'Outlander' has been renewed for two more seasons and we'd like to time travel to watch them now, please
For those who have been with Outlander's Claire and Jamie since the first season aired in 2014, it's hard to even imagine an end to their epic time-hopping journey.
Luckily, we won't have to imagine it for quite some time. Starz and Sony Pictures Television have announced the wildly popular show's renewal for at least two more seasons, running 12 episodes each.
For those keeping track, that means we'll get the upcoming fourth season currently in production slated for release in November 2018 -- and then have two additional seasons (if not more) to look forward to in the future.
And for audiences in the U.S., it looks like a central location for those seasons will be much closer to home than we're used to.
“Fans can rest assured their beloved Claire and Jamie will be back facing new challenges, adversaries, and adventures in seasons five and six as we delve into American history and continue the story of the Frasers as they settle in the New World,” Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said in a statement.
Based on the best-selling novels by Diana Gabaldon, the plot lines for each of those seasons will more or less follow the arcs from their corresponding book in the series. So Season 5 will be based on Gabaldon's fifth installment, titled The Fiery Cross, and Season 6 will follow A Breath of Snow and Ashes.
There are currently eight Outlander books in total, but Gabaldon is working on Book 9 and recently said she'd likely finish writing it by the end of 2018. The saga is planned to end with Book 10.
So never fret, lovers of premium cable adaptations of bestselling fantasy sagas. George R. R. Martin might never finish Winds of Winter, let alone the other books planned in the series, but Diana Gabaldon knows how to meet a damn deadline.
Maybe it comes with the territory of writing a book series so preoccupied with the constraints and passage of time. Or maybe it's, you know, discipline.
In any case, we've got lots more years of hearing Jamie growl, "Sassenach," in his sexy accents. And that's a timeline we want to live in forever.
Jess is an LA-based culture critic who covers intimacy in the digital age, from sex and relationship to weed and all media (tv, games, film, the web). Previously associate editor at Kill Screen, you can also find her words on Vice, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vox, and others. She is a Brazilian-Swiss American immigrant with a love for all things weird and magical.
