‘Outlander’ Mastermind Diana Gabaldon Explains Why She Recommended Cutting A Key Character From The ‘Blood Of My Blood’ Season Finale

The Season 1 finale of Outlander: Blood of My Blood provides very different endings for Jamie and Claire’s parents — one couple staying together and one couple being torn apart. Although Blood of My Blood is based on Outlander author Diana Gabaldon’s yet-to-be-written prequel books about Jamie’s parents (though she does share excerpts occasionally on her Facebook page), it’s not entirely faithful. Mainly because Blood of My Blood showrunner Matthew B. Roberts decided to have Claire’s parents be time travelers on the Starz series rather than be dead, as they are in Gabaldon’s story.

But that divergence didn’t stop Gabaldon from writing Episode 9 (“Braemar”) and cowriting Episode 10 (“Something Borrowed”) with Roberts. (She also serves as consulting producer and has written and co-written episodes for the final season of Outlander, coming in early 2026.)

DECIDER spoke to Gabaldon about the scene the TV writers cut on her counsel, the biggest threats Ellen and Brian and Julia and Henry will be facing in Season 2, and the status of Outlander Book 10.

**Spoilers for Outlander: Blood of My Blood Episode 10 “Something Borrowed,” now streaming on Starz**

---

DECIDER: There were two big surprises when it came to Brian and Ellen’s story in the finale — the marriage being actually between Dougal and Maura Grant, and then Brian killing Malcolm in self-defense. Are these events how you envision them for your prequel books?

DIANA GABALDON: That’s not what happens to Malcolm in the book. I don’t kill him at all. Something else may happen. But no, that’s not what happens.

As far as Dougal and Maura, I hadn’t thought of that, but I think it’s fine, so I’ll probably use it …  I thought that was quite surprising. 

When it comes to Malcolm’s death, how is that going to impact Brian and Ellen’s marital bliss? … Will they be in some sort of hiding?

Uncle Mac is going to continue to cause trouble, which is just about as specific as I can get with that … They’re not in deep hiding through most of Season 2. They’re being threatened a lot. But no, they’re not completely hiding out.

But the bigger threat, I think, will be from Lord Lovat. 

How have you felt about certain characters that you’ve had that have become these bigger players? For instance, Arch Bug, who has been out for Henry all season. Were you surprised at how big of a part he became in the show? 

Yeah, I was, but he does it very well. I think that’s why they enlarged his part is because the actor [Terence Rae] is so good … That’s very much as I would have imagined [the young Arch Bug]. 

Especially with his transformation in Season 7 of Outlander, where he was this big villain.

A tiger doesn’t change his stripes.

You’ve made it clear that Blood of My Blood veers dramatically from the prequel books since Julia and Henry are time-traveling versus dead. What was it like to write these Julia and Henry scenes for the two episodes you contributed to?

Writing scripts, by and large, is a lot like writing comic books. … I have a beat sheet for each episode, which is basically this happens, then this happens, then this happens. I can mess around with it to a certain extent. And I’m not above including a scene that I think is better than what they had. And sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it is, and they take it out anyway.

But it’s more that I consider this entertainment rather than, with the novels, a transmutation of life, so to speak. The novels feel very real to me. I can see what happens. And the people are real, which they’re not in terms of the show. It’s like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. You know what the parameters of this character are, and so you use those within the context of what you’re doing.

When it came to what happens to their story — at the end, Henry pushes Julia and William to go through the stones and stays behind — do you have input in that? Or is that a beat that the showrunners created? 

That was their idea, and I remember when I read the first draft of that script, saying, “Look, you know, you’re going to have problems with this because…” and I told them technical things about time travel — “How are they going to go through if this? If that?” And so they went back and kind of refined their philosophy of time travel, which isn’t necessarily mine, but they came up with a reason why Julia could travel. Which was not something I would have thought of to start with, but it seems to work all right. There was evidently a reason why that happened, and Henry didn’t go through.

Where will we be seeing Julia and Henry in Season 2?

I can’t go into detail there because what they do with Henry in the very beginning is both very dramatic and heart-wrenching.

In “Braemar,” we saw Seema, who’s the prostitute that Henry had slept with when he had PTSD, and it felt like she was going to come back up again. But then she didn’t, at least not in the finale. Was that something left on the cutting room floor, or is she promising trouble for Season 2?

She was left on the cutting room floor on my advice. I write these, but then other people rewrite them. And in one of the rewrites, they had Seema popping out of the brothel tent, seeing Henry with Julia, sidling up to him very possessively and fondling him. And Julia is saying something [like], “Do you know my husband?” or “Henry, do you know this woman?” And Seema says [imitating a breathless voice], “Of course, he knows me in the most intimate and wifely of ways.” 

I wrote a comment and said, “Are you sure you want her to do this? At this point in the plot, where they’re getting ready to ride off hurriedly and escape? You’re going to cause this kind of trouble between them?” And evidently, they thought better of it. And so she just comes out looking cranky. She may or may not say something in the next episode. 

Reminiscent of how they’re handling Faith in the [Outlander] TV show, there’s tons of theories about baby William, and possibly he’s Jamie’s brother, William. What’s your advice to the fans — that this is not true for the books, but true for the show? 

Yeah, that’s pretty much what I tell them. They say, “Oh, you know, this baby William,” referring to baby William as Claire’s brother. And I’m saying, “Well, no, he’s not. Because he doesn’t exist, because his parents don’t either.”

I didn’t want to write Julia and Henry’s story for assorted reasons, which I didn’t lay them all out for Matt because he was gung ho to write it. So basically I said, “Look, I’m never going to write their story. If you want to, that’s fine. Be my guest.”… So he went ahead and wrote that alone. But I do see it when it comes in as scripts. 

As I say, it’s like writing a comic book. I don’t take it personally, but these people don’t seem real to me. They don’t have to for me to be doing a good job on the script. 

For Season 2, are they going off your ideas still, or is it more divergent? 

Season 2 is more them than me. I do put in comments when they send me the beat sheets. I say, “Well, I propose to do this — you can bear that in mind, or you can go off and do that.” And sometimes it’s one and sometimes it’s the other, depending on how they’ve laid things out. They change their minds all the time, too, depending on what else has happened. Sometimes they try something and it just doesn’t work. Or something else happens, and suddenly it is a revelation to them.

For instance, in Season 1, at the boar hunt where Murtaugh gets the boar, they told me that they hadn’t been intending him to even meet Jocasta. But she was just there, and they wanted to draw attention to him having killed the boar. So they have this MacKenzie sister, who basically had nothing else to do in the plot, say to him, “Weren’t you afeared?” They noticed that [Rory Alexander] really had chemistry with [Sadhbh Malin], so they thought, “Huh, maybe we should make something of that,” so they did.

Which works for what they’ve done in Outlander in Seasons 4 and 5 with their relationship, but obviously not something from the books. … I’ve read that Murtagh is one of your favorite characters of Blood of My Blood.

I just love Rory Alexander. He does a wonderful job.

Was him gifting Ellen the boar’s tusk bracelets as you pictured it? Since that is something we know to be true [to the books].

Yes, I think so. The details might vary a little bit when I get to writing that.

[Brian and Ellen’s] story ended with the fiery crosses being lit as a call to the clans for the Jacobite rebellion. How involved are Brian and Ellen going to be in this part of Scottish history? As much as Jamie and Claire after them?

Season 2 actually has quite a bit of historical stuff regarding the Jacobite rising. There’s the Battle of Sheriffmuir and a lot of warfare attending it. There’s some really good stuff involving the people who are fighting, mainly Dougal, and some of the other men. This then kind of subdivides part of the season, in that part of it is the women’s story, and another part of it is the men’s story. 

Is the plan still three prequel books?

That’s what I’m thinking, but that’s just because of the shape of history. You have the risings of 1714/’15, which is what we’re dealing with here in these scripts. And then there is another, very abortive, rising in 1719. And then there’s the big one, which is the ’45, which of course is largely covered in the Outlander books. So I don’t know whether it’s a duology or a trilogy. It kind of depends on how far we get with Book 2. And if there’s anything of a dramatic nature that I can use in between 1719 and 1745.

Well, there is the birth of Jamie Fraser [born in 1721]. 

Yes. I have written that as a matter of fact.

For Season 2, are you contributing to any of the scripts for Blood of My Blood? 

Yeah, I’ve written 209.

So you’re keeping that penultimate spot? 

It seems to be. I don’t know whether they think I write good cliffhangers or what.

Do you have a say in which episodes you write?

They say, “Would you like to write this one?” I say, “Yeah, sure. Why not?” It doesn’t make a lot of difference to me which of the episodes I write. They all have their pluses and minuses. It’s more, what else am I doing in my life where I have time to write a good script. 

Is it Outlander keeping you busy? 

Yes. I’m working very hard on the 10th book, which is called A Blessing for a Warrior Going Out. You reach these stages in the writing where suddenly a whole lot of stuff comes together. And so you’re not frantically, but very very dedicatedly, [working] to keep things moving and keep them in mind. If you walk away from a book for very long, it doesn’t exactly die on you, but it goes dormant, and you have to work really hard to get back in to where you were. So you try not to leave it, if you can help it.

The ending showed up for me all of a sudden. And with that, it just fell into place. When you have the ending, it becomes much easier to write what leads up to that because you know where you’re going.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask — we should not be expecting Book 10 to correlate with the premiere of Outlander Season 8?

No, I couldn’t manage that kind of timing. I mean, it may turn up sometime in 2026. I hope so.

We’ll happily take Book 10 whenever it arrives. 

Well, that’s what I figure [laughs]. That’s usually how it works. 

---

This interview has been formatted and edited for clarity.

---

Caitlin Gallagher is a New Jersey-raised, NYC-based entertainment writer. When not writing about or watching TV, she can be found planning her next Halloween costume, crying over rescue animals, or praising Season 2 of The Leftovers.