perhaps Faith lived and survived, which is a huge surprise. Also, I guess to us as actors, we were also equally surprised. So we see them gain new family members and I think Jamie and Claire are quite determined to find out how that happens.”
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.
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, which all comes to a conclusion in this final season.
Outlander Season 8 is now streaming on BINGE, with new episodes dropping weekly