Matt Roberts on OUTLANDER coming to an end

Matthew B. Roberts, executive producer and show-runner for OUTLANDER and BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, posted this on Instagram yesterday, about the OUTLANDER TV series coming to an end. I thought his comments were worth sharing, as we look ahead to OUTLANDER's final season.

I’ve been thinking about endings lately.

As we wrapped filming on Blood of My Blood and turn our attention to bringing you the final season of Outlander this March, I’ve felt the weight of what so many of you are already feeling. The grief before the goodbye. The mourning of something that hasn’t quite left us yet.

But I want to offer you something I’ve been holding onto myself.

When we give our hearts to a story--when we let fictional people become real to us, when we carry their words with us, when we find pieces of ourselves in their journeys--that doesn’t end when the credits roll for the last time. It can’t. Because what the story gave you, it gave you. Those feelings were real. The tears were real. The comfort on hard nights, the joy, the sense of belonging to something bigger than yourself--all of it, real and yours to keep.

The characters live because you carried them. The love story endures because it moved through you. I know it’s tempting to grieve forward--to sit in the shadow of the ending before it arrives. But if I could gently ask anything of you, it would be this: don’t let the anticipation of loss steal the experience. We still have a whole season to live together. And after that, we have everything that came before, waiting for us whenever we need it.

Stories don’t die. They just finish being told. And then they belong to you forever…

"Don't let the anticipation of loss steal the experience." I think that's a really important point, and something we should all keep in mind. It applies equally to OUTLANDER Season 8 and to A BLESSING FOR A WARRIOR GOING OUT (Book 10), which Diana Gabaldon has confirmed will be the last of the Big Books in the OUTLANDER series.

It will be hard for many of us to say goodbye to these characters and these actors who've been part of our lives for so many years, but we will get through it, together.