Will Outlander Season 6 skip over everything the Bugs do?
Caution: There are book spoilers in this post but the storylines may not show up in Outlander Season 6.
Not every story from the Outlander books is able to make it to the show. With the Bugs’ storyline be something skipped, or will it be included in Outlander Season 6?
There are some things that happened in Season 5 that suggest the Bugs’ storyline will be skipped over. They don’t have the biggest part in The Fiery Cross, with their history and their deceit showing up in A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
It’s in the sixth book that Claire is kidnapped by Lionel Brown and his men. Instead of Marsali taking Lionel’s life in the end, Murdina Bug does. With this change already happening, it suggests that the Bugs won’t be the big part in the show that they are in the books.
And it does make sense to change a few things. There’s only so much time to be able to develop characters. Marsali is arguably more of an important character to the story than the Bugs. There would be a way to give her Murdina’s storyline when it comes to Lionel and then link it to an upcoming storyline for Marsali.
In the world of TV adaptations, if you can condense storylines by given them to already established characters, that’s something you do.
What about the upcoming house fire on Outlander Season 6?
There’s no guarantee that the house fire is going to happen on Outlander Season 6, but it is likely. And this is where the Bugs’ storyline comes up again.
Before this, we find out that Jocasta’s gold had been stolen years ago. It’s during the house fire that everyone learns Arch Bug was the one to steal the gold. The Bugs are banished from Fraser’s Ridge for that.
The two return in Book 7. This is the part that has a bigger knock-on effect for other characters. Young Ian is full of guilt when he kills Murdina Bug. Arch threatens Young Ian, and that’s where the Bugs’ storyline is left…for now.
It is possible to still include some of this in the upcoming seasons. While the stolen gold storyline wouldn’t make sense since there’s not been the buildup to that, there is a way the writers could see the Bugs kicked out of Fraser’s Ridge and Young Ian killing Murdina by mistake. This would then lead to the threat against Young Ian for a later season.
That’s just a condensed version of the story!
Of course, this could also be something the writers choose to avoid during Outlander Book 6, except maybe add in a few threads here and there. The storyline could be kept for Outlander Season 7 if it happens.
There are a lot of storylines in the sixth book to include. Maybe it would be better to keep the Bugs for Season 7 and build up their characters a little more in Season 6.
Would you like to see the Bugs’ storyline used more during Outlander Season 6? Share your thoughts in the comments below.