5 biggest questions we need answered in Outlander’s eighth and final season
Period drama Outlander returns for an eighth season this weekend, and fans of the epic love story between time-travelling World War II nurse Claire and 18th-century highlander Jamie Fraser are hoping the final season will resolve some outstanding questions.
The seventh season ended on a cliffhanger, but there are also other mysteries to be solved, including two that featured in the first ever episode of the series. And of course, everyone is desperate to know whether either Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Caitriona Balfe) will die before the end credits.
Although Outlander is based on Diana Gabaldon’s novels, she hasn’t finished writing the final instalment, so there are no clues to be had on how the series could end. The previous books may offer some hints, but at the US premiere of the new season on Monday, Karen Pirie star Lauren Lyle, who plays Jamie’s stepdaughter Marsali in Outlander, teased: ‘If you’ve read the books, you still don’t know what’s coming.’
Here are just five of the burning questions that need to be answered in Outlander’s final 10 episodes:
Did Jamie and Claire’s daughter Faith live?
One of the most harrowing scenes was in the second season episode ‘Faith’, in which Claire gave birth to a stillborn daughter, whom she named Faith.
Cradling her dead baby, she sang: ‘I do like to be beside the seaside,’ and we heard the song once more in the seventh season finale episode set in 1778, sung by young orphan Fanny.
Claire was shocked that Fanny could know the music hall song, as it was written in 1907, and when Fanny revealed her late mother’s name was Faith, Claire and Jamie wondered whether their daughter could somehow have survived and lived for years without them knowing.
If Faith lived, what happened to her? If she survived and was Fanny’s mother, how did she die? Did the mysterious healer Master Raymond, who tended to the bereft Claire, raise Faith himself?
Fans have speculated that Master Raymond may be an ancient time traveller with a master plan, so his potential involvement raises even more questions.
Where or when will Bree and Roger end up, and what will happen to Buck?
Claire and Jamie’s daughter Brianna, and her husband Roger MacKenzie were caught up in all sorts of time-travelling confusion in season seven.
They returned to the 20th century to get medical help for their daughter Mandy, but Roger had to travel back to 18th-century Scotland when devious Rob Cameron kidnapped their young son Jemmy.
Roger, along with his ancestor Buck MacKenzie, ended up in 1739 (more than 30 years further back in time than where his in-laws were), but was eventually reunited with Brianna and their children there.
They will likely return to Claire and Jamie’s time – even though it means they will have left their 1980s renovation of family pile Lallybroch unfinished – but the future is less clear for poor old Buck.
He accidentally travelled to the 20th century and bonded with the MacKenzies, but his disappearance from his own time meant the date of his death was recorded.
If he left Brianna and Roger and returned safely home, you would expect there to be a record of his reappearance in Roger’s history books. And the recurring pain he mentioned in season seven doesn’t bode well for his long-term survival either.
Who planted the forget-me-nots at Craigh Na Dun?
Cast your mind back to the very first episode, and the reason Claire returned to the standing stones at Craigh Na Dun she had first visited with her husband Frank.
Are you going to watch Outlander’s final season?
She went back alone to investigate the forget-me-not flowers growing there as they were not native to the area, and then heard the buzzing sound that drew her close to the stones and sent her hurtling back in time.
Many fans believe that someone purposely planted the flowers, as if they had not been present, Claire would never have travelled to the past and met Jamie.
Popular theories are that Claire may have planted them herself at some point in time, or it may have been the work of her grandchildren, Jemmy and Mandy, who can also time travel. Or perhaps we should consider Master Raymond once again, and whether it could all be part of a grander scheme.
Will the mystery of Jamie’s ghost be solved?
Before Claire travels back to the 18th century for the first time, there is a scene in the first episode where a man in Highland clothing can be seen watching her in her hotel room from the street below.
It’s widely believed to be Jamie, but since he can’t time travel, the theory goes that it is, in fact, Jamie’s ghost. This could mean that Jamie and Claire die at different times – many fans believe he will die in the final episode – and his ghost is seeking her out over time, waiting until she dies and joins him to rest in peace.
Jamie has also had some very intense dreams of the future in recent seasons, including one where he described seeing Claire and a telephone, despite not knowing what it was. It could be that in his dreams, he visits Claire’s future and even manages to send a ghostly version of his body to watch over her.
In an interview with TV Insider, showrunner Matthew B Roberts doesn’t promise that the mystery will be solved, saying that fans ‘may have to live with’ not knowing, and adding: ‘I can’t say how they’re going to deal with it.’
Even if the apparition isn’t explained in the final season, author Diana Gabaldon won’t leave fans puzzling forever.
‘The ghost is Jamie – but as for how it fits into the story, All Will Be Explained – in the last book,’ she says.
Does Jamie die?
The final episodes of Outlander are being carefully guarded until they air, and Sam Heughan revealed in a 2024 interview that even he didn’t know exactly how the show will end.
‘We’re going to shoot various endings, but I don’t know which one they will use,’ he said.
It’s possible that Jamie may die, if the final season’s trailer is anything to go by. It reveals that a book written by Claire’s first husband Frank states that Jamie dies in an upcoming battle.
However, our determined Frasers have tried to alter history before (admittedly, not very successfully), and there is another way Jamie’s reported death could be thwarted.
Since the second season, when Parisians dubbed Claire ‘La Dame Blanche,’ she has slowly been growing into her role as an almost mystical healer. It’s possible that Claire becomes the White Lady in the final season and discovers that she has the ability to heal someone on the brink of death, or even someone who has recently died, thus saving her husband if he does fall in battle.
And if Jamie dies, even briefly, that could explain his ghostly presence in the 20th century, too…
Outlander is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video via MGM+. Season eight debuts on March 7.
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