Outlander Season 7 Will Be the Show's Longest Since Season 1

On June 1—known as World Outlander Day, to the show's most devoted fans—Starz delivered a double dose of news via the show's Instagram. First, we can expect season 6 in early 2022, but it will be a shortened season (yay/booo). Second, there's a silver lining: Season 7 will be a whopping 16 episodes long!

To be an Outlander fan is always an exercise in patience, whether you're enduring the year-plus wait between new seasons on its home network Starz, or checking Netflix for season 5 on a daily basis. But at a certain point in 2020, it was easy to wonder if we'd ever see Jamie (Sam Heughan), Claire (Caitriona Balfe), and the rest of the Fraser's Ridge gang on our screens again.

"We look forward to following the adventures of Claire and Jamie in America during the Revolution as well as more time travel during this next season," Starz president of original programming Christina Davis said in a statement announcing the greenlit season 7 back in March 2021. While the renewal wasn't quite as exciting as when the network announced seasons 5 and 6 at the same time back in 2018, we're just going to live in the present and look forward to the many fresh episodes that await us...eventually.

Here's what we do know about Outlander season 7's premiere date, cast, and plot.

Outlander's seventh season will have 16 episodes.

"With the challenges of filming in these unprecedented times, Season 6 will be eight episodes with production on an extended, sixteen-episode Season 7 beginning next year," read the announcement that came alongside the announcement that season 6 had wrapped.

Yes, this bounty of episodes is a long way off. But on the bright side, it gives you plenty of time to read the source material?

Is there a trailer yet—or even a release date?!

Goodness, no. But we’ll let you know the minute there is.

The plot is based on the book An Echo in the Bone.

Each season of Outlander is primarily based on a volume from Diana Gabaldon's book series, and season 7 is no exception. An Echo in the Bone is the seventh of eight completed Outlander books. While it was released 12 years ago, a warning for non-book readers: Scroll past this section if you don’t want any spoilers!

On her site, Gabaldon sums up the four main Echo in the Bone plot threads as follows:

In the season 5 finale, we see Roger (Richard Rankin) and Bree (Sophie Skelton) attempt to pass back through the stones while tethered to their son, Jemmy. That attempt failed, ostensibly because one or both of them were unable to get Fraser’s Ridge out of their heads when they imagined “home.” Barring a major divergence from the books, that means we’ll see them go back to the future in either season 6 or 7.

Showrunner Matthew B. Roberts teased a photo of the book on May 22.

The cast will include a new face playing someone you’ve met before.

Heughan, Balfe, Skelton, and Rankin will return as Jamie, Claire, Brianna, and Roger, the network confirms. Given their appearance in the source material, it’s safe to bet that we’ll also see David Berry and John Bell back as Lord John Grey and “Young” Ian Murray, respectively.

We’re most eager to see who’ll portray the all-grown-up William Ransom, the son Jamie conceived during Claire’s 20-year absence, who was raised by Lord John Grey. Last we saw William in season 4’s “Blood of My Blood,” he was played by young actor Oliver Finnegan, so this will be a Fergus-style recast.

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