Before Jamie Fraser became the face of Outlander, shocking casting rumors suggest icons like Sean Connery and Liam Neeson were once in the running—until a last-minute creative breakthrough changed everything forever. What fans didn’t know is that producers even filmed multiple endings, leaving the cast unsure which version of reality would actually make it to air
Nothing is lost, only changed.
And Outlander fans are about to experience a major one when the show airs its series finale May 15.
Premiering in 2014, the period drama based on Diana Gabaldon’s books introduced viewers to Caitríona Balfe‘s Claire Randall—a World War II nurse who is thrust back to 1743 Scotland—and Sam Heughan‘s Jamie Fraser, a Scottish warrior who is forced to wed the already-married Claire before they end up falling in love.
Fast forward to season eight—following much more time travel, romance, and historic rebellions ranging from the Jacobite Risings to the American Revolution—and the series finale brings viewers to the Battle of Kings Mountain, where they will learn Jamie’s fate.
“Fans should brace themselves,” executive producer Matthew B. Roberts recently revealed to TV Insider. “The question of whether Jamie dies at [the battle of] King’s Mountain is the question this entire season has been building toward. We don’t avoid it. We walk straight into it.”
As for the actual fight, it’s “everything you’d expect from Outlander at its best: visceral, emotional, and not quite what anyone is predicting,” he teased. “We don’t do anything the easy way, and we’re not starting now.”
In fact, the showrunner told the outlet multiple endings were filmed.
“The cast does not know which ending made the final cut,” Roberts continued. “They’ll find out when you do. Honestly, I think that’s a beautiful way for it to end. Bring the Kleenex. Bring the whiskey. And maybe watch it twice.”
Starz
However the show concludes, Balfe is just grateful for the journey.
“I think it will remain a constant in our lives for a long time,” the actress told ELLE earlier this month. “What a gift to have been given.”
And one that keeps on giving. Because while Outlander is ending, the second season of its prequel series Outlander: Blood of My Blood is set to return this fall.
As you pop your popcorn and settle in for the series finale, do a little time traveling of your own by revisiting these Outlander facts.
The series deals with Scottish rebels fighting against British rule during the Jacobite risings in the 1700s, and in 2014, Scotland was voting on whether it should become an independent country from the United Kingdom. Cameron apparently wanted to delay the show’s release until after the referendum that September, which makes sense given how very pro-Scotland and anti-England it is. The “no” side won with 55% of the vote, and Scotland continues to be a part of the United Kingdom.
“Everyone has intimacy coordinators [now],” Claire’s Caitríona Balfe told ELLE in May 2026, noting one was first brought in season six. “I feel very grateful to have been a part of that time when that came in. Seeing the before and after, I think it is such a benefit.”
Before having to film their sex scenes in the pilot, Balfe and Tobias Menzies wrote each other letters as Claire and her husband Frank to help create some intimacy between actors who had only just met.
Particularly for the three leads, family dinners could get a bit awkward after their parents watched them enage in explicit sex and torture scenes on a weekly basis.
At PaleyFest in 2014, Balfe revealed that she had heard from various sources that her dad had seen the show. However, she got the news secondhand that he liked the series from her sister since he refused to actually discuss it outright with Balfe.
Menzies had similar reservations.
“I feel a bit odd,” he told E!. “My tummy’s doing a funny thing thinking of my mum watching it, so I think I might have to warn her. Yeah, you’re right. I’m glad we had this conversation.”
Gabaldon admitted that when she was first approached with Sam Heughan as a possibility for Jamie in the Starz series, she found him “grotesque,” but now she thinks he’s perfect. “People say, ‘Do [Sam and Caitríona] look just like your imagination?’” Gabaldon mused. “And I’m like, ‘Well, how could they?’ But they don’t need to. What an actor does is magic.”
“At the outset, I told everyone that we would find Claire first and then Jamie would be the last one cast, and of course it was exactly the opposite,” Moore told E!. “It was really hard to find Claire. Sam came in really early in the process and he was literally the first one we cast. We saw the tape and we were like, ‘Oh my god, there he is. Let’s snatch him up now.’”
But the showrunner could’ve used some of that time travel to speed up the process of casting Claire.
“Claire just took a long time,” he continued. “A lot of actresses, a lot of tape, looking for really ineffable qualities. She had to be smart, she had to have a strength of character, and really, she had to be someone that you could watch think on camera. But then suddenly Caitríona’s tape came in and we had that same light-bulb moment.”
“We heard that line so many times we wanted to cut it from the show,” Moore recalled to E!, “but when Cat did it, we all just suddenly were engaged in the scene again, and we all just went, ‘Oh my god, there she is. That’s Claire.’”
Regardless of how positive she then tried to make that word sound, it’s still not a word you would think of when you read how attractive Jamie Fraser is in the books. However, Gabaldon’s mind was totally changed when she watched his screen test, and now we’re not sure we could point to anyone who doesn’t think Heughan is absolutely perfect for the role.
“Caitríona is naturally beautiful and has lovely skin,” Kendrick said. “That’s always a help when, as a makeup artist, your canvas is a good one! If we were to give away all our trade secrets, then unfortunately, they are no longer secrets! What we can tell you is with the long shooting hours and not that much sleep, you can never drink enough water or have too much blusher.” BRB, running to CVS.
He’s also obsessed with another little time travel franchise known as Back to the Future. “I think that is one of the best trilogies ever made,” he told E!, with Balfe adding, “Sam tries to talk about it every day, if he can.”
“Sam has the unfortunate task of having a prosthetic back applied every time his ‘taps aff!’ as the Scots would say,” makeup supervisor Kendrick explained. (‘Taps off’ means to take your top off in Glasgow, by the way.) “The whole process for Jamie’s back scars and many other scars is two hours, 30 mins and it takes three of us to do. There are two large prosthetic pieces to apply and some smaller ones, and every single section needs to be glued onto Sam’s skin, blended and colored up.”
What’s not authentic are the effects of war and journeying through the Highlands. To achieve the look of well-worn clothing, the costumes are attacked with cheese graters, burned with blow torches and aged by tying them up with string and baking them.
As for Stephen Walters, who portrayed Angus, he “uses a special rock to clasp his plaid,” Dresbach noted. “It is used to create what is called a pauper’s knot in the Highlands. At one point his rock was lost and he panicked as a Highlander told him to keep it safe and never let it leave Scotland. We found it and keep it very dear.”
And apparently, it’s Geillis who changed the most.
“I have not read all the books, but I know that, particularly for my character Geillis, that they do take some freedoms with what happens and how it happens and when it happens,” Verbeek added. “So, it’s very intriguing for me too. It’s hard to talk about my part without giving away spoilers.”
Agreed Graham McTavish (Dougan), “Yes, she has the hardest job from the point of view, actually.”
We’re glad for the slight change, too, since as much as we love Jamie and Claire and watching them go through incredible adventures and horrible tragedies, we also welcome some much-needed comic relief.
“I think it’s a really interesting time that we’re setting the show in,” Heughan previously told E!, “the second or third Jacobite rebellion, the battle at Culloden, which was sort of the end of the Highland way of life, so they banned the use of Gaelic language and kilts and the playing of pipes, and all of that kind of culture, so it’s kind of like a doomed race that we meet in the first series.”
And apparently they take orders!
“Sam has been very smart about it,” she continued with a laugh. “He just sort of tweets his love of all things peanut butter and there it arrives!”
