Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe were exhausted by the time they finished saying goodbye to Outlander. What will it be like for the fans?
The seventh season of Outlander finally ended earlier this month with an emotional, surprising finale. Now the wait is on for the eighth and final season of this show, which has enraptured fans with a story about a love so powerful not even oceans of time can hold it back.
Although we won’t be watching new episodes for a while, the cast and crew have already wrapped on season 8. Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan, who play lovebirds Clare and Jamie Fraser, talked to Collider about filming the final season, which was as emotional as you’d expect. “The leading up to it was the hardest part,” Balfe said. “A lot of people were feeling very out of sorts. The anxiety of the impending ending was quite intense for me anyway. And then, there was a lot of ugly crying on my behalf.”
I imagine viewers will have a hard time saying goodbye to characters they’ve spent over a decade getting to know, so it’s easy to understand why it would be hard for the actor who’d spent years working closely together. “The last day was emotional, but so were the weeks, even months, beforehand,” Heughan said. “Sometimes there were things happening or emotions where I’d be like, ‘Where is this coming from? What is this?’ And you’d realize, ‘Oh, my God, it’s because we’re doing the last season.'”
“There were days like when we did the last final read-through where I was crying, but then the next day, I’d be good with it. You make your peace. And then, we kept getting reminded, throughout the show. There would be these moments where you were like, “Oh, this might be the last time that I work with this person, or the last time we see this location.” There were multiple goodbyes. It was so draining. It was so tiring because you were constantly feeling like you were on this roller coaster of emotions. I can’t even imagine what it feels like for the fans.”
Fans will find out when the eighth and final season of Outlander airs either late this year or early in 2026; we don’t have a firm release date yet.
Outlander season 8 will deliver the “traditional feels” along with something new
The season 7 finale left fans with a lot of questions. Did Faith, the daughter that Jamie and Claire thought they lost much earlier in their relationship, actually survive? Will Jamie be able to repair the relationships with his friend Lord John Grey and illegitimate son William Ransom? And how will this whole Revolutionary War business wrap up?
Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts answered exactly none of those questions when talking to TV Insider, but did say that the final season will try to deliver the emotional ending that fans expect. “I think these characters and these stories mean something to people, and we were very careful in crafting a season that brings those feels to the [surface],” he said. “And we wanted to make sure that that ride that you take in Season 8 gives you all the traditional feels ofOutlander.”
The feels are usually the most important part of any TV show or movie; we watch so we can be moved. But after eight seasons, it can get a bit predictable. Roberts promised that season 8 would bring the “traditional feels” but also said that there will “hopefully [be] some that you’ve never experienced before.”
I admire Roberts’ dedication to being as vague as possible about what’s coming. Outlander fans: you will feel something.
