Claire (Caitríona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) are back for the latest season of Outlander (Picture: Starz/Backgrid)
Fantasy-romance-time travel romp Outlander is back for its seventh season and a welcome return to normality after the havoc Covid wreaked last year on Claire (Caitríona Balfe), Jamie (Sam Heughan) and co.
Season 6 was a rocky road of uneven pacing and overly drawn-out drama with filming disrupted by the pandemic, which forced an early curtailment of the season.
An attempt at crafting an artificial climax ahead of the events of the ending of author Diana Gabaldon’s sixth book in the bestselling Outlander series – A Breath of Snow and Ashes – was rather ham-handed and rushed.
Not all the blame can be laid at the door of Covid, but it’s only fair to acknowledge its disruption of proceedings, which forced a disappointing end on to a patchy season that had struggled with pace and getting bogged down in repetitive and lacklustre scenes.
It felt as if we were waiting to kick start into gear and – thankfully – season seven is bringing the goods.
This time around, the fans’ ‘Droughtlander’ is being parched by a bumper crop of 16 episodes, although we only get eight this year, with the second half of the season scheduled for expected release in 2024.
The last time we saw Claire, she was in dire straights and thought a murderess (Picture: Starz/Backgrid)
The Starz series seems back on more confident footing with its latest batch of episodes (four of which were available to preview), wrapping up book six’s events with a satisfying if shocking – for non-readers of Diana Gabaldon’s novels or those who can navigate Wikipedia with an iron will – resolution.
It also marks more screen time for Mark Lewis Jones as Tom Christie, one of Outlander’s most nuanced and complicated antagonists, as Claire manages to escape the hangman’s noose after being accused of his daughter Malva’s (Jessica Reynolds) murder.
Both the Frasers, their daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and her husband Roger (Richard Rankin) MacKenzie, seem less stuck where they are in season six, treading water in North Carolina, considering past seasons have visited France, Scotland, the Caribbean and various points in the future.
Roger (Richard Rankin, L) has a lot in store this season (Picture: Starz/Backgrid)
… Including the birth of his second child with wife Brianna (Sophie Skelton) (Picture: Starz/Backgrid)
Roger and Brie welcome their second baby together, an event which very much propels their storyline this season, while Outlander finally gets into the promised nitty gritty of the Revolutionary War in eighteenth century America, where trouble routinely brews.
Season eight, the final season of the popular show, has already been commissioned, so although we are still some way off from bidding goodbye to the Frasers, MacKenzies and others, it’s both pleasing and promising that characters and plot strands from seasons past are starting to come into play again.
We’re getting to the business end of tensions in 1700s America that will eventually lead to the Revolutionary War (Picture: Starz/Backgrid)
Chief among these is the return of Lord John Grey (David Berry) and the introduction of the now grown-up Lt Lord William Ransom (Charles Vandervaart), Jamie’s secret illegitimate son and a patriotic redcoat, which is sure to cause plenty of heartache somewhere along the way.
New faces also pop up with the addition of Izzy Meikle-Small and Joey Phillips as Rachel and Dr Denzell Hunter, Quaker settlers and siblings who are drawn to the Continental Army’s cause.
At the heart of Outlander remains Claire and Jamie’s relationship, which is set to be tested yet again by new challenges and loss – however Balfe and Heughan’s chemistry is as reliable as ever.
Claire and Jamie’s relationship remains the linchpin of Outlander, over 30 years after they first met (Picture: Starz/Backgrid)
Both actors are now pointedly less weathered than their characters should be at this stage (despite what they’ve gone through), as they are portraying the couple well into their fifties while both are a glamorous 43… There is at least a sly reference to Claire still having all her teeth at this age, which is likely as close as we’ll get to an acknowledgement of that on a show that is, after all, mostly fantasy.
Outlander season 7 boasts a renewed energy missing from the last outing, and although nothing is ever easy for the inhabitants of Fraser’s Ridge, this time around the storytelling spark and action has been excitedly reignited.
Outlander season seven premieres on Friday June 16 on Lionsgate Plus.
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