Outlander season 3: Ronald D. Moore on his role, season 4 setting

One of the larger Outlander-related questions that we’ve had over the past few months specifically relates to the role of Ronald D. Moore. While he is very clearly involved in the Starz series, how hands-on is he? The showrunner isn’t credited for writing too many episodes this season, and he also is far quieter on social media than some of the other producers who work on the show. His involvement is often a little bit ambiguous compared to some others on the show.

Well, we think that we now have the best explanation on this subject that we’ve had to date. Speaking to Variety, Moore makes it clear that he oversees everything with the show, but allows some of the other producers to handle many of the different aspects of the production:

“I’m still the showrunner, but a lot of the day-to-day showrunning is done by [executive producers] Matt Roberts and Toni Graphia … I’ve delegated more authority to them. Matt is on the ground a lot in the U.K., and Toni is in charge of the writers’ room. And they both report to me and I still sort of oversee the whole production. But I’m not on the front lines like I was [in the past].”

This should give you a little bit more of a sense as to why we often see Roberts traveling about looking at locations or working during filming in whatever given location he is in at the time. Graphia is largely off of Twitter other than Q&As during the season via the writers’ room account, but we know that she pens some brilliant episodes for the series. Maril Davis also plays a significant role in the production of the show handling many different things behind the scenes.

When you think about the sheer size and scope of Outlander it really does make a whole lot of sense for them to have so many different producers working on this all at one time. There’s that old expression of “it takes a village,” and in this case we really do think that it does! You need to get a lot of people working on different aspects of things to get the job done in a reasonable amount of time. Moore has the experience to sit from afar and make sure all is running smoothly.

Another interesting quote from this interview is Moore discussing how from season 4 onward the series will start to feel a little more sedentary than it’s been in the past:

“I still underestimated how hard it would be to do [so many different things within a single show]. It was like, ‘Oh, this will be different. I’ve never done a show like this before. This will have its challenges.’But it really has its challenges, because you are creating a different TV show every season. I don’t know anyone else who’s done it this way. I think that might come to a bit of a stop after Season Four, because [around then] they get to Fraser’s Ridge, and they stay there. Suddenly we’ll have standing sets for the first time. We’re not going to continue to travel the world. It’ll be a little bit more like, “Okay, now we’re in America, and the story is going continue there from that point.”

Other Outlander fun

We suggest that you head over here in the event you want to see a fun story from yesterday all about our ideal spin-offs based on season 3!

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