Starz announced that it’s bringing its time traveling romance series Outlander back for a seventh season, which will be based on the seventh installment of Diana Gabaldon’s long-running series, An Echo in the Bone.
The series has been running on Starz since 2014. Developed by Battlestar Galactica‘s Ronald D. Moore, it follows a nurse named Claire Randall (played by Caitriona Balfe) in 1945 who suddenly finds herself in the year 1743, where she meets Jamie Fraser (played by Sam Heughan), becomes involved in the Jacobite cause, and eventually ends up in the British colonies in America shortly before the Revolutionary War.
The show’s sixth season only just entered production last month: it’ll be based on Gabaldon’s sixth installment of the series, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, and doesn’t have a release date just yet. This new season will be based on the series seventh entry, and there’s at least a couple of additional books to draw from if Starz opts to continue the show beyond this current season—the latest installment of the series, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood hit bookstores in 2014, and a ninth installment, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone is forthcoming.
This next season will run for 12 episodes, and if it tracks with the book, it’ll be set during the American Revolution, in which Jamie is fighting on the side of the American colonists, and Claire is worried about what the cost of the conflict will be. The story also follows Claire and Jamie’s daughter Brianna and her husband Roger in the 20th century.
In its announcement, President of Original Programming for Starz Christina Davis said that they are “committed to investing in unapologetic, bold premium storytelling that amplifies diverse voices and shines a spotlight on women in front of and behind the camera through our #TakeTheLead initiative,” and that the series “embodies everything about our initiative including a powerful female lead character and an amazing team of storytellers. We look forward to following the adventures of Claire and Jamie in America during the Revolution as well as more time travel during this next season.”
