The show’s writers haven’t shied away from deviations
With Outlander off-screens fans have been re-watching the show for fresh insight into the epic story.
Season eight, which is the last one, is expected to premiere at some point in 2026 but there’s no confirmed air date as yet.
When the show does return, it will be taking a very different turn to Diana Gabaldon’s original Outlander novels given the author is still penning her book series.
Namely, the Faith Fraser twist in the season seven finale will become a big plot point following an alternate timeline.
Outlander has made many changes over the years from the books to make the series work for the screen.
What viewers might not know is about the big change the show’s producers made in season two in a scene involving Jamie Fraser (played by Sam Heughan) and Fergus Fraser (Romann Berrux).
In the second novel Dragonfly in Amber, Fergus encounters Jamie when the Highlander is fleeing from attackers and ends up in the brothel where the child was brought up.
Jamie then employs the boy to serve as a pickpocket for him and steal important letters.
However, in the Starz drama, the Parisian street urchin stole from the Frasers, primarily Sawny the snake, a memento from Jamie’s late brother William.
As fans will remember, William was due to inherit the Lallybroch estate but sadly perished.
William used to call Jamie ‘Sawny’, a reference to his sibling’s middle name Alexander, and carved him a wooden snake with the moniker engraved on it.
Sawny the snake made it across the English Channel with Jamie and Claire when they went to Paris in the hopes of infiltrating the royal court and changing the course of history.
Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore and Executive Producer and writer Anne Kenney addressed this change on the official Outlander podcast for the episode Useful Occupations and Deceptions.
“Sawny is one of those things that sometimes we take things from different books and people will go, ‘Oh, I missed this or I miss that,’ and I would say to them, ‘Well, don’t give up hope because we pull things from all over the place’,” Kenney said.
Adding: “Because now Sawny has made an appearance here and I don’t think he was actually in this [book].”
She continued: “I think [Jamie] originally tells [Claire] about Sawny back at Lallybroch in the first book, so we brought him back here.”
Moore said: “We were just looking for something for Fergus to steal. Wouldn’t it be good if he stole something from Jamie too? What could he steal from Jamie?”
He explained in the writers’ room someone had mentioned Sawny the snake “as a joke” but it soon became part of the script.
Sawny has deep meaning to Jamie as it’s the only thing he has left of his older brother and so holds onto it dearly.
The creation of Sawny could well be explored in Outlander’s prequel series Blood of My Blood, which turns the lens onto both Jamie and Claire Fraser’s (Caitríona Balfe) respective parents.