'Outlander' at PaleyFest: Drinking, Games, and the Promise of a 'Satisfying' Finale
Warning: This post contains Outlander storyline and character spoilers.
It was all fun and games at the Outlander PaleyFest panel. In addition to a whiskey-fueled game of Ne’er Do I Err (aka Never Do I Ever) and a few rounds of the Newlywed Game for Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan, Balfe also engaged in a rousing game of Kill, Marry, Screw.
Executive producer Ronald D. Moore, meanwhile, tried to take an irreverent, light, and double entendre-filled approach when discussing the dark places the show will go when it finally (!) returns on April 4 to finish its freshman season.
“It is a light little tale. It’s fun. It does go to some harrowing places,” Moore said of the second half of the book and his TV adaptation. “I think if you haven’t read the book, I think you would be surprised by the direction it takes and where it goes in the finale. It was one of the things that attracted me to the books in the first place. It was very unexpected. I didn’t see any of that coming. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a fascinating journey to take an audience on.’”
"I am very proud of the way we realized it,” Moore continued. “I’m proud of the actors and the director. I think they were very fearless on the stage and it comes through on the show. The finale — this is a weird word to use if you know the end of the book — is a satisfying ending. There’s a sense of completion to what we’re doing. It culminates… fill in the double entendre here. It is an ending worthy of the story. It will take you places you weren’t expecting to go, which is what the great stories do.”
Author Diana Gabaldon, while jauntily taking a swig of her Outlander-branded scotch, basically confirmed that the finale will follow the novel closely, will include Black Jack beating up and sexually taking advantage of his ginger nemesis, and that it was everything she had hoped for.
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“I once famously said I wanted to see him raped and tortured because I thought that would be the greatest thing,” she said, pausing dramatically and flashing her signature mischievous grin. “And it was. I need to give Tobias credit for that as well. In all seriousness, I have never seen two people do such courageous things on screen before. They did a really wonderful job.”
Heughan corroborated the tease during the Newlywed Game segment when he handed the whiteboard to Tobias Menzies, who was holding the eraser lid to the pen, and instructed him to “rub me out” before they moved on to the second question. Quickly realizing his unintentional pun, he chanted, “Spoiler!” Menzies admitted that the descent into nonconsensual buggery took him by surprise. “I didn’t know very much at all actually. I only had the scenes from the first episode so this has been all quite a journey. I probably wouldn’t have signed up if I had known.” Moore cracked, “He said, ‘Should I read the books?’ Eh, no, you’ll be fine. Enjoy the journey. See where it takes you.”
Heughan had more of an idea how the book played out yet he said this acting adventure was still surprising. “I sped-read the first book and Googled the others. Even when you read stuff, you still don’t know where that’s going to take you as an actor and as a person. I think we know the general idea of where Diana’s books go, but in actually living that, it is really interesting and where our relationship, the three of us, is at the end of this season is really a strange but interesting place. As Ron said, satisfying.” (Of course, this was followed by more side eyes and giggles.)
It led Moore to reiterate what he has been saying all along about adapting the massively popular franchise. “They are different forms and it is a different experience to watch something than to read it. I can’t really tell you that I have a master plan for Season 5, 6, or 7 [but] the intent as always is to continue to stay as true to the story as we can while keeping in mind that we have created certain facts on the TV show. There’s a fair chunk of the audience that has not read the books. I always analogize it to Game of Thrones. I never read those books, but I watch and like the series. But I accept that television series on its own terms as it is presented to me week after week. Our show has to serve both masters too. Give the fans the joy of watching this come to life and also deliver a story to the people who have no idea where the books are going and aren’t missing any of the things we’ve changed. You are serving both audiences as you move forward.”
And before purists get their undies in a bunch, they should realize that even the creator appreciates the additions. “Rupert and Angus,” Gabaldon answered when asked for something found in the show but not her writings that she enjoyed. “They are just amazing; the 18th century version of Laurel and Hardy.”
Outlander returns to Starz on Saturday, April 4.
