Why The ‘Outlander’ Writers Almost Changed Dougal’s Death Scene From The Books

“Outlander” Season 2 made plenty of changes to Diana Gabaldon’s “Dragonfly in Amber,” but there could have been more differences. In the Season 2 Blu-ray, out Nov. 1, the producers revealed that Jamie wasn’t always going to kill Dougal. An argument for Claire to be the hero was made.

“Our rule is kind of, if we feel it’s dramatically sound, then we can go for it,” executive producer Toni Graphia says in the clip (available via Entertainment Weekly). “We wouldn’t violate Diana’s characters, but if it’s something we could make a case for could really happen, if she thought Jamie was about to be killed, she would absolutely jump in there.”

The writers like to make sure there is a good balance of both Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) saving each other. While it wouldn’t have been illogical to have Claire save her husband, Starz and Gabaldon both felt it should stick to the book. Ultimately, Jamie stabbed Dougal (Graham McTavish) after the Clan MacKenzie war chief attempted to kill the couple, just like in Gabaldon’s novel.

The TV show writers do not alter the source material for no reason. However, some changes couldn’t be avoided while bringing the books to the small screen. Sam Heughan said that this is why he and Balfe are always trying to please the readers.

“We confer a lot, probably more than the producers want us to,” Heughan told Vanity Fair of his communication with Gabaldon. “There’s always going to be little details that will be missed because the show is only an hour-long episode each week. I know myself and Caitriona, we read the books and if we can sneak in a small detail that may not be in the script or even just that we know ourselves, that going from one scene to another, that something’s happened in between that maybe we haven’t been able to show, but at least we know it and, hopefully, in some way it manifests itself.”

“Outlander” Season 3 will bring about some changes to the novels as well. As previously reported, the premiere will kick off with the Battle of Culloden rather than Jamie waking up with no memory of the fight.

“It just felt like for the TV show, we’ve been promising this for a while and it just felt like we should have something,” showrunner Ronald D. Moore told Entertainment Weekly. “We should give the audience some sense of what happened on that moor.”

Fans will have to tune in to “Outlander” Season 3 on Starz in 2017 to see what other changes are made.