‘Outlander’ Boss Promises Faith Explanation, Reveals Added Scene & More Season 7 Finale Details

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Outlander Season 7 Episode 16, “A Hundred Thousand Angels.”]

Outlander‘s Season 7 finale, “A Hundred Thousand Angels,” brought tears to eyes and shock to fans as the episode insinuated the possibility that Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie’s (Sam Heughan) first daughter Faith had actually lived.

But how could that be possible? Faith was stillborn in France decades earlier and seemingly buried before the couple returned to Scotland ahead of the fateful Battle of Culloden. That’s something showrunner Matthew B. Roberts promises will be answered in the show’s upcoming final season. Whether Faith lived or not is for fans to learn in time.

The installment also saw Claire revisited by Master Raymond (Dominique Pinon), the apothecary owner she met in France, who asks for forgiveness for some unknown act. Meanwhile, Jamie teams up with son William (Charles Vandervaart) to try and save Jane (Silvia Presente) amid her imprisonment, only to fail at their mission, discovering she’d died by suicide.

Their team-up leads to a candid conversation about Jamie and William’s mother Geneva (Hannah James), which prompts the young man to vow he’ll never call Jamie Father. And that’s not the only difficult relationship portrayed onscreen as Jamie’s coldness towards Lord John Grey (David Berry) continues when the man comes to check up on Claire during her recovery after being shot.

But the finale is filled with some more triumphantly sweet moments like Brianna’s (Sophie Skelton) reunion with Roger (Richard Rankin) in 1739 with their kids and her introduction to grandfather Brian Fraser (Andrew Whipp). Roberts weighs in on that Faith revelation, the status of Jamie and Claire’s Fraser’s Ridge return, plus he reveals which scene almost didn’t make the episode and much more in the Q&A, below.

Claire begins to theorize that the Pocock sisters’ mother was her daughter Faith and that she didn’t actually die in France years earlier. Should we see Fanny’s (Florrie May Wilkinson) singing of “Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside” as confirmation?

Matthew B. Roberts: I’ll say that you’ll get all the answers in Season 8. Literally, why this was created this way, we took a little portion of something that was in the book, expanded it, and ran with it. And when we knew we were getting a Season 8, we knew that we could explain it in a very Outlander-y way of how everything was possible.

Considering this storyline expands upon something that was introduced in Diana Gabaldon‘s books, how did she feel about the show’s expansion of it? What did that conversation look like?

In the course of Outlander, Diana sees everything. She reads everything. And when we’re about to go down a big road, we’ve always… she’s a consultant on the show, so we consult with her and if Diana would’ve said that she didn’t want to go down that road, wished we didn’t go down that road, we would not have gone down the road.

Master Raymond resurfaced in this episode. Was he really there or was he merely a vision or dream to Claire?

So, what I don’t do is interpret the story for people. I let them interpret it for themselves. If people decide he was really there, then in their story, he was really there. If people decide that it was a dream, then it was a dream. I’m not going to tell you how the food tastes. You have to tell me how the food tastes. And that to me is part of storytelling, is that you get to live the story through your life, through your experiences, how it makes you feel. And I think people will have different reactions to a lot of different things on Outlander, but that’s my take on it. I’ll never give you my answer.

Dominique Pinon’s return as Master Raymond was just one of the many guest star returns this season. What was it like welcoming so many fan favorites back?

With all the cast that comes back, we were lucky to get so many people that came back. It’s kind of like high school reunions when you touch base and you get to have a chat and you remember why you cast them the first time. They were so great, and then they bring all that stuff to the table again and there’s more fun to come in Season 8, too.

Silvia Presente, who plays Jane, has a strong resemblance to Sophie Skelton’s Brianna, and she also has some of that Fraser-like spirit about her when she’s speaking to the newspaper reporter. Was that intentional to help steer viewers towards the Faith theory?

That’s a good question. Once you see someone embody the character and their take on it and it’s exactly what you envisioned, but you didn’t know you envisioned that… In a weird way, that’s what happens sometimes, is you have this picture in your mind and then the actor or actress comes on and you’re like, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that’s the take.” And I think that’s what happened with Jane. There was just a magic there.

In the books, there’s an investigative element to Claire’s theory about Fanny being her potential granddaughter. Will the Faith revelation interrupt Jamie and Claire’s plans to return home to Fraser’s Ridge?

Well, in Season 8 — Jamie had promised in Season 7 to bring Claire home. So I’ll just say Jamie’s a man of his word.

Outside of this twist, Jamie’s friendship with Lord John doesn’t appear to be in a great place. Where do they currently stand?

Well, I think it’s pretty accurate to say that I don’t think Jamie’s entirely over [Lord John marrying and sleeping with Claire]. I think you might see something in Season 8. That wound gets reopened.

William tells Jamie he’ll never call him father after their conversation about Geneva. What prompts that kind of reaction from William and does Jane’s death have anything to do with it?

I think William’s extremely conflicted. He loves Lord John, the man who raised him, and now he has feelings for Jamie that he doesn’t know how to deal with. He can see that Jamie’s a good man. He can see that he has a lot of Jamie’s characteristics. He’s not blind to that. When he needed help, he went to Jamie because he knew Jamie could help him get the job done even though they were too late. He still went to his father for that. And I think the tug-of-war between, if I have feelings for Jamie, then it somehow discounts how I feel about my [step-father] John, I think that’s what this young man’s going through. And I think when he says, “I’ll never call you father,” it’s in some way him digging in saying, “I’m not going to betray Lord John.” But that’s the journey we’re going to take in Season 8. We’ll see where that goes.

Brianna and her kids made it to 1739, where she’s reunited with Roger and Buck. But she also meets Brian Fraser and they talk about Ellen. Was that scene meant to tease the depth of Brian and Ellen’s romance ahead of Outlander: Blood of My Blood?

Yes, [it’s a] little bit of tease of Blood of My Blood, but we also wanted to make sure that we saw Brianna meet her grandfather, and that was really important and I think important for the audience to see, too. That wasn’t originally in the very first draft of the script. It wasn’t originally scripted and then it was like, “Wait, well, hold on a second. We’re missing a scene.” And we put it in the script and got it in there and filmed it, thankfully. We didn’t want to miss that emotional element of giving her that chance that we know Roger got to spend time with Brian and Jenny, but she didn’t. So that felt like a big hole. And then for them to reunite, and they’ll decide where or literally when they want to live.

Were there any other scenes in the finale that evolved over time?

Every single episode from Episode 1 until now, that’s what happens. That’s the evolution of making a movie or television is that you come up with ideas if there’s IP, like books [involved], and then you write a script, and then from that script you bring it to production, and then things immediately start to evolve because what you have on the page, we might not be able to practically do what you want to do. So we have this script that evolves over time, and then you get actors that are now playing characters and you go, “Okay, hold on a second. Now we can do a lot more here.” [Like] with Florrie, who plays Fanny, is just off the charts.

She was incredible in this episode!

When you see one scene, and you go, “Oh, wow, maybe we do more.” And that’s the kind of thing that evolves. And you see that often, you’ll see something on set where you go, “Wow, I didn’t know. I didn’t see it like that. But man, that’s fantastic.” And that happens all the time.

Florrie’s scene as Fanny with Claire in the graveyard was so emotional. The whole episode was.

By the way, that was our intention.

Outlander, Season 8 Premiere, TBA, Starz