Sure, we were forced to endure the longest Droughtlander yet, but it’s finally official: Outlander will return with season 6 this year on Starz.
The network first announced the big news on June 1, 2021—known as “World Outlander Day” to fans—with a caveat: season 6 will be shortened to just eight episodes, while the forthcoming season 7 will be extended to 16. The premiere episode of season 6 will run at 90 minutes long.
“We are excited to get into the editing room to work on bringing the fans one step closer to reuniting with the family back on Fraser’s Ridge,” Outlander showrunner Matthew B. Roberts said in a statement. “Filming in 2021 has presented an unprecedented set of challenges which led us to the decision to truncate the season in order to bring the fans the most vibrant and dynamic season as soon as possible. Dinna fash, we will then film an extended season 7 with 16 episodes next year as life returns to normalcy.”
This isn’t unprecedented—the first season of Outlander, which premiered in 2014, was also comprised of 16 episodes and aired in two parts.
Below, everything we know about season 6 of the hit Starz series—from the latest from set to what to expect for Claire (Caitriona Balfe), Jamie (Sam Heughan), Brianna (Sophie Skelton), and Roger (Richard Rankin) when the show returns.
Season 6 will premiere on March 6, 2022.
On Nov. 22, hours before the launch of Gabaldon's ninth Outlander book, Starz broke the news that season 6 would finally arrive in March. An “extended episode” will drop at 9 p.m. ET to celebrate the return of our beloved characters.
Watch the official trailer below.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Outlander | Season 6 Official Trailer | STARZ
Watch onSeason 6 will largely pull from Diana Gabaldon’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
According to Starz, the new season will continue to focus on Jamie and Claire striving to establish and protect their new home in colonial America, all while the political unrest leading into the Revolutionary War unfolds around them. Here’s how the network describes the new season:
The sixth season of Outlander sees a continuation of Claire and Jamie’s fight to protect those they love, as they navigate the trials and tribulations of life in colonial America. Establishing a home in the New World is by no means an easy task, particularly in the wild backcountry of North Carolina—and perhaps most significantly—during a period of dramatic political upheaval. The Frasers strive to maintain peace and flourish within a society which—as Claire knows all too well—is unwittingly marching towards Revolution. Against this backdrop, which heralds the birth of the new American nation, Claire and Jamie have built a home together at Fraser’s Ridge. They must now defend this home—established on land granted to them by the Crown—not only from external forces, but also from the increasing strife and conflict in the community within their care. For the Frasers and their immediate family, “home” is more than simply a site in which they live, it is the place where they are laying the foundations for the rest of their lives. If Season 4 asked “What is home?” and Season 5 asked, “What are you willing to do to protect your home?” then Season 6 explores what happens when there is disharmony and division among the inhabitants of the home you’ve created: when you become an outsider, or an ‘outlander,’ so to speak, marginalized and rejected in your own home.
Though season 5 depicted several plot points from book six in the Outlander series, including the death of Stephen Bonnet and a brutal attack on Claire, most of the content of the new season will still come from that installment, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, which tracks the Frasers through the years just preceding the Revolutionary War.
Here’s how publisher Penguin Random House describes it:
The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest. With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence—with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.
Executive producer Maril Davis expanded on this in an August 2020 PaleyFest interview, per Parade:
“The original Outlander is my favorite, but A Breath of Snow and Ashes is my second favorite… There is so much for everyone in it. Jamie and Claire, their love deepens; Roger and Brianna, they have their own journey, and something fun and new happens with them. Caitlin O’Ryan, who plays Lizzie, has a great story, and she is such a phenomenal actress. There are just so many exciting things.”
Gabaldon had published eight books in the Outlander series as of the season 6 announcement, but the ninth, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, finally released on November 23, 2021. You can order it right now.
Season 6 finished filming in June 2021.
Starz made the announcement on June 1, and Heughan shared some photos the same day to announce that he had wrapped his own portions of filming on Friday, May 30.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
On Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021, Starz had initially announced that season 6 of Outlander had launched production in Scotland. Executive producer Matthew B. Roberts
told ELLE.com that “keeping everybody safe is paramount” while shooting in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: “We had to figure out how to make sure we tested everybody a
million times before they walked onto set and keep that bubble as safe as possible.”
The Christies have been cast.
Book readers know the Christie family cause nothing but trouble for the Frasers, and Starz released character descriptions for Tom (Mark Lewis Jones), Allan (Alexander Vlahos), and Malva Christie (Jessica Reynolds).
Meet the Christies: Malva (Jessica Reynolds), Tom (Mark Lewis Jones), and Allan (Alexander Vlahos).
Robert WilsonHere’s how Starz describes their characters:
Tom Christie, a fellow Ardsmuir prisoner and devout Protestant, arrives on Fraser’s Ridge seeking a place to settle. As de facto leader of the Protestant settlers who arrive with him, Tom’s strong opinion and convictions begin to create tension on the Ridge.
Allan Christie travels to the Ridge with his father Tom and his sister Malva. Headstrong and wary of strangers, he is highly protective of his family as they settle into this new environment.
Malva Christie is Tom’s young, spirited daughter. She is captivated by Claire’s work and modern thinking, which gets Malva in trouble with her conservative father. She struggles to toe the line between what she wants to do and what is expected of her.
Filming on season 6 was originally postponed due to the coronavirus.
On May 3, 2020, Heughan tweeted that season 6 was supposed to start filming that week.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Thankfully, pre-production was underway by late 2020, and the cast shared a holiday treat on December 25, 2020: a behind-the-scenes look at the costume department. Balfe, Heughan, Skelton, and Rankin all made appearances in the three-minute clip and dropped hints about the season along the way. “We’re very excited to bring the show to you as soon as possible,” Balfe says.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
“We have to dress a lot of people, because there are many, many more settlers coming to Fraser’s Ridge,” Heughan notes. He also teased a new conflict with Tom Christie, “one of Jamie's ancient foes” from his Ardsmuir Prison days. “There’s a bit of a power play,” he says.
As for Bree, Skelton says, “We’re gonna see a lot more this season of the modern Brianna…her inventor cap will be on.”
And Balfe contributed an ominous hint: “Things are coming to the Ridge that will even challenge Claire Fraser’s medical knowledge.”
Yes, a war is coming.
That’s one thing we can count on in season 6: The Revolutionary War is on the horizon, and the Frasers will, of course, get swept up in the action.
“I think we've always done really [well] with the action sequences,” Heughan told ELLE.com of shooting battle sequences back in May 2020. “Certainly I think it’s one of my stronger points in the show. It’s nice when we get a bit of everything.”
Jamie and Claire’s relationship will undergo a “revolution” of its own.
Roberts teased big changes for the Frasers in the new season: “I think what’s going on in the world at the time, 1775, is really similar to what's going on with Jamie and Claire,” he told ELLE.com. “There's going to be a revolution with them as well, and I think that’s what’s going on throughout the season: You have a foundation and when that foundation is shaken and there is a revolution, you have to deal with it. That’s kind of the theme of the season.”
Season 6 will address Claire’s recovery from the traumatic events of the season 5 finale.
The season 5 finale, titled “Never My Love,”
saw Claire kidnapped and raped by a group of men furious that she inspired their wives to demand agency. “For Claire, this is going to be an
ongoing journey of recovery,” Balfe told ELLE.com after the finale aired. “She will probably try to plow on and get back to normality, but I don’t
think she’s fully aware of just how difficult, subconsciously and psychologically, that’s going to be for her.”
In the Outlander End of Summer series that aired last September, Heughan expanded on where we find the Frasers at the end of the finale: “When we left season 5, the whole family is fractured,” he said. “They are together but Claire still has some healing to do.”
Speaking to ELLE.com again in 2021, Balfe explained, “The events of the end of season 5 have really destabilized Claire in a way that we’ve never seen before. I think Claire has always been able to compartmentalize things and move on, with that very 1940s can-do attitude. She packs things up in a little box, she parks it, and she gets on with the rest of her life. And we see that she’s unable to use that coping mechanism, to get through this particular incident. So it’s really lovely to actually finally unpick her in a way, and find her core vulnerabilities. I think it’s the only way she can properly heal, because she has to find a new way of coping. She has to find a new way through. There’s really great stuff for Claire this season. We’ve got some great directors back, and I think we’re playing around again with the style of the show, so that’s really exciting.”
The show and the cast have shared many behind-the-scenes photos and videos on their social media accounts.
On Mar. 29, 2021, the Outlander Twitter account premiered a minute-long video teasing Outlander season 6. In addition to new behind-the-scenes footage, the cast teases “new faces, new families…lots of new characters, lots of new relationships, lots of potential drama.”
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
The cast has also kept busy with content.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
Vlahos has been particularly prolific…
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
In October, Starz finally released first-look footage.
On Oct. 9, Starz revealed the first teaser trailer footage for season 6 during the show's panel at New York Comic Con. After showing Jamie, Claire and the rest of their family engaged in warm intimate moments, danger descends in the form of British soldiers. The revolution is coming, and Claire's voice over declares, “It's starting. The storm, the war, it's almost here.”
This content is imported from youTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
During the panel, Balfe spoke a bit about how her character Claire will be dealing her trauma in the upcoming season.
“This is the first time she can't suppress something and this is the first time she really had to deal with what happens,” she
said. ”We see her a little destabilized.”
You can catch up on Outlander online in the meantime.
Stream every episode on Starz—subscriptions cost $8.99 per month (after a seven-day free trial for new members). Seasons 1 to 4 are also available on Netflix.
Julie Kosin is the senior culture editor of ELLE.com, where she oversees all things movies, TV, books, music, and art, from trawling Netflix for a worthy binge to endorsing your next book club pick. She's the former director of audience strategy and entertainment at HarpersBAZAAR.com. When not glued to her laptop, she can be found taking pictures of her dog or haunting used bookstores.
Lauren Puckett-Pope is an associate editor at ELLE, where she covers film, TV, books and fashion.