What Outlander's New Opening Credits Teach Us About Season 6
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After a long Droughtlander, this week has brought treat after treat for Outlander fans. Following the release of Diana Gabaldon's Go Tell The Bees That I Am Gone, and the official announcement of the season 6 launch date (March 6, 2022), Starz has now unveiled the credit sequence for the new season.
The evocative and haunting new credits feature a few pieces of new footage from the season, though as ever they've been carefully chosen to avoid revealing any plot details. And of course, the credits sequence features a brand new arrangement of "Skye Boat Song," a traditional Scottish folk song that has been transformed for every fresh season of Outlander.
The most significant change in this new version of the song is the opening verse, which begins: "Sing me a song of a lad that is gone / Say, could that lad be I? / Merry of soul he sailed on a day / Over the sea to Skye." Those are the traditional lyrics to a version of the song written by poet Robert Louis Stevenson, sometime in the late 19th century. The song originally told the story of Scotland's Bonnie Prince Charlie, who fled the country in a boat to avoid being captured following his defeat at the 1746 Battle of Culloden.
But as Outlander fans will know, the show's opening credits have historically changed the pronouns in the song, so that the lyrics instead begin: "Sing me a song of a lass that is gone." That version returns later on in the season six version, but the reintroduction of the original male-focused version is intriguing. This arrangement also begins with a male vocalist, before introducing female vocals. Last season's a cappella version introduced male singers for the first time.
Just like the season five credits, the footage here features recurring war imagery. That's to be expected, since season six will reportedly see Jamie and Claire struggling to maintain their homestead at Fraser's Ridge under the looming shadow of the Revolutionary War. Sam Heughan has teased that their sense of stability will "disintegrate... I think these cracks are really starting to show—not only for Jamie and Claire but for the rest of the inhabitants of Fraser’s Ridge. The war is coming,” he said, per Us Weekly.
Executive producer Maril Davis has offered some similarly worrying hints about what's to come for our favorite time-traveling lovers. "Jamie and Claire keep thinking they're safe at Fraser's Ridge, but in season 6 we're asking, 'What do you do when your home turns against you?' We'll see how that happens in their own backyard," she told Entertainment Weekly. So it's safe to say we should all prepare ourselves for some trauma.
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