More than a year after the end of Outlander’s seventh season, the ‘droughtlander’ is finally over. The eighth and final season of the time-travelling period drama has at last arrived on MGM+, and going by the first three episodes, it’s definitely been worth the wait.
In case you have forgotten during those long, cold Outlander-less months, the previous season ended on a whopper of a cliffhanger, with Jamie and Claire Fraser (Sam Heughan and Caitriona Balfe) discovering that Fanny, the orphaned girl they were protecting, knew a song that would not be written for more than 100 years. It’s the same song that 20th century nurse Claire sang as she cradled her dead baby, Faith, back in 1744 (in season two), so when Fanny said her late mother used to sing it to her, it led Claire to wonder whether Faith had actually survived and Fanny was her daughter.
The first episode of the new season immediately addresses this – huge praise to the writers for not dragging out that plot twist, which we won’t spoil here – before Claire and Jamie decide to leave the American Revolutionary War behind and head back to their North Carolina home of Fraser’s Ridge.
En route, there are reunions aplenty, and straight away, one of the biggest problems of the previous season is rectified.
In season seven, characters were scattered in different places and even different times, leading to a tangle of far too many separate threads that meant viewers were frequently yanked out of an engrossing storyline for a less riveting subplot somewhere else.
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And while two different timelines worked well in the early years – such as Frank searching for his wife in the 1940s juxtaposed with Claire falling for Jamie in 18th century Scotland back in season one – in the seventh season it all got a bit much, with Jamie and Claire having wartime traumas in 1778, their daughter Brianna dealing with male misogyny in 1980, and husband Roger searching for their kidnapped son in 1730 with his ancestor Buck. Jesus H Roosevelt Christ, as Claire would say.
Happily, by the start of the new season just about everyone is in the same era (1779), with Lauren Lyle and César Domboy making a welcome return as Marsali and Fergus (they were only mentioned in passing and never seen last season), Jamie’s adorable nephew Ian (John Bell) and his pregnant wife Rachel (Izzy Meikle-Small) settling into married life, and Lord John Grey (David Berry) and his adopted son William (Charles Vandervaart) representing the British side of things.
There are some new additions to the cast, including House of the Dragon’s Kieran Bew as Charles Cunningham, who lives on the Ridge with his mother and looks like he could be a potential threat later on, but wisely the focus is firmly on Jamie and Claire, who, let’s face it, have been the heart, soul and steamy centre of the series since it began in 2014.
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Their love story has spanned centuries and continents, and has survived deadly fires, wars, near-drownings, shootings, death sentences, ex-spouses and even witchcraft. As the final 10 episodes begin, fans will be praying for a happy ending for the passionately devoted couple portrayed so well by Heughan and Balfe, while also screaming “yes!” at a twist at the end of episode one that not only provides a real threat for the final season, but also delivers one of the best surprises of the series to date.
Author Diana Gabaldon hasn’t finished writing the final book in her Outlander series of novels, so the ending of the show remains a mystery that won’t be revealed until May.
However, if the first episodes are anything to go by, the journey that takes us there will be just as tense, twisting and romantic as the series’ best seasons, and for fans of the Frasers and Mackenzies, the finale will hopefully be a satisfying sobfest too.
Outlander seasons 1-7 are available to stream on MGM+. Outlander season 8 drops weekly from Saturday, 7 March.
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Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.