'Outlander' season 3: Producers explain changes from book

A video of producers talking about the “Outlander” season 3 finale has been released online. In it, they explain their approach to the finale, especially the opening scene. They also talk about why they had to make a big change from the book “Voyager.” The following article contains spoilers.

The video (see below) was released by Sony. It shows co-executive producers Toni Graphia and Matthew B. Roberts walking the fans through some of the challenges they faced while developing the script. One challenge was to make sure they could fit the entire story in one season.

The producers had to pick and choose their favourite scenes from the book, and at the same time ensure that the main story is told without gaps. Such an approach means the writers had to skip some parts of the story they felt was not essential.

The finale shows the storm sequence, but what the TV audience didn’t see was a chase featured in the book. Jamie and Claire’s ship is chased by a military vessel in the final chapters of “Voyager.” The writers decided to cut this part out because they felt they would not be able to do justice to the scene as well as the storm in the limited time they had in the finale.

Roberts points out that they did try to do it. The chase was included up until the storyboard stage of development, in which scenes from the script are drawn on paper to see how it would look on screen. Eventually, they decided against doing both the chase and the storm.

As far as the opening scene of Claire drifting underwater is concerned, Graphia says they always felt that this scene was “poetic” and “mystical.” According to them, they have always planned to use it. The opening line “I was dead” was “provocative,” and the producers always intended to start with this then let the rest of the episode catch up to this moment.

Credit: Sony/ Twitter