Outlander fans are still reeling after watching last Friday’s shocking Season 7 finale. In addition to providing us with new romantic moments between Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe), a long-awaited reunion between Roger (Richard Rankin) and Brianna (Sophie Skelton), and the end of Jamie’s run with the Continental Army, the Starz hit also upended everything we knew about the Fraser family tree.
**Spoilers for Outlander Season 7 Episode 16 “A Hundred Thousand Angels,” now streaming on Starz**
The Outlander Season 7 finale ends with Claire emotionally telling her husband she thinks that their firstborn daughter, Faith, survived after all. After six seasons of believing that their baby was stillborn, the Frasers now have to grapple with the notion that Faith miraculously lived and eventually gave birth to Jane Pocock (Silvia Presente) and her little sister Fanny (Florrie Mae Wilkinson). If true, that not only means that Jamie and Claire are now responsible for the care of their long-lost granddaughter, Fanny, but that Jamie’s son William (Charles Vandervaart) unwittingly fell in love with and slept with his own niece, Fanny!
DECIDER got the chance to touch base with Outlander showrunner Matthew B. Roberts late on Friday afternoon and we immediately pressed the executive producer on the implications of the Faith reveal. We also followed up on the status of a potential Lord John Grey spin-off series, whether or not the Outlander finale sets up new prequel series, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, and if he and fellow executive producer Maril Davis ever considered sparing the life of poor Rollo.
Here’s DECIDER’s spoiler-filled conversation with Outlander architect Matthew B. Roberts…
DECIDER: The one big question I have been wrestling with since I watched the Outlander Season 7 finale is supposing Faith did survive, and she is Jane and Fanny’s mother — as Claire now believes — does that mean that William has slept with his niece? And how are we supposed to feel about that possibility?
MATTHEW B. ROBERTS: Well, if that is true, then yes, he did. And how do you feel about it?
I’m confused. And a little like… I don’t know! I don’t know if I like that level of incest.
Well, he didn’t know.
Right.
So there’s that. You know, again, I think [the audience] having feelings about story points is our job [as writers]. When you’re an audience member and you walk away having, and it doesn’t matter what the feeling is, as long as you’re having opinions about it, this is all good. Then you want to come back and watch more of it.
But we took this little thing about out of the book and we kind of ran with it. And we’ll see where it goes in Season 8, I promise you that. You will literally see how it unfolds and how it affects Jamie and Claire.
You mentioned you took a “little thing” out of the book. I read an interview this morning with Diana Gabaldon in Parade where she said that her theory was you took the idea from a conversation you had where she’d always envisioned some kind of little story about what Master Raymond did to save Faith’s life. Is that true? Do you have any more details? Will we see that fleshed out?
So there’s a conversation between Claire and Jamie [in the books] about ‘Did you ever imagine [what happened to Faith]?’ And then off of that [we created the story]. And yes, we had conversations again with Diana. We had conversations with her. You know, she expanded on it and we obviously expanded even more.
She’s said that she was considering a graphic novel that didn’t come around for certain reasons. Would you bring Master Raymond back and maybe do flashbacks or have him in visions to sort of explain to us like what went down in your in your point of view?
We’re done filming, so. I don’t know if you heard the rumor, but we wrapped
Right, right, right. I meant, like, next season, will there be a return of Master Raymond and any future visions or flashbacks?
Right, right. Well, again, I think you will visually see, we’re going to show you the story. We’re going to show you how… We’re not going to leave it under the table. You’ll see the stories play out.
I know that there’s a prequel series, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, coming as well. I loved the teaser trailer for that. I was curious watching the finale if the nods to Ellen and Brian’s love story were supposed to almost help tee up the prequel or did they come together sort of serendipitously with Brianna’s storyline in 1739?
Yeah, so when we wrote the original script that scene wasn’t in there and we realized it would be horribly, horribly remiss of us if we didn’t have a meeting between Brianna and her grandfather. So we added that in there and there’s a natural conversation that you’re going to have. You know, we’re bringing up how much she supposedly looks like Ellen and all that. So that was a kind of a natural conversation to have. And the fringe benefit of that is it does somewhat tease BOB*, or Blood of My Blood.
Talking about the similarities between Brianna and Ellen, once I was really thinking about it, it somehow didn’t strike me until this episode that Silvia Presente, who plays Jane, does kind of look a lot like Sophie Skelton. Was that also done intentionally to make the audience almost think there could be a Frasier connection here?
There’s definitely that. Obviously, Silvia was brilliant, anyway, so we’re going to cast her whether she looked like that or not. But that was, again, another fringe benefit of it, that there’s a similarity. Then what she brought to the table was, you know, she’s just off the charts, fantastic.
I talked to David Berry earlier this season about Lord John’s storyline and he had mentioned that the idea of a spinoff series about the Lord John series is still something that he would love to pursue. Is that something that you and Maril are perhaps open to still pursuing as well, or do you think the door has shut on more Lord John storylines?
I know Maril had said this and I’ll say it: We would love to do a series about Lord John. There has to be the appetite for it, but we would love to do it. That’s really as much as I can say. I know everybody around it sees him, sees the character, sees how David brings it to life. There’s a lot of mileage there. We know there’s a lot of novellas. You know, it’s there. We just need the venue.
In the finale, Claire says she wants to go home and there’s been teases that we’ll go back to the Ridge in Outlander Season 8. What are you most excited about in terms of revisiting Fraser’s Ridge for fans to see? Is there a character? Is there a new location? What can you tease about the next season and what we might find in the Carolinas?
Well, you know, Fraser’s Ridge, the land is the land, but there’s always something new. We hope to bring something new and fresh to each season of Outlander, and that’s very much in the books. You know, Diana does that a lot of time, in each new book, there’s a new setting or new place. Going home again, I’ll say this, that they’re not just going to go home and twiddle their thumbs. Things are going to happen. A lot of things are going to happen. With only ten episodes for the final season, we had to be very careful of what we brought in from from Book 9 in the sense of staying on track with Jamie and Claire.
One of the saddest deaths of the whole season was Rollo. I know it happens in the books, but was there any discussion, like, maybe we don’t have to kill the dog? Maybe the dog can survive? Is there a reason why you were like, “No, we have to stay true to the storyline “and why it had to come in the finale?
So this is my favorite part of the Outlander world, is when we go off the book, people will be like, “Why did you go off the book?You should have stayed with the book.” But when they like something on the show, like a Rollo, they go, “Why couldn’t you just keep Rollo alive? Because we like them.” We’re like, “But that was in the book?” And you’re like, “But we don’t care.” See, it’s the world that I live in and it’s a very sometimes difficult world to make those choices. And he died of old age. You know, I didn’t kill him. It was in the book. So I’m not taking any blame for this, but the actor that played Rollo, was… You know, it’s hard to film animals.
So is it a relief to not have Rollo going forward on set?
Only in the sense that it’s difficult to film animals and make them always do what’s necessary in a scene. John Bell, who worked with Rollo, did a great job. But it’s also, there’s not a lot of storylines with Rollo, in that sense.
But he’s still so dear to us!
This interview has been edited and formatted for clarity.
*”BOB” is the official production nickname for Outlander: Blood of My Blood.