Valentine’s Day weekend 2020 just got a little bit better. Outlander Season 5 has an official release date and, you guessed it, it is February 2020.
Starz made the announcement that it would be renewing its historical time travel romance based on the bestselling series from Diana Gabaldon for two more seasons in October 2018, taking it through Season 6 at least. The announcement came ahead of Outlander Season 4, which wrapped up in January.
Here’s everything we know about the upcoming season…
Outlander Season 5 Release Date
Outlander Season 5 will drop on Sunday, February 16th, 2020. Starz also announced that Outlander will have a Season 5 panel at NYCC on October 5th at 5:30pm ET.
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Caitriona Balfe (Claire Fraser) and Sam Heughan (Jamie) are confirmed to attend the panel, along with Duncan LaCroix (Murtagh), Maria Doyle Kennedy (Jocasta), and David Berry (Lord John Grey). Author Diana Gabaldon and executive producers Ronald D. Moore and Maril Davis will also be there.
Outlander Season 5 Cast
All of your favorite faces will be back for Season 5 (we were worried about Murtagh there for a minute), including Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Sophie Skelton, and Richard Rankin. Here’s some adorable proof…
Outlander Season 5 Trailer
Fresh from the show’s NYCC 2019 appearance, here is the first official trailer for Outlander season 5.
And here is a little peak at Season 5 filming from back in the pre-trailer days…
Outlander Season 5 Episodes
Outlander Season 5 and Outlander Season 6 will both feature 12 episodes and will be based on material from Gabaldon’s The Fiery Cross, the fifth book in the series, and A Breath of Snow and Ashes, the sixth book in the series.
“In Season 4, Jamie and Claire’s decision to remain in the New World changes the course of their life together,” said executive producer Matthew B. Roberts in an official statement. ”After being struck by the beauty of the North Carolina wilderness – untamed and uncultivated – they choose to call it home: Fraser’s Ridge. However, what is a ‘dream’ for some is a ‘nightmare’ for others. Being at the center of the birth of America is often a bloody and violent and heartbreaking matter. Now, in Season 5, Jamie and Claire’s duty is not only to their loved ones, but to the community of settlers forming part of the ever-increasing Clan Fraser.”
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More recently, Roberts spoke to Parade about what to expect from Outlander Season 5, saying: “There’s some fantastic stuff coming up with how Jamie and Claire have to navigate this. Let’s just say Jamie is clearly between a rock and a hard place, the rock being his signed oath to the Crown, to Governor Tryon, for the land that they live on, and his loyalty and his love for Murtagh. So, that is going to cause the Frasers some trouble as we go forward in season five and we’ll see how they get out of it or if they get out of it.””
Roberts also spoke about the difficulty of adapting a thick book like The Fiery Cross into 12 episodes, saying: “There’s a lot of really fantastic moments that we’re trying to find space for. Once again, when you have a very thick book and Murtaugh’s not even in it, when that story takes up space, then obviously other things have to move to the side. But we’re committed to it, we can’t just go away from it, so we’ll do the best we can.”
Outlander Season 5 Story
What happens next in Outlander? Oh boy, things are about to get messy.
If the TV show follows the books (which, so far, it mostly has), then things are about to get even dicier in the New World for Claire, Jamie, Bree, and, most especially perhaps (dude didn’t make it this far in the books), Murtagh. Here’s the official synopsis for The Fiery Cross, from Diana Gabaldon’s website:
“The Fiery Cross is the fifth book in the Outlander series, following Drums of Autumn. Set against the War of the Regulation in North Carolina (the first tax-payer’s rebellion in the American colonies, and a precursor to the full-blown Revolution), the story deals with Jamie Fraser’s efforts to protect his family, build a community on Fraser’s Ridge, and keep his land–this last requiring him to walk a delicate tight-rope between the pressing urgency of the rebellion and the increasingly unsteady but still dangerously powerful government.
In these efforts, he’s mostly aided–and occasionally hindered–by his wife Claire, who has become the conjure-woman for the Ridge, his daughter Brianna, whose 20th-century inventiveness may possibly kill them all, and his new son-in-law, Roger MacKenzie, which whom he has a rather wary relationship, owing to his having at one point sold Roger to the Iroquois (under the misapprehension that Roger had raped his daughter, but still…), and to Roger’s sense of inferiority, comparing his own budding skills at swordcraft, farming, and leadership with the man he refers to privately as ‘The Great Scot.’
It’s a story about loyalty—in which people find what’s most important to them, and just how far they’ll go to protect it.”
Read The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
More news on Outlander Season 5 and Outlander Season 6 as we hear it.
Check out our Outlander Season 4 episode guide, complete with reviews, here!
Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.