Much as we Outlander fans love to complain about the semi-annual Droughtlander (for those of you keeping count, it’s now been close to a year since season four’s finale aired), the truth is, it’s the anticipation that makes it so good. (Insert your own wink emoji here.) And by the sounds of it, season 5—which debuts on Starz on Sunday, February 16—is going to be extremely worth the wait.
During a buzzy panel at the Television Critics Association winter press tour last week, Starz president Carmi Zlotnik offered a hint of what’s to come for Claire and Jamie. Here’s the official synopsis:
Season 5 finds the Frasers fighting for their family and the home they have forged on Fraser’s Ridge. With her family finally together, Claire Fraser has to leverage all of her strength, knowledge and foresight to prevent them from being ripped apart once again. Jamie is forced to defend all that he has created in America and protect those who look to him for leadership, all the while hiding his personal relationship with Murtagh, whom he has been ordered to hunt down and kill. Meanwhile, Brianna Fraser and Roger MacKenzie work to raise their son, Jemmy MacKenzie, under the looming specter of Stephen Bonnet.
And that’s just the beginning. Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Sophie Skelton, Richard Rankin and executive producer Maril Davis were all on hand to dig into what to expect from season 5, which will apparently feature “a lot more intimacy and passion” between Claire and Jamie. Read on for more details about that important development, plus six other teasers for the new season.
1. Claire’s medical expertise leads her dangerously close to “playing God”.
Don’t you hate it when you’ve time-traveled a couple centuries into the past to build a new life with your smoldering Scottish soulmate, and are forced to perform surgeries without using any of your extensive modern medical knowledge, lest you blow your cover? That’s the frustrating situation in which Claire finds herself yet again this season. Balfe said we’ll find Claire “really investing time again in her role as a surgeon, and really expanding as a healer in this community. I think because she has so much knowledge from the 20th century, she feels that she could really help this community and the people around her…but obviously, that comes with a lot of risks.”
Since Claire’s never exactly been risk-adverse, it’s no surprise that she explores surgeries from her own time—and even tries to synthesize her own versions of modern medicines, like penicillin—which becomes “a very risky endeavor” for her in 18th-century North Carolina, Balfe said. “She actually, for a short time, has some success,” Heughan adds. But of course, this being Outlander, the other shoe is poised to drop.
Treading carefully to avoid direct spoilers, Balfe hinted that Claire’s attempts to introduce modern medicine will bring her dangerously close to “playing God, and playing with the course of history. Obviously, she had come back to the 18th century originally with her syringe and penicillin, and we’ve seen how she’s used that in the past to save herself when she was sick and also save Jamie. So it’s something she’s already used in the past. It’s an essential thing to fight against infection. It will become necessary again later on in certain storylines, but it will also be the cause of a lot of pain and trouble for Claire further down the line…There are always consequences to these things.”
2. Jamie in a redcoat uniform was a visual Heughan fought for.
Jamie’s deepening association with the British military during the Revolutionary War will, naturally, be a huge source of conflict for him in the new season, and Heughan revealed that he felt strongly about showing the character in the iconic red coat uniform, a storyline which doesn’t appear in Diana Gabaldon’s books. “I thought it was a strong visual, and something for Jamie that would go against everything that he’s fought for and what he stands for. His relationship to the British and to what the uniform represents has been pretty bad, at best, from the beginning of the season to his father’s death to Black Jack Randall—the redcoats really suppressed the Scots. So to see Jamie Fraser in a red coat for me was kind of full circle and kind of terrifying at the same time.” Though he declined to get too specific about the storyline, Heughan did confirmed that Jamie is commanded to wear the red coat, which is far from the most stressful demands he’s dealing with in the new season. Speaking of which…
3. Jamie and Murtagh’s relationship will break your heart this season.
As fans will no doubt remember, season 4’s finale saw Jamie being ordered to “hunt down and kill” his own godfather. Very chill! Season 5 opens with a flashback sequence between a younger Jamie and Murtagh, which deepens our understanding of their bond and of Jamies impossible dilemma. “This is a storyline that isn’t in the book, and it’s probably one of the biggest deviations from the books,” Heughan notes, adding that this emotional conflict has been his favorite storyline to play in the new season. “Jamie’s always had this father figure in his godfather. [Murtagh] has always been this presence which has sort of guided him, and we see some great flashbacks this season to when Jamie is a child. For Jamie to have to sort of break that bond, and put Murtagh at a distance to protect Fraser’s Ridge, is very hard for Jamie to do.” I, for one, am am not emotionally equipped for this.
Aimee SpinksStarz
4. Season 5 will delve more into the challenges of being a time-traveller.
Now that Brianna is finally reunited with her parents, Claire is no longer the only time-traveller in town, and Sophie Skelton hinted that season 5 will focus on Claire, Brianna and Roger’s shared struggle to balance their modern experiences with 18th-century life. “It’s one thing playing a character in one time period, but then taking them into another time period where they can’t be themselves, that brings new challenges,” Skelton said. “Claire, Brianna, and Roger all have to monitor themselves 100 percent of the time when it’s not just the three of them together—they have to change their language, their stance, their demeanor, any references they might make. For the character that’s really difficult, but also as actors, sometimes you just want to be in the character’s head…sometimes I might slip in an “Okay,” or something, which Brianna couldn’t say in that time. So you just have to wary of that as an actor and as the character.”
5. Look out for a lot more “intimacy and passion” between Claire and Jamie.
Okay, okay, here’s the tea you’ve been scrolling for. If you were one of the fans dissatisfied with season 4’s sexytime quotient, fear not. “Everyone’s so worried about the passion,” Balfe joked when the inevitable question arose. “I think that the circumstances of this season have really allowed us to invest in those relationship moments, so we see a lot more of the intimacy and the passion of Claire and Jamie. We have the luxury of them being in one place a lot of the time, so we get to see how they work together as a coupl…it’s really lovely to see them just converse as a couple in this supportive and emotionally supportive way.”
Heughan confirmed that although Claire and Jamie have a lot going on in their independent worlds this season—what with Claire trying to bring modern medicine to the 18th century, and Jamie trying to figure out how not to murder his own godfather—they’ll still find ways to touch base and consistently support each other. “They always need and yearn for each other, and they sort of reconnect, in these moments we see that are quite domestic. It’s their home life and it’s actually really touching. Those are the really fun scenes to play, to sort of see them need each other and reconnect.”
6. Adso the cat is just as adorable IRL as you imagined.
Move over, Rollo (but not really we still love you you’re a very good boy)—the Frasers have a new pet, and she is perfect. Ever since Adso the cat was introduced to us last year, we’ve been waiting impatiently to see how this new feline addition would fit into the show, and while we still don’t have a lot of answers on that front, we do know that she’s a delight to work with.
“We’ve all been fighting over that cat,” Skelton admitted, while Balfe added that there are several different cats playing Adso at different ages. “They’re just adorable, and they’re very placid,” she said—which is very much not what she said about the doggos who played Rollo last season, just sayin’. But there’s more: “We have had a couple of scenes where the cat will be sort of on the front porch in the scene, and then by the time they say, ‘cut,’ we have about 15 people looking for the cat because it’s either gone under the crawl space or it’s gone off into the woods. Animals are never easy to work with, and there’s no training a cat.” Worth it, though.
7. Outlander is not ending any time soon.
The most blessed news of all came towards the end of the panel, as Davis was asked about a potential endgame for the series. “We’ll keep making this until Claire and Jamie are 100,” she replied. “No, honestly, we will. I mean, there are still many more books to go. If Starz and Sony are willing, we’re willing. If the actors are willing, we’ll keep going as long as there’s interest.” Noting that Gabaldon is still writing books, she acknowledged, “we’ll never catch Diana, I don’t think. But we’ll keep going.”