It may feel like centuries since Outlander's Season 3 finale washed the Frasers ashore in the American colonies. But after 11 months of #Droughtlander, Season 4 is little more than a week away. In anticipation, let's revisit every little bit of information available about the new season (though if you read Drums of Autumn, you know of a few major plot points). Read on for all the hints shared by the show's producers and cast below.
🚨 WARNING: Spoilers for Outlander Season 4 below. Proceed with caution! 🚨
1) The 13-episode season will premiere on Sunday, November 4, 2018.
It's based on the fourth book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, Drums of Autumn, which was published December 30, 1996. You can read a spoiler-y preview of the story over at dianagabaldon.com.
2) Season 4 is set in America.
Outlander started out as a Scottish show set in the Highlands, and since traveled to France and the Caribbean. But come Season 4, Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and Jamie (Sam Heughan) will build a homestead called "Fraser's Ridge" in North Carolina, at that point a colony. Creator and executive producer Ron D. Moore explained to Deadline that the Season 3 finale "shifts the whole foundation of the show to the American colonies," adding, "That will be sort of the primary story going forward for the rest of the show because that’s where the rest of the books took place."
Moore teased the sort of drama Claire and Jamie will have to deal with in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter: "There's elements of Little House on the Prairie with elements of the frontier and wilderness. We're there at a time of tumult in the American colonies, there's slavery in the South, there are American Indians on the frontier, there's a rebellion that will blossom into the American Revolution, and they land smack-dab in the middle of all of this."
Moore also promised the series will call back to Scotland: "It’s not going to completely abandon like Lallybroch and Inverness and some of the stories back there, but you know the balance of the story and the weight of the story is definitely going to be in America from now on."
3) But the show still shoots in Scotland.
Despite moving the Fraser's home base to North Carolina, Outlander shot Season 4 in Scotland and eastern Europe, Moore confirmed to EW. But of course, this came with challenges. "Visually it was like a reinvention of everything we've done," Moore revealed to me at an Outlander PaleyFest panel in early October. "[For the first three seasons] we would go out and shoot on location a lot, but all the old buildings and all the old structures are made of stone. In America, [the] colonies, everything's made of wood... We had to build a lot more, we had to make a lot more on visual effects work. Everything had to be redone: props, set decoration, new costumes, new visual landscapes, a lot more CGI." Watch the complete PaleyFest interview below (starting at 6:08).
Co-executive producer Maril Davis also revealed at the PaleyFest panel that producers made the decision to avoid mention of the South's famous heat and humidity. "Right off the bat we were like, 'We're not gonna talk about weather," we won't be able to have everyone look glistening... Trees are trees and once you're in the forest Scotland can look a lot like North Carolina, but there are certain things you can't recreate and weather is one of them."
To prep for the season, Heughan took a short tour of the South, telling BAZAAR.com, "I went on this little road trip, and went to sort of find Fraser's Ridge so to speak, and it was incredible to see this great country," he said. "The thing that was most surprising is how similar it feels and looks to Scotland... There have been times on set when I'm looking out, and it feels like you’re in North Carolina."
4) SPOILER ALERT: Jamie will meet his daughter, Brianna (Sophie Skelton).
Yep, Bree's a time-traveler like her mom. At the Television Academy FYC panel, Heughan revealed that he's about to shoot his big meeting with Brianna in the 18th century. "This season, it’s a huge moment and will be the catalyst to a lot of the drama that unfolds,” Heughan said, according to Variety.
“The path that [Brianna] takes to make that journey is very different than the path that Claire took,” Moore told ELLE.com. “They’re on very different tracks. She goes for a different purpose, and in a different way than Claire did, and once she arrives there, she has a different set of problems than what Claire dealt with.”
5) But don't worry—Roger (Richard Rankin) isn't going anywhere.
Co-executive producer Maril Davis confirmed on Twitter that we'll see Roger and Bree together in Season 4, and EW reports that part of the new season will be set in 20th-century Boston and Scotland (Inverness, to be exact).
When the season opens, Skelton said at PaleyFest, Brianna has started a new life for herself, without her mom. She's studying at MIT, and she and Roger are in a long-distance relationship. But there will be some drama: "There's a line in the book where Bree says that she's known a marriage made of love and one made of obligation, and she knows which one she does and doesn't want, and I think that's pretty much Bree's mindset from the beginning of this," Skelton said.
"You're starting this season with them not even entirely sure where this [relationship] is going to go or even if it's going to go anywhere," Moore told THR in March. "And then it goes through all the turmoil and finding each other again under the circumstances they do and the shock of that; it's a fairly heavy, tumultuous relationship story for them this season."
6) Jamie and Claire become grandparents.
Yes, you read that right.“Season 4 is about settling down: finding a home, building a home, new families, grandchildren, larger settlements... it's sort of a progression in the life of these people," Moore revealed on the official Outlander Twitter account. It's unclear whether he's referring to Marsali and Fergus or Brianna.
Heughan also confirmed that Jamie will become a grandfather this season: “He’s grown up more and he’s now trying to provide for his family, to understand that more, what it’s like to be a father or grandfather," he told ELLE.com.
7) Jamie's Aunt Jocasta has a huge role this season.
Season 4 is "all about Jocasta," Davis told EW. Described as "strong-willed," she's the younger sister of Jamie's late mother and uncles Colum and Dougal Mackenzie, so it's safe to say political machinations are her specialty. Maria Doyle Kennedy, of Orphan Black, Downton Abbey and The Tudors fame, will portray the character.
Production designer Jon Gary Steele revealed that Jocasta's plantation is his favorite setting for Season 4: "It's heavily detailed—even more than the Parisian sets, believe it or not. I think it's more beautiful, even, than some of the Parisian sets."
8) And we'll meet a new villain.
Ed Speleers is set to play Stephen Bonnet, a pirate, smuggler and all-around antagonist to Jamie and Claire. The shows producers promise he's worse than Black Jack Randall: "Stephen Bonnet is a pure psychopath and a narcissist whose day-to-day is, 'What's going to pleasure me?'" executive producer Matt B. Roberts told THR. Heughan tells BAZAAR.com, “He's probably double Black. He's not a nice man. The problem with him is that he's charming, so he's disarming. I think that's what makes him worse."
9) Rollo is the cutest new addition to the show's cast.
Young Ian adopts a canine companion in the coming season named Rollo. He'll be played by two Northern Inuit dogs. “Rollo and Young Ian met on the docks in North Carolina, when Young Ian won the dog in a card game, and a life-long bond was formed between them, meaning that Rollo became a member of the ever-growing Fraser family," Diana Gabaldon told EW.
10) You haven't seen the last of Tobias Menzies.
Both of Menzies' characters, Black Jack Randall and Frank Randall, died in Season 3, but Menzies would gladly reprise the roles at some point in the future. "Who knows, they may have me back," he told BAZAAR.com in September 2017. "I have no news of that, but I suppose with a show that can travel anywhere in time, you never know."
In the Season 4 trailer released in September, Frank's voice clearly says, "Sometimes life takes unexpected turns," as Brianna approaches the Standing Stones. Davis confirmed at PaleyFest that Frank is in Bree's head.
11) Laoghaire might be back, too.
We probably haven't seen the last of Jamie's ex-wife, Moore revealed at the FYC event, according to Variety: “The fans love to hate her. That just means you want to see her more."
12) Production designer Jon Gary Steele called this season "the best looking year of all."
Steele famously brought such magical locations as Master Raymond's apothecary and the print shop to life on the show, but apparently, they pale in comparison to Season 4's sets. In March, he told TVGuide.com, "Normally, halfway through [the current season] we start researching and prepping [for the next season]. But we're so busy this year, it's really a big year." He continued, "It's my biggest build so far. It's huge. It might be the best looking year of all." I can't wait to see.
