Watching the series finale of Outlander, the thought that kept running through my head was “I’m bored. I hope this is over soon.” Spoilers follow.
That is not the ideal way to end an 8-season-long TV show, though it could be worse. When I was watching the Stranger Things series finale I was mostly laughing at how unbelievably stupid, rushed and cheesy it all was.
Don’t get me wrong, some of Outlander’s finale was pretty cheesy also. The extended farewells that occupied the first half of the episode were both tedious and hammy. They felt less like organic farewells and more like fan-service, much like the final half of the Stranger Things finale, now that I think about it.
Things picked up a bit with the battle, but at this point I was mostly just a little miffed, and the battle itself felt out-of-place in a finale. They created a bunch of somewhat artificial tension by having Claire run into the fray, placing herself in danger and making just about every Outlander fan worry that her actions would lead directly to Jamie’s death.
They didn’t, thankfully, but the way he died was incredibly silly. The Loyalist commander, Major Ferguson, charges Jamie on horseback after the fighting is over and the Redcoats are surrendering to the rebels. Jamie fights him off pretty easily and Ferguson is taken prisoner. But nobody thinks to search him for weapons.
I just find this incredibly unrealistic. This is an era when guns are common and officers carry pistols. They don’t tie him up or restrain him, don’t search him for weapons, just set him down and leave him. When Jamie heads over and asks if he’ll surrender, Ferguson says “I’ll never surrender,” and draws his pistol and shoots Jamie dead.
What a stupid way to get yourself killed after all this time. After 8 seasons of struggle and danger, and decades of in-universe survival. To have some random character we’ve mostly just heard about all this time off you with a pistol at the end of the battle. It’s laughable rather than heroic and that takes the tragedy and makes it a joke.
Claire is, of course, distraught and falls upon Jamie’s body where she remains until the next day. During this time, we travel back in time to the very first episode when Frank encounters a ghost staring up at Claire in the window. This is Jamie, and if I’m reading this scene right, it’s Jamie’s ghost after he dies in this battle. His ghost visits Claire in the future and then heads over to the stones, where his presence magically causes the forget-me-nots to grow.
This is basically Jamie’s ghost summoning Claire to the past, to him, creating the loop that starts their love story, which I guess is kind of a neat idea, though the more I think about it, the less impressed I am. After all, there are lots of time travelers now. Claire’s parents were time travelers! Roger’s dad was a time traveler! They’re all over the place, so Jamie creating these circumstances after his death feels a bit odd and also kind of unnecessary. I suppose he does it by accident, so it’s not that he goes there in order to summon her to him, and I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
We get lots of flashbacks to their story which is nice, though it reminds me once again how much I preferred the show when it was set in Scotland and how much better it would have been if they’d simply survived this battle and packed up and went back to Lallybroch.
The final moment of the episode I did like, however. After all these flashbacks we see Jamie and Claire laying there. Claire’s hair has turned white. We know that it gets more and more grey as she expends her healing magic (as it did with the stillborn babe earlier this season) and we have the prophecy from Season 4 that Claire will be at her full power when her hair turns white. Then Jamie opens his eyes and they both gasp. And the episode ends.
Some are calling this an ambiguous ending, and I think that’s true. Some fans believe that they both died and are waking up in the afterlife. Some believe that they both died and are both waking back up to the real world, though if this is true they’re going to have one helluva time explaining things to their friends and family (though I suppose you can handwave a lot of stuff as miracles to devout and superstitious people).
I think Jamie died and Claire healed him. She didn’t die, she just lay with him and her blue light power and love poured into him and he got to wander as a ghost for awhile, and then she brought him back and they grew old together and died in one another’s arms like The Notebook. But it’s ambiguous enough that people can form their own interpretations and the show can keep one foot in the door just in case they decide to come back for another season or a TV movie or something. I don’t think that would be a great idea, but I suppose they now have the option to tackle whatever story remains in Diana Gabaldon’s final book.
Speaking of Gabaldon, we get a funny little post-credits scene with the author at a book signing. One of the women in line asks her about a book she has on the table. It’s Claire’s book. The one she was writing her and Jamie’s story in, and Gabaldon tells her adoring fan that it’s “inspiration.” This is cute, though judging from fan response online a lot of people are confused and have been reading way too much into it. It’s just a little joke, basically, that Gabaldon somehow found this story from the actual Claire and turned it into the Outlander series.
The Things They Left Behind
The other big problem I have with this finale is that it just left so many things unanswered, so many loose threads. A lot of these are storylines created in the last two seasons. Fanny, for instance, was revealed to be a time traveler but then that was just dropped. I can only surmise that her story is going to continue in the second season of Blood of my Blood or some other Outlander spinoff in the Extended Outlander Universe (EOU).
I’m not thrilled by that, however. It’s kind of like how Star Wars has focused way too much on Skywalkers at the expense of other stories. I don’t really think we need to learn more about Fanny, though that’s also partly because I really hated the entire Faith storyline. Bringing Faith back from the dead, having her get killed off before she could reunite with her parents. Having Jane also get killed off before she could find her grandparents. The wild coincidences that led Fanny to Claire and Jamie. William having sex with Jane, aka his niece. It was all a lot of extra noise in a season that needed focus (especially more focus on its protagonists) and in the end it all led nowhere and felt as pointless as, say, killing off Fergus for no reason.
This wasn’t the worst series finale I’ve seen, or the worst final season, and I won’t claim it’s up there with Game Of Thrones or Stranger Things, but it was far from what I hoped for, and I doubt I’ll ever find a reason to rewatch it, or rewatch much of the show once they leave Europe. The finale was just . . . somewhat lackluster. I know a lot of fans loved it and were very emotional and I’m glad about that. I’m glad to hear that this struck a nerve and made people feel powerful emotions, and I did find the last little bit moving. But mostly I’m left rather disappointed and unhappy.
If I’d had it my way, the final season would have seen our heroes decide to leave the Carolinas and Fraser’s Ridge and the war behind them. They were under no obligation to stay. They would have returned to Scotland and the final moments would have been a family gathering, a feast in an old Scottish hall. Roger and Bri and their children, Marsali and Fergus and their kids, Claire and Jamie, Lord John Grey and William, celebrating Christmas or something. Jamie reading The Hobbit to the kids around a crackling fire. Maybe that’s less poetic than the ending they came up with, but it would have been satisfying in a way this wasn’t. It also would have avoided the very silly way they decided to kill Jamie.
But what do I know? I’m just a curmudgeonly old TV critic who wanted a happy ending for these characters who have struggled so much, lost so much and fought so hard to be together. What did you think of Season 8 and the series finale?
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