War! What is it good for? Storytelling on Outlander, it seems.
After several seasons dotted with the embers of rebellion, the American Revolution has at last erupted into a raging fire, rapidly approaching the Frasers’ doorstep. The hit Starz series plunges the Fraser clan and viewers into war for their seventh season, supersized at 16 episodes.
Premiering June 16, season 7 will be divided into two parts, with the back-half of the episodes not airing until 2024. This follows an abbreviated season 6, which clocked in at eight episodes and left Claire (Caitriona Balfe) on her way to prison for the murder of Malva Christie (Jessica Reynolds).
“We’ve left her in this prison,” says Balfe. “Her future is very precarious. We don’t really know what’s going to happen. All we know is that the normal systems of law have broken down.” It’s a startling cliffhanger, even by Outlander standards, though it was not the intended ending of season 6, which was cut short due to Balfe’s pregnancy and COVID delays.
Still, don’t expect Outlander to merely tack on those last four episodes to the start of season 7. “There are some major story threads from [season] 6,” says executive producer Matthew Roberts. “We do cover those, but we meld them into ending one section of stories at the exact same time as starting new stories. We had to rewrite them completely to get them into new stories going forward.”
Those new stories mean it’s out of the whiskey barrel and into the bottle for the Fraser family.
“The kitchen sink is what you can expect,” teases Roberts. “We load that kitchen sink up with everything. In comparison to other seasons, there’s more going on in season 7 than every one of our other seasons, not necessarily combined, but pretty close to it. We finally get to the Revolutionary War and how it affects all of our characters.”
