Outlander team on the return of season 7: "Bring your whiskey and tissues"

Better thank Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ because the “droughtlander” is almost over: Outlander resumes the back half of season seven next month. The eight new episodes continue to adapt Diana Gabaldon’s novel, An Echo In The Bone. To gear up for the next stage of Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire’s (Caitriona Balfe) sexy period romance, the cast and crew of Starz’s drama appeared at New York Comic-Con’s Outlander panel.

The show’s stars and producers were quick to offer warnings to fans, with executive producer Maril Davis noting that, “The most talked about episode will be the 11th. Bring your whiskey and tissues. It will be talked about in many ways.” Heughan, meanwhile, remarked on what a long, unexpected trip through time it’s been: “Caitriona and I didn’t know anything about the books when we signed on,” he said during the panel. “And we thought the show would only last a season. We were naive.”

When we last saw the couple, Jamie and Claire were jetting off to his Scottish homeland to escape the perils of the Revolutionary War. Since Claire is from the future, she knows exactly what’ll happen next, after all. But, as happens in Gabaldon’s book, Claire is eventually forced to return to the colonies in America to deploy her medical skills. With more twists to come, everyone’s favorite resilient (and horny) couple might be separated for quite a while. 

Meanwhile, their daughter Brianna (Sophie Skelton) and her husband, Roger (Richard Rankin) deal with a family crisis because they will also be separated by time. This show loves to torture fans, huh? But it’s okay because Outlander also enjoys emotional reunions to make it all worth it. Season seven will probably sprinkle those in, too—although you don’t have to take our word for it: The cast and crew also showed off a lush trailer for the new episodes, promising all sorts of time-tossed drama along the way: 

The cast and crew also talked about the show’s eighth and final season, still floating out there on the horizon. Davis stated that, “Not everyone has seen our season 8 finale scripts, but we have it ready. We want to avoid leaks. We also want to be respectful of Diana because we may not end our show the way she would.” (Gabaldon, for her part, has no George R.R. Martin preciousness in her response. From the panel, she observed, “I was not upset by [the different ending]. It was possible for me to be objective about it because it was well done and will work nicely for the show.”)

The cast includes Nell Hudson, John Bell, David Berry, Charles Vandervaart, Simon R. Baker, and Mark Lewis Jones co-star, with Graham McTavish and Lotte Verbeek appearing via flashbacks. Outlander’s seventh season returns on November 22, and will run through the end of January 2025.