Revolutionary Times

The time-travelling Frasers of Outlander are back for a decade-crossing seventh season

TIME TRAVEL IS woven into the very fabric of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander book series, as well as the hit Starz television adaptation, which returns this month. The epic narrative spans 200 years, telling the love story of Claire (Caitríona Balfe), a time traveller from 1945, and her Scottish Highlander soul mate from 1743, Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan).

Since season four, the pair have been married and settled with their family in pre-Revolutionary War North Carolina. But season seven brings with it an actual war – as well as a big return to time travel storytelling.

Primarily based on Gabaldon’s seventh book An Echo In The Bone, it features 16 new episodes (broken into two blocks of eight). An eighth season will then close the series. With that in mind, showrunner Matthew B Roberts tells Red Alert that they planned for this season to close some dangling story threads from the last season, but start fresh with its narratives.

“The war has finally arrived, so how is that going to affect our characters?” Roberts says of the central threat this season. With the Frasers pulled into the melee – Jamie as a soldier and Claire as a surgeon – their adult daughter Bree (Sophie Skelton) and her husband Roger MacKenzie (Richard Rankin) contemplate time travelling back to the safety of the 1970s with their babies.