'Outlander' season 3 spoilers: Biggest book in the series will not have two seasons; Richard Rankin on 'awkward' character relationships

Season 3 of "Outlander" is set to tackle the Diana Gabaldon novel series' longest book yet, but there are no plans on splitting the book into two seasons.

Ronald Moore, showrunner of the Starz series about a combat nurse sent 200 years back in time, shared with Digital Spy how they planned on keeping the book alive without stretching it across two seasons.

"Once we put the cards up on the board, we could see that there were five episodes just in the Jamie (Sam Heughan) story and then the reunion of the two characters [Jamie and Claire (Caitriona Balfe)]," Moore said.

"Now you're almost halfway through the season and that felt like about the right pace. When you really boiled it down to what the story was, and the character relationships, we realised we could tell this in just one season. I don't think we were tempted to try to stretch it beyond that," he explained.

He added that part of the reason why the book was so lengthy was due descriptions and to the character's internal thoughts, which, when stripped away, is "not as long as you thought."

Meanwhile, "Outlander" newbie Richard Rankin also talked with Digital Spy about his character Roger's relationship with Brianna (Sophie Skelton), saying that the two are geeky and have a "beautifully awkward" start to their relationship. The blossoming romance sees Oxford professor Roger with Brianna, Claire and Jamie's adult daughter.

"It's a new kind of relationship – but I don't know if, on the set, it was particularly sexually objectified. I've never felt that," Rankin said.

Heughan, who plays Jamie, recently posted a spoiler on Twitter by mistake. He tweeted a photo showing the moment where his character meets Claire again for the first time in twenty years. He took down the tweet and apologized, although the photo had been circulating around the internet for hours by then.