There simply aren’t enough seasons (or episodes) left to adapt all of the books in the series.
While the second half of Outlander’s seventh season is set to premiere on Starz in a couple of months, we know that the end of the series is in sight. The show has already been greenlit for an eighth season, and with that renewal came the news that Outlander would hang up its kilt after those episodes.
Readers of Gabaldon’s books, however, know that there are nine books already published, with the author currently working on the tenth installment of the series. On her Facebook page in the comments section for a post giving an excerpt from the tenth book (via RadioTimes), she shared that season seven roughly ends with the events in her seventh book, An Echo in the Bone.
That still leaves three books that the show hasn’t covered—Written in my Own Heart’s Blood, Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone, and Book Ten, which Gabaldon is currently working on—and only ten episodes to cover them all.
“It really won’t resemble the end of the book series,” she wrote, later adding, “in normal circumstances—one book per season—they can fit roughly 10% of the book’s content into the show. How much of the (VERY roughly speaking) 1,200,000 words of those three books do you think they can get into ten hours of television? Obviously, they’re going to have to cherry-pick some prime scenes/threads to film, and try to fit them into a framework that makes sense for one season, and that they can bring to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion.”
In the same vein, Gabaldon said in response to another comment that “there won’t be that much of Book Ten in the final episode of the show,” not surprising given that she’s currently writing it, though she did give the showrunners a synopsis and pieces of dialogue.
We’ll eventually be able to see what the showrunners do with Gabaldon’s source material. The remainder of season seven premieres on Starz on November 22, 2024. No news yet on when season eight will make its way to the network.