The opening scene of "Outlander" season 3 is far more gruesome than book readers might expect.

According to showrunner Ronald D. Moore, they changed the opening scene of the upcoming season to make it ghastlier than what is described in Diana Gabaldon's book, "Voyager." The new season will again feature the Battle of Culloden, which started in season 2.

"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," said Moore during his interview with Entertainment Weekly.

"We should give the audience some sense of what happened on the moor," he added.

The new season of the Starz drama will kick off with Jamie on the battlefield, fighting Black Jack Randall. Fans should expect this scene to be bloody and violent, considering all the pain and suffering that Black Jack had caused him in the previous season.

In Gabaldon's novel, "Voyager" opens not with Jamie on the battlefield, but with Jamie being not able to recall what happened during the battle.

This is not the first time that Moore has tweaked the source material. In season 2, Angus was killed following a scheduling issue which prevented Finn Den Hertog from returning as Willie. In the novel, it was actually Willie who got axed and killed.

As for Gabaldon, she does not seem to mind the changes made for television. In the previous episodes of the series where Moore had to make some modifications, Moore and Gabaldon agreed to tweak the original source a bit to make some scenes more dramatically satisfying for viewers.

"Outlander" season 3 premieres in 2017 on Starz.