As most fans would tell you, Outlander pretty much never disappoints, and the recent Season 7 midseason finale (Before yet another Droughtlander!) was just as packed with goodies as always. Fans witnessed a number of big twists, reveals and a cliffhanger, and (as usual) there was a ton of action that had to be packed into that one episode. Author Diana Gabaldon just got candid about the episode, and seemed to reveal how she must feel about the show overall.
What Did Diana Gabaldon Think Of Outlander’s Season 7 Midseason Finale?
Any dedicated Outlander viewer probably knows that Diana Gabaldon has been involved a bit with the show from the very beginning (even writing some of the Claire-saving Season 7 premiere). While she’s publicly voiced dislike over a choice or two that those behind the romantic series have made before (like with one naughty stable scene in Season 5), she’s generally been on board with how they’ve adapted her expansive novels.
After viewing the mid-season finale, she spoke to Parade about the episode, and her comments make a lot of sense when you consider how much she’s written about Claire, Jamie and their friends and enemies in her books:
I thought [the season] was amazingly successful at taking an immense amount of material, distilling it into vivid strands and weaving them into a mostly coherent and very absorbing story. While it necessarily had to abbreviate and condense—and in some cases simplify or omit complex incidents and plotlines—they mostly refrained from making up extraneous things that weren’t in the books, while including an immense amount of the original dialogue and incidents. I really appreciated that.
I especially love that, even though her words are incredibly supportive, she did throw just the tiniest bit of shade by saying that Season 7 had “a mostly coherent and very absorbing story.” We see you not fully saying what’s on your mind in an interview, Diana, and we approve!
But I digress…It would be understandable for the writer of a book series as popular, influential, and chock-a-block with action and characters to get up in arms about something that’s been left out when that story becomes a book to screen adaptation. This author, however, has been watching her time travel-filled, historical love story on the small screen for nearly a full decade, so she gets what it takes when it comes to “distilling it” for TV.
The season so far has been light on diverging into totally different areas that weren’t a part of her seventh novel, An Echo in the Bone (though they have done things before like extend the life of a certain beloved gruff rebel), which is to be expected when the book being adapted is as long as that one is. That paperback edition comes in at 864 pages, with all of her other Outlander books also topping 800 pages, and by quite a lot sometimes.
So, it’s good to see that she understands how much they need to (using a very professional term) smoosh the details and some of her incredible characters together, or simply omit them, in order to get the fantasy drama on the air. Though, considering that we’re not sure exactly when in 2024 the season will return for its final eight episodes, you can bet that there are probably plenty of fans who wish everything she’s ever written about Claire and Jamie could be put on screen so that they hardly ever have to go without new episodes.