‘Satisfying Tribute to Our Fans’: Outlander’s Caitriona Balfe Teases What’s Next for Claire in Season 8

While promoting The Amateur, Caitríona Balfe spoke with CBR about the upcoming eighth and final season of Outlander. Balfe plays Claire, the star of the series, who time travels back from the 20th to the 18th century, where she meets and marries Scottish Jacobite Jaime (Sam Heughan).

Based on Diana Gabaldon’s novels, the series follows the adventures of the Frasers for over eleven years and across continents from Scotland to France to the American colonies. With season 8 concluding the series, Balfe gave assurances that “there’s a lot of loose ends that are (sort of) tied up” and that it does provide a “satisfying” ending for the fans.

The actress is currently on tour promoting The Amateur, a techno revenge spy thriller by director James Hawes and starring Rami Malek. The Irish actress sat down with Grae Drake from CBR to talk about the movie and her real-life abilities to handle modern technology which she assured was “so bad” and “useless at it.” Drake also managed to get some time to talk about Outlander, with Balfe giving their two cents on what’s upcoming.

“I don’t know what I can say, or somebody swoops in and kills me,” Balfe said when asked if any more of Claire’s magical abilities show up in season 8. “I think, I think that we see more of the relationships

maybe, maybe that’s I think there’s a lot of loose ends that get sort of tied up, and I hope that those are kind of satisfying conclusions for people.”

It Was Very Emotional to Film

She added, “But I think, it was such an emotional season to film, and there were so many goodbyes and to places and people that we loved and that we’ve loved for so long. You know? I just really hope that it’s satisfying tribute to our fans, because we would never have been on air for that long without them, and they’ve they’ve been so incredible and stuck with us for so long. So, my hope is that they’re happy at the end.”

My hope is that they’re happy at the end.

The last season of the show dropped a major bombshell regarding Jamie and Claire’s firstborn, who seemingly was stillborn, though this is apparently not the case. Hope was originally believed to have died in the second season of the show in France, though in the seventh season, William saves sisters Franny and Jenny from life at a brothel. Claire later catches Franny singing a 20th-century song she sang to Hope

 and discovers that it is also the name of Franny and Jenny’s mother.

Speaking on when we’d receive answers, Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts stated, “You’ll have to wait for season 8.” The final season of the Starz series is expected to drop in 2026. Prior to that, a prequel series following Claire and Jamie’s respective parents titled Outlander: Blood of My Blood will be released in the summer of 2025.