It's the End of an Era as Filming Wraps on 'Outlander'

Filming on the final season of the Starz period drama Outlander has officially wrapped, bringing over a decade of time-traveling, romantic adventures to a close. The network celebrated with a series of wrap photos featuring the bulk of the series main cast with production clapperboards, and it's a charming farewell to a series that has meant so much to so many people. 

It seems strange to be mourning the end of a series with a season and a half of episodes left to air. But it's equally difficult to overstate the impact that the success of Outlander has had on the television landscape writ large. Years before Bridgerton's debut, the series was breaking new ground in period romance, pushing boundaries when it came to telling female-focused historical stories centered on love and sex. (And, yes, a fair amount of violence.)

In many ways, the premise of Outlander is ridiculous: A freshly married World War II nurse named Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) finds herself sent back to the past when she touches the standing stones of Craigh na Dun. Transported to mid-eighteenth-century Scotland, she meets and falls in love with a hunky Scottish warrior named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), and what follows is a sweeping, achingly romantic story that spans time periods, continents, and generations of both the Fraser and Randall clans. 

But at the heart of it is a central love that's so darn swoony-worthy and compelling that you'll find yourself willing to believe that virtually anything is possible. Claire and Jamie have survived war, torture, imprisonment, attempted sexual assault, rape, separation, disease, injury, arrest, court intrigue, and a shipwreck. They share a daughter who is also a time traveler and, like her mother, also has a foot in both the past and present. There's pretty much nothing these two can't face together, and that's a big part of the show's charm. 

Your mileage will likely vary when it comes to the show's frequent — and often quite brutal — depiction of sexual violence and sexual menace. Throughout the series' run, almost every central character has been sexually assaulted in some form or other, and it's more than a bit uncomfortable to watch at times. (And unnecessary to the larger story the show is telling if you ask me.)

But, to its credit, Outlander also pioneered the idea that TV could be explicitly sexy without feeling exploitative. This drama treats sex maturely — and by that, I don't mean boring, since some of these interludes are almost shockingly steamy — and as a significant and necessary part of the show's central relationship. The sex scenes aren't a means to an end or a reason for the show's attractive stars to disrobe, but a genuine extension of Jamie and Claire's bond, another means by which the two communicate. 

Part of what's so romantic about their relationship is how much these two not only talk but genuinely listen to one another. This may be a necessity when you come from two different periods, but it is nevertheless something many other shows would do well to emulate. (Considering other people's perspectives is hot, is what I'm saying.) 

The good news is that even though filming has concluded, we're still ages away from saying goodbye to the Frasers forever.

The second half of Outlander Season 7 is slated to premiere in November 2024 and will see the series' story return to Scotland for the first time since its third season and welcome back several fan favorites from years past, like Graham McTavish and Lotte Verbeek. The eighth and final season will follow at a still-to-be-determined date. (Don't be surprised if they split Season 8 into two parts and the final episodes air in 2026.) 

A prequel series, Outlander: Blood of My Blood, will also arrive in 2025 and recount the love stories of Jamie and Claire's parents — Ellen MacKenzie and Brian Fraser for him, Henry Beauchamp and Julia Morston for her. So, yes, plenty of Outlander and Outlander-adjacent content is headed our way over the next few years. Perhaps the fact that we know our time with these characters is finite will make these stories all the more enjoyable to watch in the end. But our television landscape will undoubtedly be less romantic when it's gone. 

Outlander Season 7, Part 2 premieres on Starz on Friday, November 22, 2024. Season 8 (or at least half of it) is slated to arrive sometime in 2025.