Outlander Season 5: Everything We Know
🚨Minor spoilers for Outlander Season 5 below. 🚨
It feels like Season 4 of Outlander just started, yet Droughtlander is officially here. Fortunately, Outlander has already been renewed for Season 5 and 6, and thanks to Diana Gabaldon’s books, we have a good idea of what’s coming next for the Frasers.
“Fans can rest assured their beloved Claire and Jamie (Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan) will be back facing new challenges, adversaries, and adventures in Seasons 5 and 6 as we delve into American history and continue the story of the Frasers as they settle in the New World,” said Starz CEO, Chris Albrecht, in a statement when the show was renewed in April 2018.
The Season 4 finale saw several significant changes for the Frasers: Brianna (Sophie Skelton) gave birth to a son before reuniting with her parents and later, Roger (Richard Rankin). Roger’s return required Young Ian (John Bell) to take his place as a member of the Mohawk tribe. And the episode’s final moments brought a startling cliffhanger: A letter from Governor Tryon demanding Jamie build an army to fight the Regulators—and capture and kill Murtagh.
On that note, here’s everything we know about Season 5 of Outlander.
1) Season 5 will likely be based mostly on Book 5 of the Outlander series, The Fiery Cross.
When Seasons 5 and 6 were officially renewed, Starz announced they would be comprised of the fifth and sixth books in the Outlander series, The Fiery Cross and A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
“Every year we approach it fresh,” executive producer Ronald D. Moore told EW in March 2018. “Should we keep it a book a season? We’ve done that up until now. But we’ve talked about splitting books, and we’ve talked about combining them. We want to be free in the writers’ room to pick and choose and do what feels most comfortable that year.”
Though it’s unclear whether the seasons will split up both books evenly—as the show’s done for the most part in seasons past—or attempt to combine the two, executive producer Maril Davis tweeted a sweet photo of a dog curled up with a copy of The Fiery Cross. Part of the caption read, “Thankfully we’re already knee deep into S5 #FieryCross,” a hint that most of the next season will be based on that book.
Here’s how Gabaldon’s publisher, Penguin Random House, describes The Fiery Cross:
You can read a spoiler-y preview of The Fiery Cross at dianagabaldon.com.
Buy the Books
2) Seasons 5 and 6 will have 12 episodes each.
To compare, Seasons 2 through 4 had 13 episodes each.
3) Season 5 has not yet started shooting.
Davis confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that production is still in the writers’ room for Season 5.
4) Heughan says the Frasers will get caught up in America’s pre-Revolutionary spirit.
“By the end of the season you see, no matter how hard they try, they get pulled into it,” Heughan tells BAZAAR.com of Season 4’s climax. “It’s really exciting for next season because it’s going to really set up that whole world and the different political sides with Murtagh… It’s going to be tough. This is not the first time they’ve dealt with these things. And at first Jamie thinks he can play it. He can play with fate and play with history, maybe to his detriment.”
As Balfe put it to BAZAAR.com about Season 4, “This is a big, transitional season, and I think it sets us up for the next couple of seasons. In many ways this is a big calm before the next storms.”
5) We’ll be seeing much more Brianna and Roger in future seasons.
Expect to see just as much Bree and Roger as Claire and Jamie in seasons to come. “The story is as much Brianna and Roger’s as it is Claire and Jamie’s,” Balfe told BAZAAR.com back in December. “The show has evolved to tell the story of this couple, and more, this family… Going forward it’s going to be a much more evenly doled-out set of storylines.”
6) Expect Jamie and Roger to clash—again.
Executive producer Toni Graphia tells Variety that Jamie isn’t pleased with Roger’s hesitancy to return to Brianna. “I think Jamie will never forget that Roger took more time than Jamie may have thought he should have taken to come back,” Graphia says. “He’ll still have to do some proving of himself to Brianna’s father, so I think there will be some conflict in that relationship next season that they’ll have to sort out.”
7) Balfe and Heughan hope to have a larger role in the series beyond acting.
Balfe told BAZAAR.com she and Heughan would “relish more responsibility,” hinting at the possibility of directing for both actors in the future. “I would love to be on set when Sam Heughan’s bossing me around,” she said. Heughan adds, “We’re hoping next season to have a lot more influence in the characters and the storyline, and be a part of that creatively.”
8) Young Ian will be back.
Ian became a member of the Mohawk tribe in the Season 4 finale, but book readers know he’s still very much a part of the Fraser family. As Davis put it to THR, “I’d be surprised if we didn’t see Young Ian down the line somewhere.”
9) Season 5 will likely open with the Gathering.
Season 4 left out an important segment from the end of Drums of Autumn: the Gathering of all the Scottish clans in North Carolina, a setting that bleeds into The Fiery Cross. “We didn’t want to start it and then stop it and then pick it up again in season five,” Davis told THR. “It seemed like a rather large story that we wanted to get into one season as opposed to trying to bridge it over two.”
10) Changes are coming to Fraser’s Ridge.
Fans of The Fiery Cross know the Frasers eventually build a larger two-story house on the Ridge. Production designer John Gary Steele confirmed on Twitter that it’s currently under construction.
Source: Read Full Article