© 2021 Starz Entertainment, LLC. Credit: Jason Bell
By Kate Hahn
Our beloved century-hopping doc Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe), her husband Jamie (Sam Heughan) and their clan finally return for adventure romance Outlander‘s sixth installment (Sundays on Starz beginning March 6 at 9pm ET/PT, adapted from Diana Gabaldon’s A Breath of Snow and Ashes. It’s been nearly two years — the longest “droughtlander” ever — since the gutting May 2020 Season 5 finale that left Claire recovering from a brutal assault.
“Claire wants to continue as if nothing had happened, but this is the first time she can’t suppress something,” Balfe says. “She’s a bit destabilized. That bleeds into every aspect of her life, including as a healer.”
A Season 6 scene released on Christmas Day made us even more impatient. In it, Jamie and Claire, now at least physically healed, discuss his hesitancy to welcome a new settler — devout Tom Christie (Mark Lewis Jones), whom he knows from his terrible days at Ardsmuir Prison — to Fraser’s Ridge. Next, Jamie explains why he considers Claire his “angel,” to which she coos, “Would an angel do this?” before kissing him. Swoon.
Jamie is right to be cautious about Christie. “Their different religious viewpoints cause conflict,” hints exec producer Maril Davis, adding that the safety of home starts to crack in these eight “jam-packed” episodes (the season opener is 90 minutes). Claire struggles with lingering psychological trauma, daughter Bree and her husband Roger (Sophie Skelton and Richard Rankin) try for another baby, and the American Revolution begins!
